Importance & Benefits of Research

Importance & Benefits of Research

Introduction

Conducting research makes a way towards appropriate policies and spawns better systems but only when we understand the limitations and importance of research with a sense of better judgment. Research means:

“The systematic investigation into and study of materials and sources in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions.”

As the definition, articulates research is doing systematic investigation. There can be plenty of reasons for conducting research: to establish undisputed facts, to prove the observations, to help in making alternative policies and improve the existing methodologies, to solve existing problems or explore unfamiliar problems. A credible research can only be conducted with an open mind, with an adapting behavior and accepting mindset.

Conducting research in an educational setting mainly focuses on doing experimentation to gain insight on a specific topic. Research is often a preliminary stage, setting a basis for further study and then implementation. In an educational setting, a researcher would emphasize on experimentation, rather than merely observation, to learn about the subject matter. A research conducted with impartial attitude and open mindedness, lead to shape a strong understanding of the topic.

Types of Research

Two basic types of research are descriptive research and experimental research. Each of these uses different research designs and follows different methodologies. This paper would focus on assessing various research designs available to educational research.

Some of the research designs used in an educational setting are:

Comparative Descriptive

Correlational Descriptive

Simple Descriptive

True Experimental

Quasi-Experimental

This paper will only focus on three of the above design methods.

Comparative Descriptive:

In comparative descriptive design, the researcher describes various groups of participants chosen on the basis of variety and difference of results. The design spawns a comparison between those groups. For instance, a researcher identifies non-profit, private schools in some state that have either low or high student achievement. The researcher makes a roadmap by aligning or matching each school's curriculum and state standards. S/he then compares the results of high achievers with those of lower levels to determine the degree of difference in alignment.

Correlational Descriptive:

A form of descriptive research is correlational research design. This design is extensively used in educational research setting and often considered separately from descriptive research. Correlational design is used to assess the relationship between multiple variables. These methods encompass both the simple relationship between two variables and the complex relationships among several variables. This complex relationship is the actual advantage of correlational research as it helps to investigate complex inter-relationships in the same study.

In correlational ...