The Research Process

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2076 word, APA formatted paper, includes 11 references.

The Research Process
The research process is important to society because this is how we learn about every day processes that occur. Conducting research allows us to know what is true based on sound evidence. It sounds like an easy task to conduct research but the research process is extensive, involving the selection of a topic, drafting of the purpose statement and research questions, forming both the null and alternative hypotheses, measuring and analyzing data according to the chosen research method, conducting literature reviews and writing annotated bibliography, and ensuring research is ethical and legal.
Sometimes an instructor will provide a list of topics for college students to choose from. However, this is not always the case. Sometimes people have to develop their own topics. One way to get a topic is to brainstorm and write down any ideas that come to mind (Choosing a topic, 2012). When people are not given topics to write about, they might choose topics that are interesting to them or those they wish to know more about. Thoughts can be of something familiar or of curiosity to the researcher but it needs to be important enough to call for research. When developing ideas or brainstorming, people start with a general idea and then narrow it down to a more specific topic. Sometimes it takes beginning to research the topic you have chosen to actually find information that leads you to choose a better topic.

After the background information for the problem is discussed, the introduction of a research paper usually ends with the purpose statement. The purpose statement is the statement that informs the audience of why your research took place. It needs to be clear and brief while limiting research to a specific area of concern. This allows readers to have some idea beforehand of what the paper will actually be about. The purpose statement shows the main ideas of the paper and sets the stage for the hypothesis to be introduced. After reading the purpose statement, the audience will know why the research was conducted, the importance of the research, and what specific area, if any, will be covered and how.

A research question is a reasonable statement that advances from what is acknowledged as true to something that is unknown and calls for justification (Lipowski, 2008). It is not an easy task to develop sound research questions. These questions serve as an inquiry into what the research intends to find out. It states, for the readers, your goals and the questions you will attempt to answer in your research. Choices for research questions could stem from several places such as personal experience, observations, curiosity, or research and reading of an already existing literature. One could simply take a look at the topic of the paper and generate some questions that need to be answered. The research question should not be too broad and it has to be able to be researched by others. While some look at the research question and the hypothesis as the same thing, hypotheses can be something separate.

A hypothesis is a declarative statement that guesses the outcome of a research study on existing scientific information and acknowledged assumptions (Lipowski, 2008). The hypothesis is basically an educated guess that seeks to form a relationship between two variables. While the research question is in question form, the hypothesis is declarative and answers the question of the research as if it were true. However, hypotheses are only guesses that can ...