Research methodology

Abstract

A number of decisions need to be made, prior to conducting research. The first step would be to decide on the topic or area of study. While doing this, keep in mind two things: 1. That the area must interest you – you will spend a number of hours for months or years reading about the topic; and 2. That you have access to the subjects which you wish to study. For example, if you would like to research the programmes that are available in a particular prison to help prisoners re-integrate into society and you have no access to that prison, then this research would not be possible. The topic interests you, but you have no access to the subjects. Often, inexperienced researchers have a problem in narrowing down their area of study. This might be the consequence of two main factors: fear of not finding enough information and failure to acknowledge the complexity of the problem. Let us say you want to research young people’s behaviour during the weekends. This research question is very broad. You will need to narrow it down by deciding the following: which type of behaviour would you look at (e.g. criminal, sexual, drinking and driving, taking drugs etc.); which locality would you be analysing (it could also be necessary to narrow down the locality); and during which weekends (e.g. summer/winter/feast season etc.). All these variables will influence your results. Next on the list is the research question. The research question can be formulated using two approaches: the deductive method or top-bottom approach, and the inductive method or the bottom-up approach. The deductive method uses theoretic interpretation and logically interpretive propositions to start the research. Conversely, when the researcher uses the inductive method, the researcher uses the observation of reality without any theory. What the researcher does is construct a number of indexes on which the theory will be built. These methods are used in everyday life as well. The deductive method starts with why certain behaviours occur moving to whether they will occur, while the inductive method moves from the whether to the why (Maxfield and Babbie, 2006:21). For example, in deductive reasoning you will reason that, since the Mediterranean climate exposes Mediterranean countries to dry summers, it will not rain in July in Malta. Alternatively in inductive reasoning, one would reason that as it has never rained in July in Malta, next July Malta will get no rain.