Aims of Research as a Scientific Activity

Scientific Activity

•Scientific activity is the activities of recognizing that personal and cultural beliefs influence both our perceptions and our interpretations of natural phenomena.

•It provides a means to formulate questions about general observations and devise theories of explanation.

•The approach lends itself to answering questions in fair and unbiased statements, a long as questions are posed correctly, in  a hypothetical form that can be tested.

Aims of Research

•To gain familiarity with a phenomenon or to achieve new insights into it.

•To portray accurately the characteristics of a particular individual, situation or a group.

•To determine the frequency with which something occurs or with which it is associated with something else.

•To test a hypothesis of a causal relationship between variables.

1. Problem Solving

•Problem solving refers to the ability to use knowledge, facts and data to effectively solve problems.

•This doesn’t mean you need to have an immediate answer, it means you have to be able to think on your feet, assess problems and find solutions.

•Steps involved in Problem Solving

1.Confronting the problems

2.Collection of evidence

3.Formulating possible solution of hypothesis

4.Evaluating the sustainability of solutions

5.Testing the possible solutions

6.Arriving at conclusions.

2. Theory Building

•Meaning of Theory Building: The process of building a statement of concepts and their interrelationships that shows how and/or why a phenomenon occurs.

•Theory: A theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment.

Steps of Theory Building

Theories
Propositions
Concepts
Observation of objects and events

3. Prediction

•It is a statement about a future event in research.

•Predictions are usually stated as hypotheses, i.e. clear statements which can be subjected to scientific verification.