How to Evaluate a Research Report with Precision: Bridging the Gap

In this part, we will look into how to evaluate the research papers, the issues that might occur and a couple of other components too. Because just making a report and not being able to make the best knowledge out of it just won’t do right? 

• Introductory chapter: Building the Rationale

When we start reading anything, the first thing we pay most attention to is the introduction chapter. The same goes for a research report, where the introductory chapter helps understand the researcher, his social and psychological views, his education and his reason behind the undertaking of this particular research. 

The key is to pay attention to the language of the report. And by that we mean the WAY it is written. As we know, research is conducted when a researcher decides to test a hypothesis. He is expecting a true or false result. But it may be the case that the researcher is influencing the research with their preferences or decisions. This causes a bias in the research and is generally detectable through the report’s language. 

Biases can be easy to figure out through paying attention to the efforts that researchers have put in gathering information from the resources and how diverse they are. Diversity will make sure that the researcher is not just referring to the sources that support his views, but they shed light on the topic from all the possible angles. 

Another thing to check in this chapter is the justification of the study and its relevance. A researcher has to study a wide range of information to make assumptions and test the theory. It is crucial to know how the researcher has related the topic to that vast area of information. How he has brought down the complexities of the topic to the form that is helping his research topic. 

Last comes the test of quality. Once you have verified the non-biases of the researcher, credibility of the resources and relevancy of the information, this will automatically paint a picture of the research’s quality for you. If the chapter satisfies the key requirements – relevance, importance, timeliness, researchable and researcher’s competency; then the introductory chapter has served its purpose well. 

• Review of Literature

This section, depending on the researcher’s choice, can be included in the introductory chapter to build the rationale or can have a separate chapter just to elaborate it further. 

The first major areas that the researcher should elaborate on in this chapter are the findings. When it comes to that, there are three sub-areas to specifically look into:

• Gaps – gaps in the research occurs when a broad area of the research is mapped out and see what pre-existing researches are conducted, this will create gaps in the study. In this gap area, variables are likely to influence the study in a wrong way and some of them may even be unstudied. 
• Overlaps – overlap occurs when several studies are conducted in the same way, resulting in the frequent use of the variables that are not much different from each other. The literature review will help us identify these variables. 
• Contradictions – it is possible that when one study is conducted in different circumstances, the results are different as well. In this case, a researcher must conclude whether the research is conclusive or not. 

The second area that this chapter brings to light is the methodology of the research. According to these guidelines, the research should be able to provide the measures of – sampling technique and size, research design, variables used, scaling techniques, research instruments used, data collection and quantitative or qualitative measures used for data analysis. 

Another indication of well structure literature is its scope. What is the scope of the review regarding time and how the literature was constructed and retrieved? Whether the significant data is missing or not. This will define the quality of the literature involved. 

• Objectives and Hypothesis

In this section, the objectives are nothing but the questions that the researcher has raised concerning the problem for which he is searching a solution for. As these objectives are the heart of the research, they are likely to cover the following attributes:

• The objectives should have a clarity of expression and direction to where the research is going to go and why it is being conducted in the first place. 
• The objectives should be measurable when it comes to qualitative data. It should be easy to code and highlight the information so that it is easy to access. 
• The objectives are the lines inside of which the research is conducted. Hence they should be comprehensive enough to cover all the aspects of the research and nothing should be outside the defined limits. 
• The objectives should be judicious with regards to stating the objectives. “Recommending future results” which is mentioned commonly in the objectives is not very much feasible.  

The hypothesis is the reason behind the entire result, and they can be proved either true or false. Researchers construct their hypothesis based on the previous conclusions, studies, existing literature, etc. to evaluate the hypothesis, it is important to evaluate the following 4 factors:

• Whether the hypothesis was null or directional, and in either of the case, the researcher has proved their point correctly. 
• The hypothesis can be tested or not. 
• The hypothesis is stated clearly and are implicating some relationship between the variables. 
• When there are multiple variables, whether the relationship of independent variables to that of dependent variables is stated or not. 

• Choice of Research Design

After the objectives and hypothesis is laid down correctly, the more important part is which research method or design to use. There are a lot of research designs that researchers use, depending on the requirements of the study. It is equally important to implement the perfect research design that will cover all the aspects of the research and answer all the questions that were put forth for the hypothesis. 

The efficient way to check the accuracy and suitableness of the design is to test it against the objective. If the hypothesis is evaluated concerning relationships, implementing a survey method to check that relationships will be valid. Whereas if the hypothesis is about the effects of treatment over a population, then experimental design will be helpful. There are factors like, treatment, sample size, nature of the study, that influences the researcher to choose the right research design for the study.