Seven-Day National Workshop on Research Methodology

The Centre for Research, Innovation and Training (CRIT) of the IIS University, Jaipur organized a “Seven-Day National Workshop on Research Methodology” from 24 November to 30 November 2016 for research scholars and young faculty members.in the IISU Campus. The workshop was inaugurated by Dr. Ashok Gupta, Vice Chancellor,the IIS University. The workshop was organised keeping in mind the need of the hour to improve the quality of teaching and learning process. The workshop commenced with an introductory remark of the basic purpose of the Workshop by Dr.SubhashGarg, Dean & Director, CRIT. The core objective of the workshop was to equip the research scholars with set of skills and potentiality to undertake the research very effectively in the disciplines of Commerce, Management and Social Sciences.
The workshop was designed to achieve the following objectives:
•    To make the participants familiar with the basic concepts of Research Methodology.
•    To familiarize the participants with the basics of data handling and analysis.
•    To give hands on experience in Primary research to the participants through the practical work assigned to them.
•    To enable the participants to develop research plan proposal.
•    To enable the participants to develop quantitative and qualitative research skills.
The workshop brought together over 51 participants from different universities. The workshop focused on both qualitative and quantitative aspects of research. The workshop provided an interactive atmosphere between the resource persons and the participants. The workshop focused on helping participants to understand basics of research methodology with special emphasis on writing a research proposal. The workshop was handled by a team of eminent resource persons from the respective field. Some of the notable speakers were Dr.Balwinder Singh, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, Prof. Balkishan, Himachal Pradesh University, Shimla, Dr. Ramesh C Gaur, Jawaharlal Nehru University(JNU), New Delhi, Dr.NeerajKaushik, NIT, Kurkshetra, Dr.SanketVij, B.P.S.MahilaVishwavidyalaya, Sonipatand Dr.Satish Kumar, MNIT, Jaipur.Dr.PoonamMadan was the convener of the workshop and Dr.BhawanaArya, Dr.PayalMehtani, Dr. Mani Bhatia and Dr. R. K. Taylor were the co-convenors of the workshop.Most of the participants who attended the workshop were Research Scholars and Faculty Members.

The detailed report of the workshop is as follows:
Day 1
The first session of the workshop was conducted by Prof. Rashmi Jain, Vice Principal, University Maharani College, Jaipur who introduced the participants to the basic aspects of qualitative research, with a purpose of building a strong foundation within aspiring researchers.In her session, shediscussed Grounded theory as a qualitative research approach. She talked about Ethnography as an extremely broad area with a great variety of practitioners and methods. However, the most common ethnographic approach is participant observation as a part of field research.She explained about ethno-methodology and stressed that interpretative understanding of the society is essential in order to draw generalizations.She concluded her lecture by highlighting the importance of qualitative research. This was followed by interactive session which proved to be enriching for all the participants. The Resource person of the second session was Prof. NishaYadav, Controller of the Examination, The IIS University,Jaipur. She elaborated the philosophy of qualitative researchand reflected on its various aspects.She also discussed the various methods of analysing and interpreting qualitative data. Major qualitative approaches were also introduced to the participants.She explained Critical Research as the notion which includesself-critique, a critical posture vis-a-vis qualitative inquiry itself. The resource person for the technical session III&IV of Day I was Dr.Satish Kumar, MNIT, Jaipur. The discussion topic for his session was handling the Literature Review which is one of the most vital parts of the research endeavour. The steps to be followed for developing the Review of Literature in a structured fashion were discussed.He suggested that the researchers should read the book   “Research Design” by Jennifer Walker to brush up their knowledge.He explained the uses of Mendeley as a free reference manager, data manager for citation for academic and social network. He threw light on online bibliographic programmes. He also addressed several issues related to writing quality research papers He explained about end notes and foot notes. He gave information about the requirements of a good article emphasized on its originality. He stated that researchers should make efforts to publish their articles only in peer reviewed and indexed journals. He explained about the steps of framing of paper and process of review of papers.

Day 2
Dr.NeerajKaushik, who is a renowned expert in the field of researchmethodology,was the resource person for the day. Dr.NeerajKaushik is currently working as Associate Professor in Department of Business Administration, National Institute of Technology, Kurukshetra. He explained about Exploratory, Descriptive and Experimental research. He discussed about internet sources for collection of data. In the subsequent sessions he dealt with basic statistics, importance of statistical enquiries and their limitations, mean & median and elaborated on SPSS. He explained about measures of central tendency, measures of dispersion, moment & kurtosis and skewness. In his second session, he discussed about questionnaire building and formation of Research Questions.  He dealt at length with questionnaire framing and types of questions. He focused on questionnaire designing.Types of questions to be included, avoidance of overlapping categories, reliability and validity of the questionnaire were discussed. Various issues related types of question sequence of questions were addressed during this session.

Day 3
Dr.NeerajKaushiktook a session on identifying variables for research. Hediscussed the concept ofIndependent, Dependent, Extraneous, Mediating and Moderating VariablesControlling Extraneous Variables.He discussed the concepts in Hypothesis Testing, Null and Research Hypothesis, Statistical Significance and confidence Intervals, Inferential Errors. He a took a session on Identification of Statistical Tools for Data Analysis and  gave brief introduction to the participants on various topics like Scales of Measurement, Sampling Theory,Probability and Non Probability Sampling. He stressed that sampling which otherwise is often mistaken for an easy task actually demands utmost care and sincerity He expounded on universe, population and sampling. He discussed about the types of probability sampling with the help of examples. Detailed discussion was carried out on simple random sampling, stratified sampling, convenience sampling and snowball sampling.  He stated that generally the social science and management researchers work on 5% confidence level. He also explained about sample size criteria, level of precision and degree of variability. In his post lunch session on Formulating Hypotheses, he discussed about role and sources of hypothesis, and explained about null and alternate Hypothesis. He emphasized the acceptance and rejections of hypothesis are research outcomes. Dr.NeerajKaushik also conducted practice sessions on Research Questions and Hypothesis Framing.

Day 4
The resource person for the day was Dr.BalwinderSaini, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar.The session provided an overview of the data sources available to researchers and demonstrated how different types of data can be incorporated into research. Particular attention was paid to how primary datacan producehigh quality research output.The basics of SPSS and data entry were dealt inthe session on Data preparation- Coding & Tabulation, Basic Data Cleanings in SPSS followed by Descriptive statistics & Cross-tabulation. He explainedabout Data Entry & Data Cleaning and outlier data. He stressed that data duplication should be avoided since it can be identified by SPSS.He explained the process of data selection in SPSS. He discussed about parametric and non-parametric tests. Chi Square test of independence, chi-square test of goodness, spearman’s correlation, phi- test, split file and weighed cases. He explained the steps of these tests with the help of examples. He apprised the participants about the software, the Sigma Plot, which can help us to decide the application of the type of tests. He also gave information about E-Views for regression. He also gave information about   ETD, ETHOS and Australian Digital Thesis Programme for downloading thesis on various topics. He emphasized that curiosity is the basic need for learning any software.Students were guided how to perform statistical analysis, data & text mining, predictive modelling and decision optimization. They were also informed about important software available as ready-reckoner for smoothness in their various research analyses. The participants were also given practice of the same.

Day 5
The expert of the sessionwas Prof.Balkishan, Himachal Pradesh University, Shimla.In his session on Hypothesis Testing, Interpretation and Results,hedeliberated that since every research has future concerns, so think wisely and make hypothesis near to reality.He drew special attention on regression.He gave clarification about how Regression Analysis is different from Correlation AnalysisDr.BalKishan carried further the discussion of quantitative analysis by talking on Correlation Analysis with SPSS. He said that one has to take utmost care in making correlation between two variables. It should be logical He mentioned that sampling should be carried out carefully otherwise the conclusion will be misleading.He explained concepts with hands on practice of writing Results from SPSS.He explained about the application of bivariate correlation, partial correlation, pearson”s coefficient, spearmen’s rank correlation and Kendall Tau.He elaborated on one sample t-test, independent sample t-test, paired t- test and ANOVA.

Day 6
Dr.Bhawana Arya took a session on Research Design and designing an effective survey.She elaborated on various types of research designs. She explained about descriptive and exploratory designswith the help of examples.She threw light on various aspects of research methodology. He detailed the participants about various statistical tools used in the research process. He laid emphasis on effective research design for quality research.She gave insights on how to design effective survey for research. The post lunch session was delivered by Prof. R.C. Gaur, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), on issues surrounding plagiarism. He familiarized the participants with the use of anti-plagiarism tools in research. He enlightened the participants with the technical terms like H-index, citation and impact factor  He explained that an annotated bibliography is a list of citations to books, articles, and documents and follows the appropriate style format for the discipline, i.e., MLA, APA, Chicago Manual of Style, etc. He explained that creating an annotated bibliography calls for the application of a variety of intellectual skills: concise exposition, succinct analysis, and informed library research.He explained the uses of citation builder anddiscussed the meaning andseriousness of plagiarism.He discussed and demonstrated how to create bibliography using zotero from various sources and different formats of bibliography.At the same time he  stressed on the importance of references and various styles prevalent for the Reference Management.

Day 7
The sessions on the last day were conducted byDr.SanketVij, B.P.S.MahilaVishwavidyalaya, Sonipat.In his session onWriting and Presenting   Research Proposal, heintroduced basic principles of writing proposals across a range of disciplinesHe explained the various formats of research proposals and explained the in depth for all the components of Research Proposal. Dr.Vij introduced the practical rhetorical and grammatical principles of writing effective proposalsto the participants of the workshop.He informed the participants that proposal should include a working bibliography of key texts that inform about their study andmethodology. Researcher should include all sources cited in his or her proposal. Session presentedpractical strategies, and it included examples of successfulproposals. The session helped the participants to understand the rhetorical situation of the thesis proposal and common elements of such proposals.H explained the intricacies of research progress. He stressed that knowledge of applied statistics and IT tools was must for good research work. He explained the use of SPSS software package. This was followed by interactive session which proved to be enriching for all the participants.
The workshop ended with the valedictory session wherein participants were provided with the certificates of participation.