By Ahmed Ali Mangrio
Lecturer – Department of Commerce,
Govt. Islamia Arts & Commerce College, Sukkur.
E-mail: ahmed.mangrio@gmail.com
Propositions: (1) All italicized paragraphs are not the part of story. (2) This story actually targets to create a link between natural thinking of a lay man and thinking of a person from scientific research (italicized).
Once upon a time there was a nice and hard-worker young boy who desired to study in a college nearby his residence. So he decided to plan well in advance and went outside the home and found a college in locality. He went inside the college and looked around in college and he found that there is large number of students but many were discussing that they should leave the college and many were asking for admissions.
In research this situation is called the presence of a main problem or question i.e. in this case it is “Will the joining of the college will benefit me or not?”
He thought there that one day my selection of college may prove wrong therefore he decided to take time and review his decision. But he was not able to decide the grounds of decision because he has seen contradicting discussions at the same time. Then he went to a person who was a senior student and was doing a research and asked him that how he can decide to study in this college or not and, will this decision prove fruitful to him or not? The senior student looked briefly at his odd cowboy-like clothes and smilingly said that why you are just asking from me go and ask from everybody if majority favors in studying in this college then you should study otherwise not. He surprised at such a difficult thing that he has to do, so he went home and slept in dismal.
The need of research arrives in the above paragraph if the researcher wants to ascertain the facts about the solution to the main problem.
On next mourning he awaked and he was happy with an idea that he will ask from his neighboring uncle who was very kind. He went to uncle and said the yesterday’s story. Uncle laughed much at his inexperience and said to him that the short cut is that you can use the experience of persons like you from the past records or you should ask from an expert who has all such data. Uncle being already in hurry told him before going away that you should find such data from newspapers or library.
Then the need for Literature Review arrives or going through the experiences of other persons which had the same main problem like ours.
He previously depressed was now felling somehow relaxed by knowing the way out. He gone to the library and asked the librarian that how he can get such data. The librarian gave him the statistical reports of college rankings published in press. At first look he didn’t understood the reports but after studying for a while he begin to grasping it. There was not much data except the ranking in that material. He found the college was much higher in ranking few years ago but it began to loose its ranking every year after that. Once again he worried and that this ranking may be much lower when he will have his degrees in hand or might not be this situation occurs at all.
The Literature Review from different sources such as media or libraries reveals some more facts and figures which generate some specific questions i.e., in this case “why the ranking has gone down.”
He came back to home and in bed at night he was thinking that he should ask from as much students as he can in a day so that why not to join or what’s the problem in this college. Then he would be sure about his decision. He decided to ask from students that what are problems with this college which had lowered the ranking of the college but he also decided that he will ask from senior students only because they will be able to assess the problems correctly because of their longer period of stay in college. He slept with a hope that tomorrow he will be able to decide.
Then the researchers arrive at the Research Question i.e., in this case “what problem lowered the ranking” This question testifies a hypothesis i.e., “there must be a problem which had lowered the ranking of college.” The researcher must decide his sample of population (in this case senior students) and its sample size (as many as in a day) which can provide the accurate as well as cost-beneficial solution to the research problem.
On next day he brought up early and made several chits of paper and on each chit he put his question that to be answered. Whole day exercise of distributing and receiving back his chits has made him tired but in bed he looked at glance some chits that were stating many reasons on many chits but he was not able to understand what does the majority saying at that moment.
Different kind of surveying techniques (chits with question in this case) reveal different results (open answers) but open ended questions result in much complicated data and the issue of compilation of facts also arrives in large datasets of population (answered chits).
On next day he sorted all chits and separated the chits which were stating common issues. At the end he arrived that out of 175 chits 70 chits were saying that the faculty is not good, 50 were saying that administration is not serious to studies and 40 were saying that there is no problem in college and 15 actually joked at him.
Researcher has to compile and summarize data gathered in surveys into understandable information to arrive at possible (most likely) answer to the research problem.
After having all the information about the ranking and problem of lowering of ranking he decided to tell the college authorities that they should correct this problem otherwise he will not choose the college. He went to college and got an appointment with a senior professor of the board. During meeting he told him that your college is continuously losing due to faculty and administration. The professor felt this statement annoying and said him how he can say that. Then he put the whole story before the professor and professor agreed with him and said to him that gentleman you just know your side of story. You must hear my story too, that is few years ago we had very high rankings and because of that students rushed to our college for admissions. This high number of students pressurized our work load but due to some funding problems we were not able to hire more faculty-members and overload on faculty resulted in dissatisfaction and stress and ultimately lesser performance. But now by realizing the situation we strived hard for funding and now we are going to increase the number of faculty by 50% in next month. Now you have the other side picture. Go and decide what you like.
After answering one research question new research questions arise in this case these questions might be:
“Does faculty’s performance is really lowered due to work overload.”
“Does the college is retaining the same qualitative faculty when its ranking was higher.”
“Does any other condition such as possibility of poor administration has annoyed faculty and resultantly their performance deteriorated.”
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