A Guide to Research Methodology for Beginners

Book excerpt: This book is the outcome of more than four decades of experience of the author in teaching and research field. Research is a creative process and the topic of research methodology is complex and varied. The basic premise for writing this book is that research methods can be taught and learnt. The emphasis is on developing a research outlook and a frame of mind for carrying out research. The book presents current methodological techniques used in interdisciplinary research along with illustrated and worked out examples. This book is well equipped with fundamentals of research and research designs. All efforts have been made to present Research, its meaning, intention and usefulness. Focussed in designing of research programme, selection of variables, collection of data and their analysis to interpret the data are discussed extensively. Statistical tools are complemented with examples, making the complicated subject like statistics simplest usable form. The importance of software, like MS Excel, SPSS, for statistical analyses is included. Written in a simple language, it covers all aspects of management of data with details of statistical tools required for analysis in a research work. Complete with a glossary of key terms and guides to further reading, this book is an essential text for anyone coming to research for the first time and is widely relevant across the disciplines of sciences. This book is designed to introduce Masters, and doctoral students to the process of conducting scientific research in the life sciences, social sciences, education, public health, and related scientific disciplines. It conforms to the core syllabus of many universities and institutes. The target audience for this book includes those are going to start research as graduate students, junior researchers, and professors teaching courses on research methods.The book entitled "A guide to Research Methodology for Beginners" is succinct and compact by design focusing only on essential concepts rather than burden students with a voluminous text on top of their assigned readings. The book is structured into the following nine chapters.Chapter-1: What is Scientific Research?Chapter-2: Literature ReviewChapter-3: How to develop a Research Questions & HypothesesChapter-4: Research Methods and the Research DesignChapter-5: Concept of Variables, Levels and Scales of Measurements for Data collectionChapter-6: Data Analysis, Management and PresentationChapter-7: Tips for Writing Research ReportChapter-8: Glossary Related to Research MethodologyChapter-9: ReferencesIt is a comprehensive and compact source for basic concepts in research and can serve as a stand-alone text or as a supplement to research readings in any doctoral seminar or research methods class. The target audience for this book includes those are going to start research as graduate students, junior researchers, and professors teaching courses on research methods.