Methodology of Scientific Research (Методология научного исследования). Учебное пособие
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Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia
Engineering Faculty
T.B. IVANOVA, A.A. KOZLOV, E.A. ZHURAVLEVA
METHODOLOGY
OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH
Study Book
Moscow
Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia
2012
УДК 001 |
У т в е р ж д е н о |
ББК 72 |
РИС Ученого совета |
И 20 |
Российского университета |
|
дружбы народов |
Р е ц е н з е н т ы:
доктор экономических наук, профессор Юха Хамадаинен, доктор социологических наук, профессор Вели-Матти Ритакаллио
Ivanova T.B., Kozlov A.A., Zhuravleva E.A.
И20 Methodology of Scientific Research (Методология научного исследования) : Study Book / Т.Б. Иванова, А.А. Козлов, Е.А. Журавлева. – М. : РУДН, 2012. – 76 с.
ISBN 978-5-209-03657-9
«Methodology of Scientific Research» is a study book prepared by a group of scholars from engineering faculty of Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia. It covers the main aspects of the nature and methods of scientific research. The study book concentrates primarily on methods of data collecting and data analyzing which is extremely important for students in social sciences including economics. The main advantage of the study book is the focus on creative thinking development and autonomous data search for researching of important socio-economic problems.
«Methodology of Scientific Research» is designed for students of economic schools, individual researchers and those who feel interest in scientific methods of data analysis.
ISBN 978-5-209-03657-9 |
ББК 72 |
©Иванова Т.Б., Козлов А.А., Журавлева Е.А., 2012
©Российский университет дружбы народов, Издательство, 2012
INTRODUCTION
The Study Book «Methodology of Scientific research» is for students who are taking different Master courses. It offers notions, concepts and instruments of science research to help scholars in investigating topics connected with vast spheres of social sciences including economics.
History of scientific research. It was philosophers of Ancient Greece who were the first to start applying scientific method to explain the existing reality. They paid much attention to the logic of discussion setting up its main rules and principles usually based on sophistic affirmations. Socrates, one of the most famous philosophers, is known by his saying that the truth is borne in discussion.
XX century gives us hypothetic and deductive model of scientific method. It contained the following consequent actions:
1.Use your experience: detect the problem and try to comprehend it. Find its existing explanations. If the problem is new for you take the next step.
2.Set up your hypothesis. Explain your idea and share it with someone or expose it in a written form. Draw conclusions from your hypothesis. If your hypothesis is true which consequences or conclusions might it have due to the rules of logic?
3.Verification: look for facts which may contradict each of there conclusions in order to refute your hypothesis. Conclusions according to the rules of logic cannot be used to confirm the hypothesis. It can be considered as a logical error and is known as «aaffirming the consequent» (Greek Επιβεβαίωση του επομένου).
4.Experiment.
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Most Ancient philosophers considered 1st and 4th steps to be extremely important. Mention should be made that the scientific method will never be able to verify the hypothesis truth. It can only refute it and show that it is false.
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SCIENTIFIC METHOD AND RESEARCH
METHODOLOGY
What is a Scientific Method?
Science is based purely around observation and measurement, and the vast majority of research involves some type of practical experimentation.
This can be anything, from measuring the Doppler Shift of a distant galaxy to handing out questionnaires in a shopping center. This may sound obvious, but this distinction stems back to the time of the Ancient Greek Philosophers.
The scientific method, as defined by various scientists and philosophers, has a fairly rigorous structure rules that should be followed.
In reality, apart from a few strictly defined physical sciences, most scientific disciplines have to bend and adapt these rules, especially sciences involving the unpredictability of natural organisms, humans and social relations which tie them.
In many ways, it is not always important to know the exact scientific method, to the letter, but any scientist should have a good understanding of the underlying principles.
In many ways, if you are going to bend and adapt the rules, in the first place you need to understand the rules. Cutting a long story short, Plato believed that all knowledge could be reasoned; Aristotle that knowledge relied upon empirical observation and measurement.
This does bring up one interesting anomaly. Strictly speaking, the great physicists, such as Einstein and Stephen Hawking, are not scientists. They generate sweeping and elegant theories and mathematical models to describe the universe and the very nature of time, but measure nothing.
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In reality, they are mathematicians, occupying their own particular niche, and they should properly be referred to as theoreticians.
Still, they are still commonly referred to as scientists and do touch upon the scientific method in that any theory they have can be destroyed by a single scrap of empirical evidence.
In conclusion we may say that on one hand the scientific method is based upon logic and on the other hand it needs measurement.
The Scientific Method and Data
The scientific method always relies upon data. Collecting data is part of the scientific research process, and it also needs to be analyzed and interpreted.
The scientific method uses some type of measurement to analyze results, feeding these findings back into theories of what we know about the world. There are two major ways of obtaining data, through measurement and observation. These are generally referred to as quantitative and qualitative measurements.
Quantitative measurements are generally associated with what are known as ‘hard’ sciences, such as physics, chemistry and astronomy. They can be gained through experimentation or through observation.
Example:
▪At the end of the experiment, 50% of the bacteria in the sample treated with penicillin were left alive.
▪The experiment showed that the moon is 384 403 km away from the earth.
▪The pH of the solution was 7.1
As a rule of thumb, a quantitative unit has a unit of measurement after it, some scientifically recognized (SI) or SI derived unit. Percentages and numbers fall into this category.
Qualitative measurements are based upon observation and they generally require some type of numerical manipulation or scaling.
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As an example, a social scientist interviewing drug addicts in a series of case studies, and documenting what they see, is not really performing science, although the research is still useful.
However, if he performs some sort of manipulation, such as devising a scale to assess the intensity of the response to specific questions, then he generates qualitative results.
▪On average, the subjects showed an anxiety level of four.
▪91% of respondents stated that they preferred Hershey bars. Generally, qualitative measurements are arbitrary, a scale
designed to measure abstract responses and constructs. Measuring anxiety, preference, pain and aggression are some examples of concepts measured qualitatively. For a small group of longestablished tests, the results are often regarded as quantitative, such as IQ (Intelligence Quotient) and EQ (Emotional Quotient).
Both types of data are extremely important for understanding the world around us and the majority of scientists use both types of data.
A medical researcher might design experiments to test the effectiveness of a drug, using a placebo to contrast.
However, he might perform in depth case studies on a few of the subjects, a pilot study, to ensure that his experiment has no problems.
The Scientific Method May Be Empirical,
Intellectual and Visionary
Science requires vision, and the ability to observe the implications of results.
However, the visionary part of science lies in relating the findings back into the real world. Even pure sciences, which are studied for their own sake rather than any practical application, are visionary and have wider goals.
The process of relating findings to the real world is known as induction, or inductive reasoning, and is a way of relating the
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findings to the universe around us. There is also deductive reasoning and mixed type.
For example, Wegener was the first scientist to propose the idea of continental drift. He noticed that the same fossils were found on both sides of the Atlantic, in old rocks, and that the continental shelves of Africa and South America seemed to fit together.
He induced that they were once joined together, rather than joined by land bridges, and faced ridicule for his challenge to the established paradigm. Over time, the accumulated evidence showed that he was, in fact, correct and he was shown to be a true visionary.
In other words inductive reasoning first states an astonishingly new idea, which is to be supported by the facts. Inductive reasoning starts with numerous facts to induce an innovative idea. The mixed type unites both.
Science Uses Experiments to Test Predictions
The process of induction and generalization allows scientists to make predictions about how they think that something should behave, and design an experiment to test it.
This experiment does not always mean setting up rows of test tubes in the lab or designing surveys. It can also mean taking measurements and observing the natural world.
Wegener’s ideas, whilst denigrated by many scientists, aroused the interest of a few. They began to go out and look for other evidence that the continents moved around the Earth.
From Wegener’s initial idea of continents floating through the ocean floor, scientists now understand, through a process of prediction and measurement, the process of plate tectonics.
The exact processes driving the creation of new crust and the subduction of others are still not fully understood but, almost 100 years after Wegener’s idea, scientists still build upon his initial work.
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The Scientific Method is Systematic and Methodical
Scientists are very conservative in how they approach results and they are naturally very skeptical.
It takes more than one experiment to change the way that they think, however loud the headlines, and any results must be retested and repeated until a solid body of evidence is built up. This process ensures that researchers do not make mistakes or purposefully manipulate evidence.
In Wegener’s case, his ideas were not accepted until after his death, when the amount of evidence supporting continental drift became irrefutable.
This process of changing the current theories, called a paradigm shift, is an integral part of the scientific method. Most groundbreaking research, such as Einstein’s Relativity or Mendel’s Genetics, causes a titanic shift in the prevailing scientific thought.
The scientific method has evolved, over many centuries, to ensure that scientists make meaningful discoveries, founded upon logic and reason rather than emotion. The exact process varies between scientific disciplines, but they all follow the above principle of observe – predict – test – generalize.
In other words scientific method is a means to investigate different data in mostly objective way. It helps researchers to make conclusive statements about their studies with a minimum of bias avoiding personal and subjective approach.
What is the purpose of the Scientific Method?
The interpretation of data, for example, of an innovative potential of the company can be laden with bias. The researcher is used to have his personal stakes in the results of his work. Any skilled debater is conscious of the fact that his opinion can either be justified or misapprehended. In order to minimize the influ-
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ence of personal stakes and biased opinions, a standard method of testing a hypothesis is expected to be used by all members of the scientific community.
How does the Scientific Method Work?
The first step in using the scientific method is to set up some basis for conducting your research. The data to be collected are based on observed phenomenon that is either directly or indirectly related to the specific subject matter of your proposed research.
For example, you may have observed that Innovation in economics is effective in the countries with minimum of natural recourses, such as Israel. Would it be effective in countries which are considered to be oil donors and whose main income depends on oil exportation? Is it necessary for these countries to go for innovation search? Which are the characteristic features of the innovative economy? Are they the same for all the countries? Is there a certain similarity of symptoms or are there variations? Can we say that outbreaks of features in the first group of countries occur in the second group with the same strength? These are the observations you get making your first step in using the scientific method in innovation research.
The second step is to form a hypothesis to explain some aspect of your observations. You speculate that a country which does not posses natural resources is obliged to invent something new in economics just to survive in the hypercompetitive world. Your hypothesis is that scare resources always lead to innovation development.
Now that you have a hypothesis, you are ready to test it. You must use your hypothesis to predict other phenomena that have not yet been observed. You know that such countries as India, China and Brazil are investing much in computer technologies innovation. Why does it happen? According to your
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