Whether we are aware of it or not, we are surrounded by research. Educators, administrators, government officials, business leaders, human service providers, health care professionals, regularly use social research findings in their jobs. Social research can be used to raise children, reduce crime, improve public health, sell products, improve workers’ efficiency, or just understand one’s life. Assume for the moment that you are the Manager of a restaurant. You are experiencing a significant turn over in your waiter/waitress pool, and long-time customers have been commenting that the friendly atmosphere that has historically drawn them to your door is changing. What will you do? Where will you try to solve this problem? The problem of high turn over and decline in the friendly atmosphere at the restaurant has to be researched.
The study of research methods provides you with the knowledge and skills you need to solve the problem and meet the challenges of a fast-paced decision-making environment. A systematic inquiry whose objective is to provide information to the problems (be they managerial as in our example) is one way to explain research.
What is Research?
General image of the research is that it has something to do with the laboratory where scientists are supposedly doing some experiments. Somebody who is interviewing consumers to find out their opinion about the new packaging of milk is also doing research. Research is simply the process of finding solutions to a problem after through study and analysis of the situation factors. It is gathering information needed to answer a question, and thereby help in solving a problem. We do not do study in any haphazard manner. Instead we try to follow a system or a procedure in an organized manner. It is all the more necessary in case we want to repeat the study, or somebody else wants to verify our findings. In the latter case the other person has to follow the same procedure that we followed. Hence not only we have to do the study in a systematic manner but also that system should be known to others.
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