Research Scope, Significance

19/08/2021 0 By indiafreenotes

Research without a pre-drawn plan is like an ocean voyage without Mariner’s compass. The preparation of a research plan for a study aid in establishing direction to the study and in knowing exactly what has to be done and how and when it has to be done at every stage.

Marketing Level

  • Price
  • Product
  • Place
  • Promotion
  • Sales
  • Customer

Organizational Level

  • Finance
  • HRM
  • Production
  • Organizational Effectiveness and Success.

Environmental Level

  • Competitors Analysis
  • Technological innovations
  • Industry fears
  • New Market entry
  • New product development

  • It is the process of giving clear and precise meaning and accepted definitions to various concepts and variables used in the area of research undertaken. All terms and concepts should be defined clearly. Vague ideas will lead to inadequate and un-interpretable research findings. A not “too broad or too narrow” definition is to be given to understand the full meaning of the terms and concepts used. It should also specify the depth and magnitude of empirical reality that needs to be explored for investigating the problem.
  • The social researcher guided either by a desire to gain knowledge or by an urgency to solve a problem scientifically works out a plan of study. In the beginning, this scope is generally vague and tentative. It undergoes many modifications and changes, as the study progresses and insights into it deepen. The considerations which enter into making the decisions regarding the what, where, when, how, constitute a scope of the study or a study design.
  • A research plan prescribes the boundaries of research activities and enables the researcher to channel his energies in the right work. With clear research objectives in view, the researcher can proceed systematically toward their achievement. The design also enables the researcher to anticipate potential problems of data gathering operationalization of concepts, measurement, etc.

Significance

Research design is significant simply because it allows for the smooth sailing of the various research operations, thus making research as efficient as possible producing maximum information with nominal expenses of effort, time and money.

Research has its special significance in solving various operational and planning problems of business and industry. Operations research and market research, along with motivational research, are considered crucial and their results assist, in more than one way, in taking business decisions.

Market research is the investigation of the structure and development of a market for the purpose of formulating efficient policies for purchasing, production and sales. Operations research refers to the application of mathematical, logical and analytical techniques to the solution of business problems of cost minimization or of profit maximization or what can be termed as optimization problems. Motivational research of determining why people behave as they do is mainly concerned with market characteristics. In other words, it is concerned with the determination of motivations underlying the consumer or market behaviour.

All these are of great help to people in business and industry who are responsible for taking business decisions. Research with regard to demand and market factors has great utility in business. Given knowledge of future demand, it is generally not difficult for a firm, or for an industry to adjust its supply schedule within the limits of its projected capacity. Market analysis has become an integral tool of business policy these days. Business budgeting, which ultimately results in projected profit and loss account, is based mainly on sales estimates which in turn depends on business research.

Once sales forecasting is done, efficient production and investment programmes can be set up around which are grouped the purchasing and financing plans. Research, thus, replaces intuitive business decisions by more logical and scientific decisions. Research is equally important for social scientists in studying social relationships and in seeking answers to various social problems. It provides the intellectual satisfaction of knowing a few things just for the sake of knowledge and also has practical utility for the social scientist to know for the sake of being able to do something better or in a more efficient manner.

The design assists the researcher to organize his ideas in a form whereby it will be possible for him to watch out for flaws and inadequacies. This type of design can also be given to others for their comments and critical evaluation. In the absence of such a strategy, it will likely be challenging for the critic to supply a comprehensive review of the offered study.

Descriptive research design provides accurate description of variables relevant to the problem under consideration and generally used for preliminary and exploratory studies. The descriptive study is more formal and less flexible as it involves both qualitative and quantitative information and can be used for both positivist test and non-positivist test research. The commonly used techniques under this category are panel research design or longitudinal research. The panel design involves the continual or periodic information collection from a fixed panel or sample of respondents. The longitudinal analysis involves repeated measurement of the same variables to facilitate a variety of inferences to be drawn about the behaviour of the elements of the panel. Participant observation and field studies use such methods.

Cross sectional design is aimed are taking a one-time stock of the situation or the phenomena in which the decision maker is interested. Cross sectional designs give the picture of situation at a given point of time. Opinion polls and market service use such kind of methods.

Experimental Research Design is where the researcher actively tries to change inputs like the situation, circumstances or experience of participants which may lead to a change in behaviour or outcome for the participants of the study. It establishes the causality between dependent and independent variable and test hypothesis. The participants are ideally randomly assigned to different conditions and variable of interest for measured. This is done to eliminate all extraneous variables. Hawthorne studies of Elton Mayo are class examples of such experimental design. This is a method which is most often associated with natural sciences in which we change variables in a controlled environment. This method is mostly used for positivity is to research or quantitative research as it aims to keep prejudices and biases away while doing the research. Experimental research attempts to determine how and why something happens. Experimental research tests the way in which independent variable affect the dependent variable. Due to high objectivity data obtained through such methodology are more reliable.

Comparative method is used to compare the social phenomena to arrive at generalized conclusions. It is a method which is suggested as an alternative to the experimental research in sociology but is based on the similar sets of principles. According to Haralambos and Holborn in the Sociology: Themes and Perspectives, 2013, the comparative method is based on what has happened or is happening in society rather than upon situation artificially created by the researcher. It was more popular with the early sociologist. Durkheim was the first sociologist to discuss this method at length in the rules of Sociological Method, 1895. He regarded it as a method of sociology to identify dependent and independent variables. The crime study of suicide is a classic example of use of this methodology. Ginsberg use this method in the study of primitive societies. If a particular social phenomenon is studied in different social contexts and the causes are found out then a cause and effect relationship can be established.