Recently, for the preparation of my master’s thesis, I started reading the book Scientific Research in Information System written by Jan Recker. Overall, it was an interesting read and I acquired some helpful information regarding how I should conduct a scientific research.
I summarized the book into 10 steps for conducting a scientific research. I hope it will be helpful to you!
Step 1: Understand Your Motivation
Is it the quest of knowledge? Is it the will to develop innovative solutions? Do you pursuit to be a thought leader in a particular field or industry? There are 3 dimensions of motivation:
- Ambition: Are you pursuing an academic career or a corporate one?
- Dedication: Is the research topic exciting enough for you to work on it for a prolonged period of time?
- Commitment: Are you willing to free your time and resources to work dedicatedly on the research?
Step 2: Find The Purposes of Scientific Research
One should understand that all scientific knowledge to date is merely an accumulation of currently suggested explanations of a particular phenomenon. Evidently, we could only find out the truth of a conclusion by adding better evidences and more accurate measurements to the body of knowledge. Below are several ways one could add value to current scientific researches:
- Improve the explanation of a particular phenomenon by arriving at a better theory for a phenomenon or by extending a theory.
- Advance the collection of scientific evidences by creating systematic statements about facts that were previously unobservable.
- Improve the methods for collecting observations in relation to theory by using previously unavailable tools or technology.
Step 3: Ensure the Objectivity of Research – 4 Principles
- Replicability: Document and conduct the research in a way that others could repeat the procedure and get identical or similar results.
- Independence: For a research to be independent, it has to be free from subjective judgement or bias stemming from researchers.
- Precision: Use precise definition and measurement to ensure others could comprehend, use or challenge the interpretation of a research.
- Falsification: A good scientific research must be stated in a way that could be hypothetically disproven. For instance, the statement “all swans are white” is falsifiable, as one could disprove it with a black swan. On the contrary, statements like “If all participants performing the Rain Dance Ceremony are pure of heart, it will rain the next day” is not falsifiable. For one cannot measure whether the participants are pure of heart or not, a disproving statement is impossible to create.
Step 4: Research Questions
Asking a research question is the logical, necessary, and inevitable conclusion of a set of arguments. The arguments explain that there is
(1) an important problem domain with
(2) an important gap of knowledge about
(3) a particular important phenomenon that deserves attention from the research community.
(4.1) 2 Types of Research Questions:
- “What”, “Who”, “Where” Questions: focus on issues where we seek to explore and describe a topic where little knowledge exists to date.
- “How”, “Why” Questions: seek to provide answers about causal mechanisms regarding a particular phenomenon.
(4.2) Hierarchical Structuring Approach
- A managerial question states the driving question of the study.
- A research question is derived from the managerial question, it captures the general purpose of the study.
- An investigative question identifies questions that need to be answered in order to precisely address the research questions.
Step 5: Research Design
After defining the research questions, we should design a plan of action to answer those questions.
- Observation: To document previously unknown or under-studied phenomenon for finding systematic order in them (if any) in order to form speculative propositions or theories.
- Induction: To reason a general conclusion or a theory from a set of specific facts.
- Deduction: To test concepts and patterns known from theory using new empirical data.
Step 6: Research Methodology
- Quantitative Strategies feature research methods such as experiments or surveys which focus on quantitative data.
- Qualitative Strategies feature research methods like case study or phenomenonlogy which focus on “words”.
- Mixed Methods feature the combination of both “number” and “words”.
- Design Science Methods feature methods to build and evaluate new models, methods or systems. They focus on the construction of the artifact and the demonstration of its utility to an organizational problem.
Step 7: The Role of Literature
(7.1) Direction of Literature
Since it is important to acquire knowledge in order to contribute to knowledge, there are 3 types of knowledge one needs to acquire before conducting a research:
- Domain relevant to your area of interest and research
- Theories to examine and frame questions and phenomena
- Methodologies applicable to develop new knowledge, build innovative artifacts or articulate new questions
(7.2) Read – Think – Interpret
The following questions can help you master the current body of knowledge:
- What is the paper’s core contribution to the modern practice in your field of study?
- How does it relate to other articles and practices?
- Does it follow any theory or methodology that is useful to your research? Why is it the case?
- How may it influence your thinking of the field?
- How do you think has the paper influenced the body of knowledge at the time it was published?
Step 8: Theorizing
(8.1) Roles of Theory
Theories represent the current accumulation of the body of knowledge. As a result, we could only work with the existing theories in order to compose new ones. However, let’s first look at the important roles of theory:
- Provide guidance and framework in terms of the direction of future studies
- Integrate sets of individual studies into a large research program
- Help identify patterns and themes in the data
- Offer suggestions that can be used to make sense of the data collection
(8.2) Building Blocks of Theory
- “What” (constructs): To take the abstract meaning of a concept and operationalize it to something in the real world that can be measured (e.g. intelligence –> level of education)
- “How” (relationships): To define a sense of causality and identify patterns of how values of a construct change according to the change of values in another construct
- “Why” (justifications): Why are the defined causality relationship as specified? Justifications describe the logic of a good theory, upon which trust is built.
- “Who”, “Where”, “When” (boundary condition): Boundary conditions describe the circumstances, scope and limitation under which the theory is expected to hold by specifying conditions of “Who?”, “Where?” and “When?”.
(8.3) The Theorising Process
Step 9: Structure of Research
(9.1) Introduction
- Motivation: What is the problem and why is it a problem?
- Specification: What is your research question and research outcome? What is your research approach (in general terms)?
- Outline: how will the paper tell the reader about what you’ve done with the research?
(9.2) Background:
Provide relevant theories required to understand the research.
(9.3) Research Model/ Hypothesis/ Theory development:
This session typically applies only to empirical/ quantitative papers. It provides an overview of the factors being studied, important theoretical contracts and their relationships in a survey, or the set of hypothesis or propositions to be tested, explored or falsified in a case study.
(9.4) Research Method:
This section describes how the research was done and how it meets the requirement of replicability. Key elements include (1)research strategy, identification of (2) materials, (3) case sites, (4) scope of survey, (5) samples, (6)participant selection, and (8) other decisions pertinent to the research design
(9.5) Results:
Only the factual results including statistic tests or other analyses are described here- without discussion or interpretation of the findings.
(9.6) Discussion:
In this section the data gathered and findings are interpret. It should be structured as below:
- Summarizing the main findings
- Interpret the findings by (1) explaining (2)abstracting (3)theorising the results
(9.7) Implications:
- For practice: How the findings change/ impact the way stakeholders work in practice.
- For research: How the findings could guide future studies or other scholars. e.g. new measurement instrument available, important boundary conditions of a theory, the inconsistencies uncovered in collected data, etc.
(9.8) Conclusion:
Identify the key findings of your paper and relate them back to the introduction- keep it short! Follow the principle of summary, recap, and reflection.
(9.9) Abstract (100- 300 words):
Serve as an informative summary of the paper used to entice readers to read the full paper. It should include:
- Address the problem in a statement
- Describe the approach/ methods
- Summarize the results
- Provide key interpretation of the results
- Offer major implication of the results and conclusions
Step 10: Review & Revision
Finally, following the first version of your paper with peer review is a very important process. This process will ensure the quality standards of your research is met and that it is understandable from a reader’s point of view.
Further Reading Recommendations
- “The Logic of Scientific Discovery” – Karl Popper
- “Against Method” – Paul Feyerabend
- “A Primer in Theory Construction” – Paul Reynold
- “Theory Building” – Robert Dubin
- “Survey Research Method” (Quantitative)- Floyd J. Fowler Jr.
- “Qualitative Research in Business and Management” – Michael Myers
- “Case Study Research: Design and Methods” – Robert Yin
- “Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative and Mixed Methods” – John W. Creswell
- “Handbook of Mixed Methods in Social and Behavioral Research” – Abbas Tashakkori, Charles Teddlie
- “Road to Success: A Guide for Doctoral Students and Junior Faculty Members in The Behavioral And Social Sciences” (Chap. 4- paper writing)- Viswanath Venkatesh
- “Survival Guide for Scientists: Writing, Presentation, Email” – Ad Lagendijk