RESEARCH

Planning and Reflecting at Post Graduate Level

Planning and Reflecting at Post Graduate Level

Introduction

This paper comprises of three given tasks. The first task in this paper intends to discuss the prevailing research strategies and that what research methods have been used for this specific assignment. Further, in the second task this paper also analyses a project plan and its management. To have deep understanding of the importance of project plan, elements of planning, time and decision making are critically analysed. In addition to this, third task is about reflecting over the whole process of this assignment. It explains the issues that were faced and how they were resolved and in the end things that were learnt while working on this assignment.

Discussion

Research Strategy

Research is a form of structured and intellectual organized work, which is strongly linked with the conduct of science. Research can also be said as a form of inquiry. However, researches can be of various kinds. Usually research is of two types; namely primary research and secondary research. Primary research is referred to conduct a research right from scratch, to investigate. Tools that may be used for primary research are questionnaires, interviews, focus group and many others. This way the researcher will get first hand information that is required to fulfil the research. Secondary research refers to the research that has already been conducted several times by other researchers and analysts (Walsh and Wigens, 2003). However, one can access those researches and their outcomes by accumulating the literature on that specific topic. Then he analyses the data that has been gathered from other researches and accordingly conclude the research.

It is immensely important for the researcher to set out research questions, in order to remain focused on the research subject. Some researchers also frame hypotheses and then conduct the research to determine if their hypotheses is accepted or rejected. However, this method may create biasness as the research may only focus on the literature that is in favour of his hypotheses. Therefore, it is suggested that a researcher may only frame research questions with the only intention to inquire about the prevailing issues, analyse and make appropriate recommendations. Further, research may be focused on quantitative study or qualitative study. To have accurate statistical result, one may conduct a quantitative study. However, all the topics cannot be quantified, so majority of them are researched under the qualitative method (Flippo and Caverly, 2009).

However, for the purpose of this assignment on planning and research, I employed the strategy of qualitative method. As compared to quantitative methods, the qualitative method is less expensive in terms of gathering data. Moreover, qualitative data has more scope in terms of compiling the information. Further, I gathered secondary data from the libraries and existing journals. I did not restrict to only recent years, since research strategies have been in use since quite many years. So I diversified my study based on articles and researches that were published from 1990 to ...