Doctorial research Process



Doctorial research Process

Part I

To complete Doctorial Research it is very important to first understand the process of Doctorial research. One of the main reasons that students become frustrated during their research is that they fail to understand the procedure of research at doctorate level. Students who get attracted towards a field also get very worried in making a link between application and theory. It is one of the essential parts of the research enterprise. The thing which is not obvious is that same skills of a practitioner are required for competent researcher. Curiosity and hypothesis testing are considered as rock layer of the empirical research (Jahn, 2011).

One way of conducting the research process is called as research wheel. The research wheel suggests that research does not have linear cycle instead they have recursive cycle of steps which means that they repeat over time (Jahn, 2011).

Observations

In the below figure the cycle of research wheel is shown. In most of the research the entry point is usually some form of empirical observation. In other words, a topic is selected by a researcher from a wide range of topics (Davis, 2001).

Proposition

The next step is to induct the logical process that culminates in a proposition. The inductive process builds relationship of the specific topic with the broader context and it is started with some hunches (Davis, 2001).

These hunches are in the form of “I wonder if….” These hunches are usually guided by the assumptions, values and goals of the researcher. In the stage two of the research wheel proposition is developed. The proposition is presented as a statement on the developed relationship. The existence of proposition is within the conceptual and theoretical framework. The main role of researcher is to clearly identify the relationship of particular proposition with both the previous researches and with broader context. This part is the most creative and challenging part for the researcher (Davis, 2001).

Conceptual framework

Conceptual framework is not a fully developed form of theory. It consist a statement which is linked with the abstract concept of the empirical data. The purpose of developing theories and conceptual frameworks is to describe the abstract phenomenon that has taken place under similar conditions. In theory, researcher moves from one observation to another observation. The purpose behind these moves is that researcher makes sense between the similarities and differences. It is very necessary to place study in such context otherwise the study will have the question of “so what”. For new researchers it is one of the main objectives of the research (Ruger, 2011).

Research Question

In the research question it is not necessary that if the research question is interesting so it also has ultimate meaning. The example of this can be taken by the help of this question: “does the existence of women is greater the men in graduation schools?” this question is banal until the answer of this question has a practical implication for the study. For practical implications, a study has to be worthwhile practical but it is ...