In the last column, we looked at how we could use research methods, both quantitative and qualitative, to collect and analyse different types of data. We made the distinction between data in the natural world and data about human beings and how they live in societies.
However, our method depends on the research question with which we began our project. To answer the research question, we direct ourselves to study certain objects of research, whose data we collect and analyse by using certain methods. Once the analysis is done, both quantitatively and qualitatively, we will have gotten some results as well as found some new findings. It is at this stage that we have to sit back and look at the entire project. This is a crucial step in the process of research because the research question that captured the research problem with which this journey of research began would have to be directly addressed by our research findings and results. We need to make sure that the results are truly an answer to the question that was raised at the beginning.
Let us backtrack a bit and talk about the research question once again. Before we arrived at the research question, there was an existential problem in the real world that we were interested in that took our complete attention. Then, we moved from this world of life into the world of text. We identified the discipline within which this problem could be studied, and within the discipline, we looked at the historical discourse of the thematic that we were interested in, and we engaged with the contemporary debate on the thematic to find the gap in the literature with regard to the problem that we had begun with and finally, this gap in the literature was articulated as the central research question.
To address the research question, we divided it into several related sub-questions. For PhD research, each of these sub-questions could serve as the foundation for a chapter. If it is for a journal article, then the research findings should respond to all the sub-questions. Perhaps, in the context of a journal article, we should primarily focus on the central question and avoid splitting it into too many sub-questions. Even at the PhD level, the research question can be broken down to probably a maximum of four sub-questions. What is important is that each of these sub-questions logically flows from the first to the last, so that when each of these sub-questions is answered, the central research question as a whole is answered. Therefore, the final section of results and findings has to make the connection between the central research question and the sub-questions and the findings that come from the analysis of the data. We have to ensure that each of them maps onto the other so that we are satisfied that the question that we raised has been answered through our research findings. How do we ensure that?
It's very simple and straightforward. On the one hand, whatever claims we have made with regard to our research question and the sub-questions, you can ask yourself if those claims have been proven right or wrong through the research findings. And if yes, then our research question has been successfully answered. This connection is something that the researcher has to make within themselves. The researcher has to be convinced and persuaded that his research question and the hypothesis with which he began have been successfully answered and has proved that the data does support his claims and hypothesis and answers the question.
However, the research question that arose from within the discourse and the debate has a certain language, and the findings, both qualitatively and quantitatively, would have another set of language, either the language of the common man if it was qualitative research or numbers if it was quantitative.
In order to make this connection between the question and the data, a certain task of interpretation needs to be done. This interpretation of the findings is done through the first part of the methodology, which we said is the ‘eyes’.
The first part of the methodology, which we said was the eyes or the conceptual lens, offers us the language to articulate the new insights. Now that we have the insights after the data analysis, we have to tell the story in the language of the methodology, or we have to tell the story using the language and the vocabulary of the conceptual lens that we have brought into our research.
We will follow a Hegelian triad for this part of narrating the story of the results and findings. The structure of articulating our findings begins with the academic language of the debate that gave us the gap and research question. The debate has two schools of thought, let’s say, school A and school B. We begin by articulating the position of school A and then its limitations and then compare and contrast it with school B and then state the limitations of school B. We look at the central claims of both these schools and show how they have missed something. Our claim, with evidence and proper reasoning, will address and fill this gap between schools A and B, which was articulated at the start of the research as the research question.
What we say has to be an extension of the discourse of the contemporary debate that was there within the literature, which was captured by the red bucket; the challenge is in transforming our findings and results into a language that will extend that conversation in which the gap was found. The new knowledge that is brought and added to the existing discourse is through this language of the methodology, the vocabulary of the conceptual lens and supported by evidence that has come from the data analysis. Therefore, what is written out as results and findings must extend the red bucket’s conversation and also stay true to the yellow bucket’s conceptual language. Finally, it must, of course, correlate with the evidence that is found in the green bucket. When the results and findings are written up, they must be faithful to all three of these discourses: the red bucket, the yellow bucket, and the green bucket.
Dr Brainerd Prince is an Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Thinking, Language and Communication at Plaksha University.
