ARAŞTIRMA YÖNTEMLERİ

Finding an original and new research problem is the main organizing principle guiding the analysis of your research. It is difficult to choose an interesting topic without doing a preliminary reading in your discipline. Therefore, you should read a lot of topics and discuss the topic then determine the topic that you feel you find yourself better involved and interested in.

An abstract is a short summary of your completed research. If written well, it makes the reader want to learn more about your research. When writing a structured abstract, consider the following sub-headings:

Think of the introduction as a mental road map that must answer these four questions for the reader:

1. What was I studying?
2. Why was this topic important to investigate?
3. What did we know about this topic before I did this study?
4. How will this study advance new knowledge or new ways of understanding?

When paraphrasing we generally begin the sentence with a signal phrase. When we want to imply that an author ‘argues in favor’, the verb that we use indicates that the source is providing evidence or reason for a position. Common signal phrases in this sense include argues, asserts, contends, demonstrates, holds, illustrates, indicates, ,insists, maintains, shows, supports and proposes. Differs and refutes means ‘argues against’; and determines implies drawing a conclusion from previous discussion.

Transition words are words or phrases used in the topic sentence of a paragraph that give the reader clues about the paragraph logically relates to the rest of the paper. Transition words can also reveal different types of logical relationships, and that logically relate a particular paragraph. If the logical relationship between sentences or paragraphs are based on cause and effect, appropriate transitional expressions are accordingly, consequently, hence, so, therefore, and thus.

It is important that researchers are able to create appropriate research designs which are in line with the purpose and scope of their studies. A well-developed design will achieve the following:

1. Identify the research problem clearly and justify its selection, particularly in relation to any valid alternative designs that could have been used,

2. Review and synthesize previously published literature associated with the research problem,

3. Clearly and explicitly specify hypotheses [i.e., research questions] central to the problem,

4. Effectively describe the data which will be necessary for an adequate testing of the hypotheses and explain how such data will be obtained, and

5. Describe the methods of analysis to be applied to the data in determining whether or not the hypotheses are true or false.

Research instruments are the tools and approaches used to collect data to answer the research question / hypothesis. More than one technique can be employed, the commonest are questionnaires and interviews. Research instruments or measures are the source of the actual data. These can be surveys, interviews, observation and measurement of demographic characteristics (gender, age, height, weight etc.) of the participants. Describing the measure is important because measures are the source of your data. All the results rest on whether or not the measures are adequate, whether measures help the reader judge the validity of the results or not.

The method section is critical because it allows other researchers to see exactly how you conducted your research. This is one of the most crucial parts of a research, and extreme care should be given when writing. In general, we should provide detailed information on the research design/ model, research samples/participants, data gathering instruments/equipment, materials and procedure, validity and reliability of the research instruments and data analysis. The method section should provide enough information to allow other researchers to reproduce our work. In most thesis and articles, the results/findings are presented in a separate chapter/section. A ‘Result’ section that presents key findings emerging from the analysis that answers the research question.

There are five approaches to qualitative research. Narrative: This approach to inquiry retells someone’s story across time. It explores what the story means and the lessons to be learned. Phenomenology: The goal of phenomenological research is to describe participants’ experiences in a specific context and understand a phenomenon. Grounded theory: This type of qualitative approach investigates a process, action, or interaction with the goal of developing a theory. Ethnography: The mainstay of early culture anthropologists, ethnography is an in-depth description of a people group done through “immersed” participant observation and recorded in the vernacular of the host society. Case Study: The most common type of qualitative research, case study looks at episodic events in a definable framework bounded by time and setting. The overall purpose is generally to explain “how.”

Discussion section brings everything together, showing how our findings respond to the brief we explained in or introduction and the previous research we surveyed in our literature survey. This is also the place to answer our research questions and theses hypotheses. The purpose of the discussion is to interpret and describe the significance of your findings in the light of what was already known about the research problem being investigated, and to explain any new understanding or insights about the problem after you’ve taken the findings into consideration.