10/10/2024
SOURCES, PLAGIARISM, AND DESIGNS
Sources of data for research are classified as primary or secondary sources.
A. Primary sources include
# Questionnaire
# Interviews
# Observations
# Structured group discussions or focus group discussions
# Informal conversations
# participant observation
B. Secondary sources include
* Journal books
* Textbooks
* Specialist books
* Magazine articles
* Conference papers
* Government reports
* Web pages
* Acts of parliament
* Company or industry reports
* Research papers
Plagiarism
When does your paper contain plagiarism?
Plagiarism involves
1. Intentionally copying/using someone's ideas, words or statements without acknowledging them (with no proper citation).
2. Cutting, copying, and pasting text or notes from the internet and using them as your own work.
3. Purchasing someone's work and describing it as your own work.
4. Citing a source but reproducing the exact word or statement without quotation marks.
5. Borrowing the structure of another author's phrases/sentences without giving the source.
6. Borrowing all or part of another paper.
Note that plagiarism above 20% is not allowed for a Masters thesis paper and above 35% is not permitted for a PhD dissertation paper.
Research designs
Research design is an arrangement of conditions for the collection and analysis of data based on the purpose of the study.
It constitutes the blueprint for the collection, measurement, and analysis of data aimed at answering specific research questions.
There are different research designs.
The selection of a research design depends on its purpose.
Some of the commonly mentioned research designs are:
Qualitative Designs
Phenomenology
Ethnography
Historical
Quantitative
Experimental
Cross-sectional
Cohort
Explanatory
Quasi-experimental
Descriptive
1. Descriptive research design
# It places emphasis on determining the frequency with which something occurs or the extent to which two variables are correlated.
# It tries to discover answers to the question of who, what, when, where, and sometimes how.
# It clearly describes a situation or behavior obtained at a particular time.
2. Explanatory research design
It investigates whether the value of one variable causes or determines the value of another variable.
It assesses relationship between variables in order to explain certain problems or events.
It attempts to explain the reasons for the phenomenon.
It uses theories or hypotheses to study about forces that caused a certain phenomenon to occur.
It focuses on relationship between variables.
It uses different models of relationship.
3. Experimental research design
It focuses on testing the change of variables by considering at least two groups (both experimental).
It usually involves practical measurement of data using various methods.
It is based on the principle of randomization. That is, to be representative, experiments should be done on random samples.
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
© Statement of the problem needs to discuss the practical problems that you have observed or get in the form of feedback concerning the topic that you are interested in doing the investigation.
© In addition, you need to do an empirical review related to your topic and identify the gap that needs to be filled.
Research gap/literature gap
It is based on review of theoretical and empirical literature.
@ Research gap refers to:
® Unavailability of studies on the issue of the study.
® Presence of very few studies on the issue under study.
Lack of outdated studies on the issue of study.
Due to conflicting findings on the issue under investigation.
® Practical problems noticed in an entity with no explanation of it in the empirical studies.
Conceptual framework
conceptual/theoretical framework of the study indicates the relationship between variables.
The conceptual framework should show a diagrammatic demonstration of the relationship between the Independent and dependent variables.
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On Manuscript preparation and article review
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