It is necessary for every student and scholar to comprehend the notion of what are the methods of research. That is due to the fact that the research methodology plays quite a significant role in every educational and scholarly activity. In particular, the research methods are dedicated to providing an appropriate collecting, processing, and synthesizing of various scientific data that are required for a big variety of the academic and scholarly works. In this regard, it is quite a necessary issue to discover the meaning of the concept of what are the methods of research.
Meaning of the Research Methods
Research methods are considered specific tools that carry out collecting and processing of the particular information in order to provide the appropriate findings for the scholarly investigation. In other words, research methods imply the strategies of providing the answers to the specific research questions. Considering the fact that there is a wide range of the scholarly investigations that involve different subjects, they require an appropriate method in order to find necessary data and implement the objectives of their studies. The respectively selected research methods may assist in developing a high-quality academic investigation that will provide knowledge that will be applicable in the future.
Qualitative and Quantitative Research Methods
The research methods consist of such significant types as qualitative and quantitative techniques of the scholarly investigation. The qualitative method of the academic research implies a detailed description of the particular issue. This research method is based on such strategies of data collection as surveys, interviews, and observations. In addition to this, the qualitative research method is primarily aimed at the exploratory studies. The goal of the qualitative method is to discover the particular hypothesis, and causes that are related to the research question. One of the most significant advantages of the qualitative method is that it is able to provide complex textual descriptions of how individuals experience the research issue. This method is more appropriate for the studies of humanities as it is effective in identifying various intangible factors, including socioeconomic status, religion, ethnicity, gender roles, or social standards. The second significant technique of the scholarly investigation is the quantitative research method. In contrast to the qualitative one, this method of the academic research implies the process of collecting and processing the numerical data in order to provide findings for the academic investigation. This method is applied in order to resolve the research issue through generating numerical data that subsequently can be transformed into the applicable statistics.
Correlation, Regression, and Meta-analysis
There are also other common types of the research methodology such as correlation, regression, and meta-analysis. The correlation and regression analysis of the academic research involves the identification of the relationship between the dependent and independent variables. Meta-analysis implies the application of the statistical approach for the purpose to combine the findings from various studies in order to enhance the power over the individual investigations and resolve the uncertainty between the controversial results. In essence, it is a statistical overview of the results from one or more systematic reviews. In general, meta-analysis provides a weighted average of the included study results.