Research is a natural component of our everyday life because we knowingly or unknowingly use it to obtain knowledge about issues and situations that present in our immediate environment (Understanding Research, n.d.). When I was doing voluntary work for a certain non-governmental agency, I was confronted with the issue of increasing husband battery by spouse. Upon dealing with several cases and observing the battered individuals, I was able to reveal a relationship between husband battery and job loss. Almost all of the battered husbands presenting at the agency for assistance reported they had recently lost their jobs or were in some financial difficulties. Consequently, I was able to establish that financial/economic status is a predictor to domestic violence directed at men by their spouses.
Of course I did not apply all the steps of the research process, which include:
- selecting and developing a research question,
- generating a research hypothesis,
- forming operational definitions,
- choosing a research design,
- evaluating the ethics,
- completing the design of the study,
- collecting data,
- analyzing the data and developing conclusions, and
- reporting the research reports (McBride, 2009).
Specifically, I omitted the steps of generating the research hypothesis, choosing a research design, evaluating the ethics, completing the design of the paper and analyzing data. The main reason for these omissions is that my study was basically informal and directed by the urge to know why cases of husband battery by spouse were on the increase. Additionally, I was not aware of the existence of sequential steps involved in conducting a research study and was only interested in gaining knowledge for personal consumption.
It is my belief that the results would have been different if all steps had been followed, especially when it comes to validity of the results and generalizing the findings to a larger population. My inability to develop the research hypotheses and select an appropriate research design, for instance, meant that my results were largely subjective.
The list of steps of the research process, in my view, is useful for all research problems, but this does not mean that the steps must be applied sequentially as demonstrated above. Indeed, researchers have been known to work on a number of steps at once or may even move back and forth among the steps, not mentioning that others add some steps such as reviewing existing literature and theory, as well as refining the research topic (McBride, 2009). The importance of these steps, however, is premised on the fact that the research process should be a scientific enterprise and therefore requires a certain degree of validity and reliability that can only be guaranteed by following a predetermined structure (Understanding Research, n.d.). Additionally, these steps are important as they provide the researcher with the opportunity to plan the research activity and ensure it is completed within a definite time-frame.
If I was given the chance to redo the stated research, I would ensure I follow all the steps mentioned above to ensure my findings are scientific and free from bias. For instance, I would ensure I develop an effective qualitative-oriented research design that would then provide me with the framework to interact with victims of battery and collect data through interviews as well as observation. Additionally, I would develop a set of research hypotheses before conducting the study to see if data collected from the participants would either prove or reject these hypotheses. Lastly, I would also ensure that the process of data analysis is done scientifically to achieve valid, reliable and generalizable results (Understanding Research, n.d.).
References
McBride, D.M. (2009). The process of research in psychology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
Understanding Research. (n.d.). Web.