6 Steps to Successful Research Paper

Structure, methods, evaluation: With our recipe for research projects you are doing research like a pro.

The thought of having to do your own research project makes you sweat? You can breathe, empiricism is much easier than your reputation announces. After all, research is like cooking a four-course meal: it depends on adding the right ingredients at the right time. And just as with food, you can not know how it tasted until you prepare and eat it.

Structure is everything: research projects need red threads

For each research project, a red thread is really important: all phases of the empirical survey depend on it in turn – from the first research idea to the presentation of the results and the summary. This applies to surveys as well as to focus groups, content analyzes, expert interviews or scientific observations. So, in a row, and every research and statistics muddled part of the past belongs to the past.

Step 1: The interest in knowledge

You can only research if you know exactly what you want to research. That should be clarified. Each research project initially has a general interest in cognition. From this research questions or hypotheses are derived. This takes place in the economy from factual contexts, in science in the course of detailed literature searches. The research questions formulate the exact details to be investigated.

A little tip: It is better to ask, “What influence do the ingredients of a dish have on the taste?” Instead of: “Do the ingredients have any influence?” – otherwise you can only answer your research question with a yes or no.

The difference between research question and hypothesis

Hypotheses in turn use findings from the literature, from preliminary studies or parallel surveys and make a guess based on it. There you formulate: “The more cream added, the better it tastes” or: “When cream is added, then the taste changes.” Only when you have worked out your research questions or hypotheses, you can think in accordance with how you achieve the most efficient results.

Note: you answer research questions, hypotheses are checked.

Step 2: The Setting

How to set up your investigation, you can either after you have the research questions or hypotheses set up or in parallel to think. Be careful here: determining the right research methodology steers your entire project including evaluation and presentation of results.

Qualitatively or quantitatively research

On the one hand, you can do something qualitatively – in search of verbal content – or on the other hand quantitatively – in search of numbers.

Definition Qualitative Research: In qualitative settings, you are looking for verbal answers to questions such as “What does a dish have to contain to make it taste great?”.

Definition Quantitative Research: Quantitative empiricism, on the other hand, aims at the collection of numbers in the form of percentages, averages or the like. For example, you might ask, “Did you like this dish?” Or “Please rate this dish with a grade.”

Step 3: The population

If you do not think carefully about who or where you want to find out, it will not work. In interaction with the setting of a survey is the exact definition of your population: Who – in a survey – or where exactly – in an observation or content analysis – should be examined at all? Unfortunately, many make the mistake of not making this determination or not sufficiently accurate. This leads to results that are not or poorly useable, because it is not clear what they apply at all.

Full survey or sample?

Once you have clearly defined the population, you can consider whether a full survey – of the entire population – is possible. If this is not the case, you will take a sample and examine only part of the population. You choose this part randomly, according to certain characteristics or arbitrarily – depending on how your setting requires it.

Step 4: The survey

Now it goes to the actual survey by questionnaire, guide, coding scheme or protocol sheet. Your questions or survey dimensions must be absolutely accurate here. This means that there should be no contradictions or blurring on your research questions or hypotheses. Also the measurement level is crucial for how much you can read out of the data later. For example, if you merely ask, “Did you like this dish?” You can read far less about the results than “Please judge this dish with a grade,” or “How many times a year would you like to eat this dish?”

Step 5: Pretest and evaluation

At the pretest, the survey instrument is checked for suitability. If it does not work satisfactorily, it has to be reworked. After collecting it goes to the evaluation.

Note: Data analyzes are initially technical. Only then do you interpret.

Step 6: Collect, evaluate and interpret data

When collecting the data, do you check whether you were able to collect enough data? Has the full elevation really been fully charged, and does the sample show satisfactory returns? – Otherwise, your results may not be representative. If the data are then available, their technical evaluation follows. Here you use – especially in quantitative surveys – best a statistical evaluation program such as SPSS. Again, this is easy to learn and use with an instruction manual.

Result section: First evaluate, then discuss

When evaluating, you first describe your results in descriptive statistics, then you sample them for your population – the significance checks. Now you can start to interpret the results, i.e. answering your research questions or testing your hypotheses. If necessary, you will conduct in-depth data analyzes. Finished?

Now it is still necessary to prepare and present the results as strikingly as possible, so that everyone – even those who are hearing about your investigation for the first time – can quickly get used to it. Not so hard, right? Otherwise, you always can address to writing services for research paper writing help.