Stages of Conducting Research

Stages of conducting research

1. Problem identification — a problem is the question or idea of interest, which ought to be answered through data.

2. Pre-surveying — researcher should make a survey of a place where the research is going to be conducted to know things like transport, weather, etc.

3. Literature review — these involve readings of various publications to know what other scholars/researchers have done about what you are investigating.

   • Sources of literature reviews are journals/reports, books, internet.

4. Formulation of hypothesis — this is an assumption used on what one expects to find out in the field. It can be either true or false. Hypothesis is a prediction of outcome of the results.

   • Example: Poor student's classroom attendance results to poor academic performance.

5. Types of research hypothesis

   • Null hypothesis – is the one that is stated in negation i.e., it indicates non-relationship between the variables.
   • Alternative hypothesis – is the one stated to indicate the actual expectation. It indicates relationship between the variables.

6. Research designing — this is the framework of the research, or is the arrangement of conditions for collection and analysis of data in the manner that aim to combine relevance to the research purpose.

7. Data collection — refers to the collection of various information/data in the field to enrich a research. Data collection can be done by:

   • Observation
   • Interview
   • Questionnaires
   • Group discussions

8. Analysis of data — the stage involves the following processes:

   • Editing
   • Coding
   • Classification
   • Tabulation of collected data

9. Hypothesis testing — after data analysis, the researcher needs to test the hypothesis formulated earlier. The major question here is whether the facts support the hypothesis or not.

10. Data interpretation and presentation — after getting correct information about the study topic, the analyzed data is interpreted and preserved in different statistical graphs and charts so that it can be understood by everyone.

11. Report writing — at the end of the research, the researcher has to prepare a report of what has been done. The researchers' findings have to be communicated or exposed to the public.