Research

Understanding Research and Its Applications

What is research?

In the broadest terms, we do research whenever we gather information to answer a question that solves a problem:

• Problem: My Windows 7, 64-bit operating system computer has stopped functioning. How can I fix it?

  Research: Go online, preferably Google.com or Bing.com, and type your search query “my Windows 7, 64-bit operating system computer has stopped functioning,” in the search box and start reading the given help instructions on the Microsoft website or elsewhere on the Internet.

 

• Problem: To settle a bet, I need to know who the current president of Ghana is.

  Research: Google “who is the current president of Ghana,” and many websites, Wikipedia.org among them, will pop up and your problem is now solved.

 

• Problem: Where does this small country called Tahiti that was participating in the FIFA Confederations Cup 2013 in Brazil come from?

  Research: You search the Internet for Tahiti, and sites like Worldatlas.com and Wikipedia.org give you the geographical and country profile information, respectively.

 

We all do that kind of research every day, and although we rarely write it up, we rely on those who wrote up theirs: Microsoft’s user manual or official websites, the Internet, books, newspapers, magazines, and so on. We may ask, “Why those researchers did write up their research in the first place?” What motivated them to write it up? The answer is: They knew that one day someone—like you and me—would have a question that they could answer.

Research is just that: You do it because you feel it will help someone, and in the process of doing it, you acquire an invaluable reward—you become a good researcher, and if you do your research carefully and respect other people’s intellectual works, you become a respected one.

 

Our Approach

The content of this course is drawn from the best manual and style guides available from the Chicago University Press’s duo of A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations; and The Chicago Manual of Style; The Publication Manual of APA; the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers; and The Oxford Guide to Style; among other prominent writing guide books.

 

Target Audience

The course is a ‘how-to’ course and is designed to help undergraduate and graduate students who want to produce professionally written research papers; school and university teachers who wish to hone their research skills to do better research and guide their students effortlessly; working professionals whose job includes reporting and research undertaking; and, of course, entrepreneurs who want to understand better their businesses, market research—niche and segmentation, and customer buying behavior.