- Aujas Sohal
As the lecture began, it was focused more on how to conduct
the research. The research material should be systematic, replicable and
logical. The main part of research is its hypothesis, which works as a guide
and a result which the researcher aims towards. It is suggested that you always
keep a hypothesis so you don’t divert from the aim of the research. Another
important factor is the administrative feasibility, whether you have enough
money to afford all the equipment and data required. Once your cost factor is
in check, next are your sources from where you organize your samples. Different
kinds of scientific methods exist for this purpose. These samples that are collected,
are accepted to be same for the entire group, this is called generalization.
Since there are too many variables that cannot be controlled by the researcher,
he or she aims to use the sample collected from a smaller group and accepts it
as the same for the entire group. The lecturer then gave us the example,
‘Impact of stress on sexes’, stated two kinds of hypothesis, a non-directional
hypothesis, which doesn’t bring much clarity to the topic and a directional
hypothesis, which brings clarity and acts as the aim of the research. The major
characteristic of a hypothesis is that it should be testable or else the entire
research may become pointless.
The lecturer then continued forward with the quote, “Writing
a research report carefully and accurately is an art.” The next major part of
research is assessment and measurement. In situations where you do not
mathematically use any definition or formula, the conclusion you make is called
an assessment. Whereas, the conclusion calculated accurately by a mathematical
formula and definition is called measurement. Each time you write a research
paper choosing the topics is also a very important issue, as the topic and sub
topics should be made so that the paper follows a continuous flow and is easy
to follow. Making objective decisions is a critical point in research, as the
researcher has to make unbiased decisions and there should never be any
scientific dishonesty of ethics. Falsification of data is a very common example
of scientific dishonesty, plagiarism being on the rise, each research report on
similar topics is bound to have some lines in common, and hence the scientific
community has set a level of acceptance of similar material. Other such breach
of ethics includes falsification of data, faulty data gathering process.
Justification and validity of data is another concern, a researcher should be
able to justify why he has chosen the topics, the samples and the formulae.
Errors in research are bound to happen, no matter how careful the researcher
is, there are two types of errors, type 1 and type 2. Type 1, rejecting the
null hypothesis, when it is true and type 2, rejecting the null hypothesis when
it is false. Null hypothesis indicates similarity in the group. The more
dangerous error of the two varies from situation to situation. The lecturer
concluded his topic with a quote, “Research is to see that everyone sees, but
to think what no one has thought.”
After the topic was concluded, Dr. Anthony sir offered us
some insight on how to actually write down the research on paper. Remembering
every quote we come by, so that when we use it ourselves, we never forget to
give due credit.
Sophia Club member Hrishabh offered the vote of thanks and
brought the event to a close. Pen and paper in each hand, every student looked
forward to writing a research paper themselves one day.
(Photographs by Abhishek Sharma)
(Photographs by Abhishek Sharma)
