ARAŞTIRMA YÖNTEMLERİ - Deneme Sınavı - 4

Interpretive, constructivist position has some connections with idealism, however, it differs in many respects. Constructivism has no claims to existence of an immaterial world. They are similar in the sense that both acknowledge the role of human mind in human perception, human reality, and human knowledge.

There are three well-known reasons that researchers seek after. They are; experience, theory testing, and replication of previous research. Past experiences of professionals can be a strong inspiration for researchers. Researchers are mostly interested in negative experiences for the purpose of improving practices and making them better for next generations. Theories can be used to develop research studies. Even a single study can be the focus of a research to examine its implications. The replication studies refer to repeating a past research recognizing its methodological weaknesses to do a better one. A researcher repeats a study carefully so that the previous limitations will not be repeated.

Anderson and Arsenault defines six types of knowledge: Historical knowledge, axiological knowledge, theoretical and conceptual knowledge, prior research studies, reviews and academic debate. Axiological knowledge, also be called a “theory of experience”, is created by practitioners who share their long-term experiences. Axiological knowledge may include important conclusions and generalizations. This kind of literature knowledge does not mean technicalities but the world of practice. So, the literature reviewer should notice the potential use of the axiological knowledge and avoid using it as a theory or prior research.

Literature can be defined as published study such as articles, books, dissertations, research reports, etc. Social scientists define literature as the “published scholarship”. The term literature review is referred as “the process of reading and reviewing published scholarship in the field.” It empowers us to perceive how new investigations and research are fairly similar to building squares, which are laid upon the thoughts worked by others.

A literature review can be performed in seven steps:

There are four types of literature review: narrative literature review, systematic literature review, meta-analysis, focused literature review. A literature review is considered to be a research methodology in its own right when it is carried out systematically. In systematic reviews, a strict methodology is followed in literature selection. While selecting the literature, including or excluding criteria are transparent. Systematic reviews are convenient when the reviewer aims to illuminate the existing literature and its potential implications.

Internet materials can be ranked from unreliable to very reliable depending on their sources and the quality of their publication processes. A good researcher distinguishes the most effective types of sources from the others. Peer-reviewed sources are regarded as the strongest, implying that the published paper has been reviewed by authorities in their fields and appreciated for the quality of the methods adopted in the paper. Thus, the literature reviewer should be careful about the sources they prefer. In this sense, websites of an individual, who is not an expert on the issue can be considered as an unreliable source.

University repositories are an ordinarily open-access database of the research and publication productions of an institution. Grey literature is the unpublished, non-commercial, hard-to- find information that organizations such as professional associations, research institutes, think tanks, and government departments produce. The most comprehensible sources of reference are the encyclopedias for the selection of the topic as well as the preparation readings after the topic selection. One of the sources that are appealed in scientific studies is the statistics. The statistics utilized by researchers lose their up-to-dateness as soon as the new statistics are published. Periodicals are more widely known as journals. They are the major information source of prior research literature. Periodicals are published a number of times a year and are sent to subscribers including the libraries. The journals which report the research findings are the most significant ones.

A good literature review should have the following characteristics:

Common problems and mistakes in conducting a literature review include uncertain purpose, vague introduction and poor organization, not enough information, failing to connect to take-home message, be critical, exceptions and counterexamples, tell the reader where to go, and matters of style. Some other common literature review mistakes are as follows:

A scientific research process involves 1) problem identification, 2) data collection, 3) data analysis, 4) interpretation, and 5) report writing. All these stages are relevant parts of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed method research efforts.

Such a stance with respect to the nature of reality led to the birth of a research design to produce knowledge that is measurable, replicable, generalizable, intact, and value-free judgements. Unlike qualitative and mixed methods, quantitative studies entail a strict planning process that researchers have to abide step by step right from the beginning.

Hypotheses are of two major types: statistical and research hypotheses. Statistical hypothesis (H0- neutral hypothesis, null hypothesis, absence hypothesis) denotes that there is either no relation or difference between the variables. Research hypothesis, on the contrary, (H1- difference hypothesis, alternative hypothesis) is the expression of the relation that a researcher hopes to confirm after relevant data collection and analysis (Altunışık, Coşkun,
Bayraktaroğlu, and Yıldırım, 2005).

Dependent variable is the one whose change is observed in comparison to other variables, and it is generally symbolized with the letter “Y” (Erkuş, 2011). Pretend that our research problem focuses on the influence that international organizations have over the level of globalization. In this case, the level of globalization is the dependent variable since its change is examined in comparison to other variables. Independent variable, on the other hand, is the one that has some kind of effect over the dependent variable, and it is mostly symbolized with the letter “X”.

Ontology is a concept that means the study of being/existence and the nature of reality. Ontology asks questions such as “What is the essential substance of (or the underlying foundation of) existence?”, “What is the nature of reality?” and “Is it possible for us to perceive reality as is?” The correct answer is B.

While ontology is interested in the questions related to the apple’s existence, epistemology is interested in how we gain our knowledge of an apple. For example, how is it that we know that there is a thing called apple, and it is edible, and it has a taste, the taste can be sweet or sour, it has a particular material structure, it is juicy, it is smelly, and our knowledge that apple has health benefits, and what those benefits are and so on. The correct answer is A.

Rationalism defends the idea that knowledge that is obtained through the senses lack certainty, because senses often deceive us; for example, a stick put in water seems to us as if it is bend, even though in reality it is not bend. Further, the knowledge gained from sense experience is based on inductive inference, which is a generalization that is based on our past experiences. That is, our knowledge is induced form particular experiences we have had in the past, and because the future does not have to resemble the past these generalizations are not trust worthy.are Thus, our knowledge based on sense experiences can only give us probabilistic knowledge, which could or could not be true in future experiences. In other words, knowledge based on sense experience lacks certainty. The correct answer is E.

A “problem statement” should be restrictive. Otherwise, it can't be handled by the literature reviewer. Therefore, B is not correct.

Axiological knowledge can also be called a “theory of experience”. This kind of knowledge is created by practitioners who share their long-term experiences. The correct answer is D.

"To maintain repeating previous studies that have ben completed before" cannot be among the purposes of a literature search since the researcher is supposed to produce an original work. Therefore, the answer is A.