INTRODUCTION

Research is the scientific search for knowledge that serves as practical solution to a problem. It is the surest process by which man uncovers the ultimate truth for problem-solving. Research is the conscientious scientific quest for knowledge. Knowledge means a belief that has been empirically certified to be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth for practical application in problem resolution (Kpolovie, 2010).

At each moment, life poses a myriad of problems as a result of man's propensity for survival, development, and advancement. This is particularly so now that the society is constantly and radically becoming more and more complex. It has therefore become necessary for each person to study and have a mastery of scientific research process that induces a way of thinking that will enable the individual to critically evaluate the information with which he or she is confronted on a regular basis. We are living in the information age and only scientifically verified information through research that can be helpful in our journey towards attainment of glory and wealth. The complexity of modern society demands that we rely completely on scientific evidence. How such evidence is arrived at as well as the way of intelligently evaluating such evidence is taught only in a course on research, which this book exemplifies.

Virtually, all the knowledge that you have gained from the study of the various subjects or courses up till date were arrived at through research. It is clear that you have been regularly bombarded by the results of scientific research and you need experimental tools to verify the research outcomes to know the ones that are conclusive.

Unfortunately, however, the knowledge, skills, and ability to understand and personally engage in research do not and cannot come from all the other numerous courses and books that you have taken or read. It is only the course covered adequately in this book that can equip or provide you with the requisite skills and knowledge of successfully executing research to arrive at workable solutions to any of the millions of problems that face an individual, a group of persons, or mankind.

Concerted effort, unreserved commitment, and total dedication are required of you to study and master the process of executing research as presented in this book. A mastery of the course covered with this text is a potent solution to virtually all the problems that you will encounter. There is no course that is of great importance to your success in life as the one that is treated adequately in this text. This book provides you with the requisite information on how scientific research is conducted. It is necessary for the education of every person. No one can be said to be well educated in any field of human endeavour when he or she has not known how to successfully conduct research in the area or in any other field.

In fact, the entire material that you are required to learn in the social, physical, and educational sciences is virtually based on knowledge acquired from research (the scientific method of gaining knowledge). You will most likely be requested to conduct a study on a very important issue in the future. Conducting of a research is a sine qua non for graduation, be it at first degree, masters, or PhD level, from every globally recognised institution of higher learning. Successful execution of research is a fundamental requirement for the award of a degree in any university. You must therefore be knowledgeable and skilful in the art of conducting research successfully. This book is therefore an invaluable asset, a master-key for problem resolution that must be acquired, meticulously studied, mastered, and correctly applied in an individual's endeavour towards the actualisation of desired goals in life. Perhaps, a closer examination of the meaning of research will further reveal or clarify the indispensability of this book.

Definition of Research

Research can satisfactorily be defined as the logical, systematic, and objective collection, analysis, synthesis, evaluation, and recording of accurate and controlled observations for the development of generalisations, principles, or theories that are ultimately aimed at description, explanation, prediction, and control of natural phenomena to meet specific needs of man.

Eight indispensable characteristics of research are embedded in this definition and they are briefly explicated hereunder:

1. Research is goal oriented, aimed at meeting man's needs.

2. Research is characterised by objective and controlled observation.

3. Research is statistical.

4. Research is scientific.

5. Research is characterised with theory and verification.

6. Research ultimately aims at correct description, explanation, prediction, and control of future occurrences.

7. Research demands careful recording and accurate reporting.

8. Research can only be done by the self-disciplined, curious, persistent, and objectively minded.

Research is goal oriented, aimed at meeting man's needs

Research is aimed at attainment of a goal, which is often provision of solutions to unsolved problems. Unravelling the truth, adding to knowledge, and pushing back the frontiers of ignorance are the goals of research. This is why a research begins with identification of a researchable problem that is begging for a solution. It is directed towards discovery of systematic cause-and-effect relationships between variables of interest. The ever increasing industrial and technological society poses numerous problems, and man engages in more and more research works to meet his needs. Originality and creativity are needed in the formulation of novel research topics for the resolution of either old or new problems. Relevant literature is reviewed extensively to show the various works that have been done by others to solve the problem and how there is need for the new investigation, approach, strategy, effort, technique, and method to solve the problem in question or fill the existing gap. Occasionally, a previous successful study in resolution of a given problem is even replicated. This means repeating the same study exactly the way it was done but using different sample, subjects, population, settings, and period of time for the same or identical problems.

There is absolutely no problem that appropriate solution cannot be found if only man researches enough on it. Put scientifically, there is an equal and opposite reaction for every action. Perhaps, you are more familiar with the biblical expression that whatsoever a man sows is what he definitely reaps. We live in a world that is governed by law and not chance. There is nothing without a cause. Every effect has specific cause or causes. Every problem must have a cause or causes, which when removed, the problem will be solved. Research is therefore embarked on to discover the causal relationships between variables that are associated with a particular problem. Research is man's most rational effort at solving an identified problem in order to meet his needs or at least reduce his needs for the truth about the problem. Research is said to be successful when it meets its goal by adding to knowledge. Each successful research provides solution to a problem (which was the goal of that investigation) and serves as a breakthrough in knowledge because it creates new opportunities that expand and multiply as long as the knowledge is applied, utilised, or exploited. Knowledge is generally cumulative. Once it exists, it grows exponentially as it becomes available to more and more persons. Also, there cannot be any new knowledge in isolation; as every piece of knowledge reveals connectivity and interconnectivity with other areas of knowledge in a self-reinforcing and accelerating manner. This success propels and motivates man to identify another problem or set another goal and research on it. As long as man lives on planet Earth and even when he gets to live in other planets, research will continue to be man's permanent engagement, in order to solve his problems and meet his needs (Kpolovie, 2010).

Every research begins with identification of its goal, which is one of the myriad of problems facing man in a given society. This goal is then carefully structured or worded to form a researchable topic. The goal is further clarified by

(1) operationally defining all the associated variables;

(2) clearly stating the purpose of the study;

(3) specifically mentioning the problem under investigation;

(4) formulating of all possible hypotheses that serve as tentative solutions to the problem, tenability of each of which will eventually be tested;

(5) enumerating and lucidly explaining the utility, usefulness, or significance of the inquiry to the society;

(6) outlining the questions that will definitely be answered at the end of the investigation;

(7) stating the design and procedure to be adopted in the course of the inquiry;

(8) indicating the limitations and delimitations as well as the assumptions of the inquiry.

2. Research is characterised by objective and controlled observation

Research demands accurate, systematic, logical, reliable, valid, objective, and controlled observation. It is from such observation that the relevant data for the investigation are collected, analysed, synthesised, evaluated, and recorded. The empirical evidence of a new piece of knowledge gotten from a research is based solely on the overt and/or covert observable experience that were subjected to appropriate statistical analysis and evaluation in the course of the inquiry.

The kind of observation that the researcher makes and that is referred to here is different from the ordinary day-to-day things or events that we perceive with our eyes and other sense organs. Just think of all the things that you have seen or beheld with your eyes within the past one week. The researcher's observation that I am talking about is far different from all the eye or body contacts that you have made during that week. While the general and ordinary day-to-day observations that every person does are done willy-nilly, the researcher's observations are objective, controlled, directed, accurate, systematic, focused, logical, possess the rare qualities of validity and reliability, and are recorded and subjected to statistical analysis for testing of his formulated hypotheses, answering his research questions, and meeting the purpose of his inquiry without bias. The researcher's observations, whether direct or indirect, structured or unstructured, contrived or natural, unobtrusive or obtrusive, involved or uninvolved, are carefully designed research tools or the techniques that are systematically planned, logically recorded, and critically validated for a predetermined research purpose. This accounts for why variables under investigation in a research are usually defined operationally in concordance with the observational tools employed for data collection in the inquiry.

While direct observation is done with the use of sense organs, particularly the eye, and excludes mechanical devices, indirect observation is executed with the use of mechanical aids like hidden video camera, motion camera, one-way glass, concealed microphones, tape recorder, and so on in a natural setting. Structured observation is applied in experimental setting by controlling each of the variables associated with a particular behaviour in order to determine the effect of that variable on the behaviour. Unstructured observation on the other hand is applied in a nonexperimental setting, a situation that the variables of interest are not held constant (not controlled directly) because the investigation is not aimed at establishing cause-and-effect relationship. Contrived observation is the type that is adopted in laboratory experimentation and seeks to describe action or behaviour that will occur under carefully arranged and strictly controlled conditions. Such behaviour is sometimes simulated due to the complexity of human beings as the subjects of inquiry. Naturalistic observation is applied in the normal and usual social settings like classroom, home, hostel, prison, social group, and so on, to reveal or identify what each of the subjects actually, really, or typically does in accordance with the variables under investigation. An observation is said to be unobtrusive when the subjects being observed do not know that they are under observation. Simply put, the observer is concealed from the subjects of the study in an unobtrusive observation. On the contrary, obtrusive observation is that in which the observer reveals himself to the subjects of the study. That is, a situation in which the sampled persons for the study are aware that their behaviour or actions are being observed and recorded for the purpose of the research in question. An involved observation is that which the observer actively participates with the subjects of the study in exhibiting the behaviour under investigation. For instance, in the study of the feeding habits of obese and nonobese students, the observer necessarily has to be a student and eat with them whenever there is food. It requires more than empathy to do this type of observation. Uninvolved observation is that which does not require the observer to participate in demonstrating or exhibiting the trait under investigation. In this case, he will only watch or observe obtrusively or unobtrusively whenever the obese and nonobese students are eating to carefully record their feeding habits.

3. Research is Statistical

Statistics is the third integral characteristic of research. Statistics can be defined as the science of data collection, organisation, presentation, analysis, synthesis, evaluation, and interpretation (drawing of valid conclusions and reasonable decisions) that adds or contributes to knowledge. Research requires gathering and analysis of either firsthand/primary data or already existing data for a new purpose. The results of data collected and analysed in a research must add something new to existing knowledge or else the work does not qualify to be described as a research. Data analysis as an integral part or characteristic of research does not attempt to persuade or prove an emotionally held idea or conviction. Rather, it eliminates personal bias as it tests the tenability of each of the hypotheses at a given statistical significance level (Kpolovie, 2011a). Conventionally, the statistical significance level or probability level is 0.05, which means that the probability of obtaining such result by chance, accident, coincidence, or mistake is 5 per cent or less in every 100 replications with other samples from the same population (Kpolovie, 2011b). In the social and natural sciences, merely reorganising or restating what is already known and has been written cannot and will never be taken as a research, no matter how valuable the write up may be. A research must collect and subject data to statistical analyses and expand the frontier of knowledge.

It is with statistical analysis that the parameter of a population is inferred from the sample of any given research. Generalisations, principles, and theories as the goal of science and research are reached through inferences from the statistical analysis of various samples and populations. The best, most apt, or precise way of describing research data is statistical or quantitative. Even data from qualitative research can best be summarised quantitatively or statistically.

All data collected in a research can be subjected to either parametric or nonparametric statistics, descriptive or inferential statistics. Parametric statistics is employed when data collected are at the interval and/or ratio scales of measurement, and which assumes that the variable under investigation is normally or nearly normally distributed in the population covered by the study. This type of statistics easily permits close study of only a small randomly selected sample and the accurate generalisation of characteristics of the sample to the population from which the sample was drawn. Examples of parametric statistics are Pearson's correlation, t-test, analysis of variance (ANOVA), and regression, analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA), and factor analysis. Nonparametric statistics deals with data collected at the nominal or/and ordinal scales of measurement to which arithmetic operations of addition, division, subtraction, and multiplication cannot be correctly applied. Nonparametric statistics, occasionally called distribution-free statistics, is not based on the stringent assumptions that the characteristics under inquiry are normally distributed in the population under investigation. Examples include chi-square, median test, sign test, Spearman's rho, Mann-Whitney U test, and Wilcoxon test