Freelance
Academic Research
29 March, 2011
There Is No Hope of Doing Perfect Research (Griffiths, 1998, p97).
Research as defined by Merriam Webster’s Dictionary is “ a studious inquiry or examination, especially, investigation or experimentation aimed at the discovering and interpretation of facts, revision of accepted theories or laws in the light of new facts, or practical application of such new or revised theories or laws”
With Merriam Webster’s definition of research in perspective, I would describe it as an investigation undertaken to extract information from determined sources essentially for the purpose of equipping humankind with the right resources, concepts and principles necessary for sustaining and building upon the structure and quality of living, as we know it in our universe. It is a process which itself, is continuous for the reason that our world is in reality, an evolving process clustered with hypothesis still subject to revaluation.
The curious nature of man creates in him an ever increasing drive for researching into new and existing subjects with the ultimate goal of replacing and, or optimizing current systems, science and engineering for better productivity. For such processes, errors arising from bias, misconceptions and qualitative mistakes are inevitable.
The very fallible nature of man makes errors, in precision measurement and deductive analysis of ideas, certain in the quality of the resulting successes of every empirical research.
There are essentially two approaches to research, both of which make certain “there is no hope of doing perfect research”.
1.Inductive approach
2.Deductive approach
When we think about the very concept of inductive research, three words come to bear; precursory, qualifying, and experimenting. It implies a process of controlled trial and error (en.wikipedia.org). As we have learned over the course of many decades, every success recorded from researches have either been improved
Bibliography: Merriam-Webster, Incorporated. “Definition of Research”. Merriam-Webster Dictionary. n.d. Web. 26 March, 2011 Wikipedia. “Research”. Wikipedia. n.d. Web. 26 March, 2011. Christiana Hughes. “Introduction to Qualitative Research”. Warwick. Dpt. Sociology, U. Warwick. n.d. Web. 27 March, 2011. George Leard. “There is No Hope of Doing Perfect Research”. authospot.com. 16 Apr, 2010 Web. 27 March, 2011. Karen Rothwell. “The Role of Human Bias in Our Analysis and Decision Making Accuracy”. Scip.org. n.d.Web. 27 March, 2011.