Research 101

A research project is a methodical and innovative process to increase scientific understanding. The main goal of doing research is to investigate relevant questions and unknowns using a scientific method. In order to generate a robust research, one must acquire, organize, and assess data to gain a greater understanding of a topic. It is common for research project to use past knowledge to generate more.

Defining Objectives

Identifying exactly what you hope to accomplish beforehand is crucial to the process of collecting data. By setting well-defined objectives, it is the best way to avoid wasting time and getting exactly what you want out of your investigation. To define your research objectives, follow these simple steps:

1. Problem Statement

Start by identifying the main focus of your research. You can define it by answering the question: what are you trying to achieve? As you proceed with this step, think about your primary aim. Setting an overall goal can actually help a researcher to understand their knowledge gaps. Furthermore, it could even rethink the reason of doing the research.

During this process it is very important to make sure there are no similar projects already done that might answer your problem statement.

2. Narrow it Down

After being done defining the main focus of your research, divide your problem statement into objectives. One simple way is to keep finding questions inside question you want to answer and organize them from broader to detail. Another way is to think what steps you need to follow to obtain a solution. However, in both cases organizing categorically and by importance is a useful way to breaking down your primary goal.

By narrowing down your objectives, one can detect the different data needed to obtain the answers you want to get. Your objectives should be specific enough for you to be able to determine the type and amount of data you need.

3. Be S.M.A.R.T.

Yes, we all you are pretty smart, don't need to brag about that. But we are not talking about that in here. S.M.A.R.T. is an acronym for you to not forget how to write infallible objectives. It means that your objectives should be:

• Specific: How do we make it happen? Who's gonna do it? How are we gonna do it?
• Measurable: How do we measure it? What type of data you need to get?
• Achievable: Are you being realistic? Is your research grounded? Do you have everything you need to accomplish your objectives?
• Relevant: Why?! Yeah, why is this needed? Will it actually be useful?
• Time-Bound: How long do you plan to work on this? When will you begin and end this project? What's the research timeframe?

Collect it, and by 'it' we mean data.

To get answers, we gather data from a variety of sources. Data collection is a system to obtain useful information for a set goal. It's all about collecting quality data. You need high-quality data that makes sense for what you're doing. In order to achieve that, you must think about how you're going to do it.

There are two basic categories of data collection: primary and secondary. There are also two main types of data that can be collected: qualitative and quantitative. Primary data collection gather information directly from the source. Secondary data collection use publicly available (already gathered and processed) data. Plenty of methods to collect data exist, most of them are no-brainers and easy to deduct. So we will not go into detail about that.

No matter what data collection method you choose, it's crucial to make sure the data is unbiased, traceable, high-quality, and real. So make sure that the data collection process is thorough, transparent and achievable. This is called data integrity.

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Where do I get data?

Plenty of methods to collect data exist, most of them are no-brainers and easy to deduct. However, there are many ways to obtain your data, and that can also be overwhelming. Because we do not go into details and examples about it, if you are still confused, feel free to use this online resource.

What is Data Integrity and why is it important?

No matter what data collection method you choose, it's crucial to make sure the data is unbiased, traceable, high-quality, and real. Follow this link to get more information about data integrity.

What is S.M.A.R.T. and do you have any examples?

S.M.A.R.T. is an acronym for you to not forget how to write infallible objectives. It means that your objectives should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. Use this resource to get more details about S.M.A.R.T. goals.

Now that I have my data, where can I find data visualization tools?

You are in the right place, different page. No worries, because we'll take you there: just click me!