Willie Chee Keong Tan - Research Methods

RESEARCH
METHODS

A Practical Guide for
Students and Researchers

RESEARCH
METHODS

A Practical Guide for
Students and Researchers

Willie Tan

NUS, Singapore

Published by

World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.

5 Toh Tuck Link, Singapore 596224

USA office: 27 Warren Street, Suite 401-402, Hackensack, NJ 07601

UK office: 57 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9HE

National Library Board, Singapore Cataloguing in Publication Data

Names: Tan, Willie.

Title: Research methods : a practical guide for students and researchers / Willie Tan, NUS, Singapore.

Description: Singapore : World Scientific, [2017] | Includes bibliographic references and index.

Identifiers: OCN 992937200 | 978-981-32-2961-7 (paperback) | 978-981-32-2958-7 (hardcover)

Subjects: LCSH: Research--Methodology.

Classification: DDC 001.42--dc23

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Copyright 2018 by World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.

All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission from the publisher.

For photocopying of material in this volume, please pay a copying fee through the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. In this case permission to photocopy is not required from the publisher.

Desk Editor: Amanda Yun

Printed in Singapore

Preface

This book is based on a series of lectures given over many years to undergraduate and graduate students in the Department of Building at the School of Design and Environment, National University of Singapore. The students are largely from architecture, construction, engineering (all branches), information technology, and the service sector.

The target audience of this book includes senior undergraduates, graduate coursework students, researchers, and professionals. My aim in writing this book is to provide a concise, practical, and reasonably comprehensive guide on research methods. I hope it will help readers who are just starting out on their research journey. The book is also integrative, in the sense that it connects the different steps of the research process.

In terms of conciseness, most of the chapters are relatively short so that the reader can focus on the key issues in each step of the research process. I first explain the main principles before discussing their applications using relevant examples. Many of these examples are actual research conducted by experts in various disciplines. Hence, the book is suitable for readers from different fields.

The book has a practical slant. Many books on research methods are too simple and impractical as a guide to actual practice. These authors simplify the exposition to avoid the harder statistics. However, it also means that readers are missing a vital tool of research. I have tried to explain the statistics more intuitively so that readers can see the forest before they examine the trees in detail. I hope that this will make the learning journey more enjoyable and less of an obstacle course.

In terms of comprehensiveness, the book covers both qualitative and quantitative research designs; that is, it discusses the case study, comparative study, experiment, survey, and regression. The case study and comparative study are small-N research designs, where N stands for sample size. The experiment, survey, and regression studies are large-N research designs. I organized the research designs into two main categories, namely, causal and interpretive research.

Importantly, this book integrates the entire research process of problem formulation, hypothesis, research methodology, data analysis, and conclusion. For example, it does not provide a smorgasbord of techniques for analyzing data. Instead, I arranged the chapters on data analysis by research methodologies. In this way, we avoid the common problem of analyzing data using inappropriate tools.

I have also paid considerable attention to the difficulties students face in formulating the research problem, reviewing the literature, and developing the research framework or hypothesis. To motivate and guide students, I provided detailed examples from different disciplines on how to execute these steps effectively.

I would like to thank my research assistant, Zhang Yajian, for reading the entire draft and providing useful suggestions. Jonathan Lian, Eric Tan, Yeo Teng Kwong, Daniel Wong, Lim Pin, Gabriel Kor, Leonard Teo, Dilini Thoradeniya, and Calvin Yeung read draft chapters.

Lastly, I thank Ms. Amanda Yun, Senior Editor, World Scientific Publishing, for her kind assistance and patience while I seem to work endlessly on the draft because of my busy schedule.

Willie Tan

Contents

CHAPTER 1

Introduction to Research

What is Science?

Research is the bedrock of science. Before discussing what constitutes scientific research, we first need to understand what constitutes science.

Most people learn science without knowing what science really entails. As early as primary school, the child learns chemistry, physics, and biology as subject matters in a general science course, topic by topic. The teacher emphasizes the content of science rather than the methodology. This way of approaching science continues in secondary and high schools as well as junior colleges at higher levels of difficulty. Gradually, general science splits into the various sciences such as biology, physics, and chemistry at higher levels.

At university, the Faculty of Science normally offers pure science subjects such as the mathematical sciences (for example, mathematics and statistics) and natural sciences (for example, physics and biology). At the Medical School, there are medical sciences (for example, physiology and pharmacology). There is also cognitive science, that deals with human perception, memory, learning, and reasoning. The applied sciences may be found at the Faculty of Engineering, and there is also computer science at the School of Computing. Finally, the Faculty of Social Science offers courses in economics, sociology, psychology, and political science.

The student discovers that, despite the varying content, all these sciences have something in common. They have similar aims, such as to explore, describe, interpret, explain, predict, control or evaluate phenomena or behaviors.

However, science is not, and cannot be, defined by its content or aims. If it is defined by content, there will be considerable disagreements as to what constitutes science. For example, what aspects of human behavior should be considered science? Should it be restricted to physical behavior, or should it also include emotional behavior that are shaped by culture, authority, attitudes, values, beliefs, morals, and so on? Similarly, if science is defined by aims, then other nonscientific studies have similar aims. For example, one of the aims of astrology is to predict the future based on the belief that there is a close connection between astronomical phenomena and human events. By providing guidance on how we should think and act, astrologists hope that we can lead better lives.