Steps in Social Research

Social research is a systematic procedure to seek explanation to unexplained social phenomena to clarify the doubtful and misconceived facts. It is a scientific process to discover new facts or to verify old facts in attempt to explain the causal relationship of a phenomenon. Therefore, research is aimed at generating concepts and theories and reliable explanations.

Social research involves the following steps.

1. Selection of Research Problem
2. Review of Related Literature
3. Formulation of Research Objectives
4. Devising Hypotheses
5. Making the Research Design - methodology
6. Sampling procedure
7. Data Collection
8. Data Analysis and Interpretation
9. Hypotheses Testing
10. Deriving findings, conclusion and suggestions
11. Report Writing

A research problem is simply the topic of the research. Selection of research problem involves selecting a broad area and then narrowing it down to a specific topic. For example, a researcher may select a broad area for his research such as Domestic Violence. He splits this broad area into a number of sub-areas to select one sub-area from them as the topic for his research. For instance, the broad area ‘Domestic Violence’ can be split into the following sub-areas:

• Cause of Domestic Violence
• Impact of Domestic Violence on Family
• Impacts of Domestic Violence on Children
• Services available to victims of Domestic Violence
• The extent of Domestic Violence in a Society

The reserach may select one of the above sub-areas as the research topic. The purpose of narrowing down the broad area into sub-areas is to select a specific and manageable topic for the research.

The next step is to study available literature on the topic – all the previously done work on the topic including research thesis, research papers, books, reports and publications. The purpose of reviewing the related literature is:

• To understand various aspect of the topic – required for conducting the research.
• To understand the nature of work done on the topic
• To identify research gaps – those areas which have not been explored by others
• To make a theoretical background for the study – as it is added as a chapter to your final report.
• To have a theoretical background for analysis of the new findings of your research

Objectives are the aims of research. The research wants to explore these aims through the research. The simple way to make objectives is to first make questions that what do you want to explore in relation to the topic and then convert these questions into objectives.

For  example, you select ‘Impact of Domestic Violence on Children’ as your research topic. You can raise the following questions about this topic.

• What is the impact of DV on the emotional development of a child?
• How DV affects the child’s academic performance?
• What are the effects of DV on a child's physical health?
• How DV influences the social behavior of children?

Now, convert the above question into objective by using action-oriented words (e.g.  to explore, to investigate, to know etc) as follows:

• To understand the impact of DV on the emotional development of a child;
• To examine the influence of DV on the child’s academic performance;
• To know various effects of DV on a child’s physical health;
• To explore the impact of DV on the child’s social behavior.

A hypothesis is a testable assumption showing a relationship among certain variables of the research. It is a logical relationship and is relevant to the theme of the research.  The purpose of devising hypotheses is to confirm or reject some fact which the researcher assumes to be true or false in relation to the research. Therefore, a research devises some hypotheses and test them with the help the data collected to establish certain facts.

The examples of hypothesis are as follows:

• The higher the illiteracy in a society, the higher will be the poverty.
• The higher the poverty in a society, the higher will be the crime rate.
• The higher the illiteracy in society, the higher would be the discrimination against women.

Hypotheses help the researcher in forming a base for the research. It specifies the focus of the research. It makes it easier for the researcher to carry out the research to generate productive findings.

The research design is simply a plan for research. It outlines the methods and procedures used in the research. It tells how the researcher wants to conduct the research. It includes the following:

• Which methodology will be used? - e.g. quantitative or qualitative method
• Which tool of data collection will be used? - e.g. questionnaire, interview, or observation
• Who will be the respondents and how many respondents? e.g. sampling size and techniques.
• How will be the collected data analyzed? - e.g. software, manual, graphs, tables etc.
• Which test will be used to verify hypotheses or other facts? – e.g. chi-square test etc

Depending on the nature of research topic, a researcher may also take other considerations of research into account while making the research design, such as a description of the geographical area of research, ethical considerations and variables of the study. Writing a proper research design is important because it guides the researcher throughout the process of research.

Sampling means selecting a part of the population for research study. It is difficult for a researcher to study all the population of an area due to limited resources, such as time, money and energy. Hence, a smaller part of the population is selected for the research study. The number of total respondents in a sample is known as sample size. The sample size can vary depending upon the nature of the study.

The sampling procedure means how to select respondents from the population to make the sample, so that it is possibly a true representative of the entire population. There are various sampling procedures such as random sampling, stratified sampling, purposive sampling, probability sampling, non-probability sampling and so on. The sampling procedure and sample size is always discussed in the research design of the study.

After making a good research design, the researcher starts to collect data for the research. The data is collected according to the techniques reflected in the research design of the study. The collected is used by the researcher to derive the ultimate findings of the study.

There are two main types of data: 1) primary data, and 2) secondary data.

Primary data: It is the data that is collected for the first time by the researcher from the respondents of the study. The researcher has to visit the respondents and collect data from them using different tools of data collection, e.g. a questionnaire, interview or observation etc. It generally involves a lot of fieldwork.

Secondary data: It is the data which has already been collected by others and is available in the form of books, reports, papers, websites, magazine, encyclopedias and so on.  Such data is called secondary data. Nowadays, the use of secondary data (such as survey data by different organization) for research has become pretty common because it helps the researcher save their resources (e.g., money and time).

The collected data is analysed to generate findings. Before analysing the data, it is prepared for analysis which involves data editing and data coding. Data editing means checking the collected data for errors or missing information and correcting it accordingly. There different ways of treating the problem of missing values such as by simply excluding the missing values from analysis, using mean values for the missing values and so on. Data coding means scaling the variables in the data so that they can be measured. Various scaling methods may be used (such as nominal scale, ordinal scale or interval scale), where the response-categories for questions are assigned certain numbers. Sometimes different questions are combined to make a cumulative index for the measurement of a phenomenon.

After preparing the data for analysis, it is analysed using different techniques such as quantitative and qualitative techniques. The quantitative analysis is mainly based on statistical assessment the responses of respondents in terms of their frequencies or mean values. It involves using statistical techniques such as regression techniques and other statistical tests. It may also involve making tables, graphs and diagrams. On the other hand, qualitative analysis is mainly based assessment of the ideas expressed by the respondents. It involves identifying common and differing patterns within these ideas of respondents to establish certain themes for analysis.   

The ultimate purpose of analysis is to find answers for the question that were raised by the researcher at the start of the research. In other words, the purpose is to achieve the objectives of the research. For this, the findings are explained as new facts in detail and also as how they relate to the already found facts (as discovered in the reviewed literature).

Hypotheses are tested in the light of analysed data. For example, we have a hypothesis that ‘Higher the poverty in society, higher will be the crime’. The relationship between poverty and crime rate in an area can be verified or rejected in light of analysed data. This can simply be done by seeing whether the rate of crime is higher in the areas where there is higher poverty among people, as explored by the data. The researcher may use some statistical tests to confirm or reject the correlation between crime and poverty.

Remember, hypothesis testing can be a part of the data analysis and is done during the analysis phase. However, sometimes the researcher may do it after analyzing the data completely to establish certain conclusions.

Data analysis generates the findings of the study which confirmed facts. The last part of the research is to derive conclusions based on these findings of the study. The conclusions are final inferences regarding what larger picture can be seen in the light of the finding of the study. Therefore, in the conclusion chapter of the thesis, the main findings are briefly restated and then, in the light of these findings, the conclusions are discussed.

Moreover, in the light of the findings of the study, the researcher has to devise some suggestion or recommendations to the possible audience of the research, e.g., government officials, the general community, and future researchers.

After completing research, the research has to write a research report generally known as thesis or dissertation. At each step of research, the researcher generally writes different parts (e.g., basic concepts, literature studied, methodology, findings, suggestions etc.) of the research. However, in the end, all of these parts are compiled into a combined thesis. The purpose of writing a thesis report is to give a proper shape to the research and to bring it into a presentable form for the audience of the research. The widely used format of the research report is as follows:

1. PRELIMINARY PAGES

▪   Title Page
▪   Abstract
▪   Table of contents

2. MAIN BODY

Chapter 1 - Introduction
Chapter 2 – Literature Review
Chapter 3 – Research Design
Chapter 4 – Data Analysis and Interpretation
Chapter 5 – Findings and Suggestions

3. CLOSING PAGES

▪   Bibliography / References