Introduction
“Research is nothing but finding diamond from a ploughed field,” said Sir C.V. Raman, the Indian Nobel Laureate in Physics, who won the Nobel prize in 1930 for his invention “Law of Refraction.”
Research is a process of searching and acquiring knowledge through objective and systematic methods to find a solution to a problem. Research, in common parlance to a search for knowledge and a scientific and systematic search for relevant information on a particular topic as it is an act of scientific investigation.
Research is an original contribution to the existing body of knowledge making for its advancement and adding ideas for an effective and efficient system of creating a corpus of knowledge.
Research is an unconscious learning interest pertaining to experiments, sincere longing to obtain more information or library study, archival exploration, or any other in-depth explication to study something new.
Research is a process of developing procedures by assuming and developing a theory, making an enquiry to find evidence, and creating a methodology and methods to go ahead and find out the conclusion.
Research is a method of critical thinking for making a new paradigm, or a new theory, or finding something pertinent to an addition of the existing theory for knowledge production and knowledge generation.
Even though scholars are least bothered by doing fundamental Research, they often raise fundamental questions that eventually become one of the most important critical questions to be explored for achieving an answer.
Research is also a critical inquiry to bring knowledge and correct existing misconceptions. Research is a systematic and scholarly application of the scientific method as science is knowledge, which is more organised and calculated than ordinary observations and inclinations.
Scientific approaches and innovations in Research are trials of immense credibility for obtaining renovative methods in academic research.
Research should be viewed only as scientific investigation, which is empirical, inductive and understanding the reality through sense perception, to become an attitude of inquiry.
Why do we do Research?
Research is carried out to gain knowledge, and knowledge is ”human beings’ supreme virtue and hidden treasure.” Knowledge, achieved through Research, has mainly two components – basic and applied.
Knowledge is transmitted from generation to generation and from tradition to modernity as tradition has a lot of knowledge. The quest for knowledge to generate more and more from less and less propels and compels to raise various questions descriptively and exploratively.
While science is an approach to knowledge which is more organised and calculated than ordinary observations and inclinations, quantitatively explored and qualitatively expounded with a bird’s eye.
What is Qualitative Research?
Research is a methodical and organised effort to explore a specific problem and find a solution. Qualitative Research is conceptualised with a critical and reflective gaze on methodological approaches, understandings and engagements.
It encourages authors to critically engage with the orthodox and the heterodox, familiar and innovative, modern, and experimental and traditional.
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It involves participants’ experiences, perceptions, and questions, perseveringly raised for answering. One of the strengths of qualitative research is its ability to explain processes and patterns of human behaviour that can be difficult to quantify.
Phenomena such as experiences, attitudes, and behaviours can never be accurately and quantitatively assessed. Qualitative Research is the methodology used by researchers to acquire deep contextual understandings of users through non-numerical means and direct observations.
What is Quantitative Research?
Quantitative Research is based on the scientific method. It uses deductive reasoning, where the researcher forms a hypothesis, collects data, and uses the data for the investigation to make conclusions.
Quantitative Research observes something unknown, unexplained, or new, where it searches and explicates and searches for the contemporary theory to find a solution.
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Quantitative Research is formal, objective, rigorous, deductive in approach, and systematic strategies and manoeuvres for generating and refining knowledge to problem-solving [Burns & Grove, 2005].
In quantitative Research, the objectives are measurable and cannot be separated from variables and hypotheses. The survey, case study and experimental Research are some of the most frequently used research strategies in quantitative Research.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it may be aptly fit to site an anecdote on a retired Indian Muslim who went to Macca as a pilgrim. This pious man, after retirement, received his retirement benefits and prepared to go to Macca, for he had desperately wanted to go there for a long time now.
This devotee, sixty-five years now, planned and booked his Haj pilgrimage, started from New Delhi and went to Macca through Mumbai. Having landed in Jedda, Saudi Arabia, he started moving towards the Holy Place, so he reached a particular common junction where all devotees used to reach.
From this particular point, according to the norms that existed, public transportation was unavailable, and every devotee either had to walk for a five-kilometre distance or hire private men who used to carry the devotees.
He saw a police barricade right there, from where everyone had to walk to the sanctum sanctorum, the most important place, which was five kilometres apart. The Musalman gently asked the police officer who was guarding: “How long it will take to reach the Macca main building?”
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The policeman, looked at the pilgrim top to bottom many times and asked, “How old are you?” and he replied, ”sixty-five”. The policeman added, “From where you are coming?” “India”, he responded.
The policeman gently added, “See, the distance between this barricade and the main building is just five kilometres. If you can walk all five kilometres in one hour, you can reach the main building within one hour. If you can walk one kilometre in one hour, it will take five hours to reach there. Now you decide.”
Research is all about speed, perseverance, and excessive interest, which is developed in learning, explaining, experiencing, exploring and explicating to invent something new that could be a diamond.
SGT University established the Faculty of Mass Communication and Media Technology (FMMT) to meet the demands of an increasing job market in the media industry in India and abroad. The Faculty has a dedicated Centre for Languages and Communication (CLC), which offers BA in English Hons. and MA in English Hons. courses.
The Centre for Language and Communication is among the best colleges in Delhi NCR for English Honours courses.
Written By:-
Professor Sam Nesamony
Centre for Languages and Communication
SGT University, Gurugram
