Meaning and Introduction to Research

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The term research is derived from the French term recherche. It means to see or to find out again. The word research by the name itself denotes search again or to search for a new fact, or to modify older ones in any branch of knowledge. One can define research as a scientific and systematic search for relevant information and fact on a specific topic or issue. Research is the method or procedure of scientific investigation.

Scientific research is a systematized, methodical, data and fact-based, serious or critical, logical inquiry or investigation into a precise statement commenced or undertaken with a goal of verdict responses or solution to it.

In the most common understanding, research refers to the search for a new thing to increase the stock of knowledge or to increase the horizon of knowledge on different issues in different subjects. Some people consider research as movement and connect it with movement from the known to the unknown. It is also called a voyage of discovery.

Research is a tool and considered a building block and sustainable pillar of every scientific and other non-scientific disciplines. Research is not only exploring previous facts but is also the process of generating the new theory that can solve the problem relating to society, a business, and an economy as a whole.

According to Clifford Woody, the research comprises defining and redefining, formulating hypotheses or suggested solutions; collecting, organizing, and evaluating data; making deductions and reaching conclusions; and at last, carefully testing the conclusions to determine whether they fit the formulated hypothesis.

Fred Kerlinger (1986) stated that scientific research is a systematic, controlled, and critical investigation of propositions about the various phenomenons.

D. Slesinger and M. Stephenson defined research as, the manipulation of things, concepts, or symbols to generalize to extend, correct, or verify knowledge, whether that knowledge aids in the construction of theory or the practice of an art.

Thus, research is an unbiased, structural, and sequential method of inquiry motivated towards a clear implicit or explicit predetermined objective or defined issue. This voyage may lead to validating and accepting already existing postulates or arriving at new theories, principles, and methods.

Meaning and introduction to research
Meaning and introduction to research

Research is therefore a well-defined and scientific method or way of finding an answer to a question or issue. When one is saying that he or she is undertaking research or finding an answer to the question then he or she has been applying or searching an answer within a framework of a set of philosophies, using procedures, methods, and techniques that have been tested for their validity and reliability and design should be unbiased and objective oriented.

In conclusion, we can say research is an act to search for knowledge by using systematic and valid methods, experiments, techniques to reach a predetermined objective. Research is assumed to a systematic, efficient, and rigorous process of undertaking a scientific and logical study to hunt or search for acquaintance.

It is a problem solving and fact-finding method consisting of interconnected and sequenced steps like setting or identifying problem statements, hypothesis formulation, observation, data collection, data analysis and finally interpreting the result. So the meaning and introduction to research conclude research as a systematic and objective-oriented analysis that may lead to the generation of principles and theories.     

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