Two Week Workshop on Research Methodology , (15 June 2016- 28 June 2016)

 Two Week Workshop on Research Methodology

 (15 June 2016- 28 June 2016)

 Report

Research is a continuous process and requires progression to achieve meaningful results for the benefit of the society at large. Research Progression requires a logical and conceptual knowledge. To meet this challenge it is necessary to train and equip the faculty and research scholars so that they can comply with the quality standards of research in their respective disciplines. To address these issues a Two Week Workshop was organized by The Centre for Research, Innovation and Training, The IIS University, Jaipur. The workshop was designed to achieve the following objectives:

• To make the participants familiar with the basic concepts of research

methodology.

• To impart skills in the integration of qualitative and quantitative research.
• To make the participants user friendly with the statistical softwares for data
• analysis.
• To develop the applied research skills of the participants.

 The workshop was attended by 56 participants. The workshop focused on both qualitative and quantitative aspects of research. The detailed report of the workshop is as follows:

Day 1

The resource person for the day was Dr. Satish Kumar, MNIT, Jaipur. The topic of First session was Research Methodology: Conceptual Frame work. He discussed about the basic idea of research. He stated that researchers should make efforts to publish their articles only in peer reviewed and indexed journals. He talked about various aspects of qualitative research and stressed that researchers should focus on validity, legitimacy and generalization. In the subsequent sessions he elaborated on review of literature. He suggested that the researchers should read the book   “Research Design” by Jennifer Walker to brush up their knowledge.

  Day 2

Dr Satish Kumar, MNIT, Jaipur was the resource person. 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 explained about end notes and foot notes.

He also elaborated on various types of research designs. He explained about descriptive and exploratory designs with the help of examples.

He gave information about the requirements of a good article. It should be original and should contribute to the existing body of literature. He explained about the steps of framing of paper and  process of review of papers

 Day 3

The sessions were taken by Prof. Sanket Vij, Bhagat Phool Singh Mahila Viswavidyalaya, Khanpur Kalan, Sonepat . The topic for the first session was Plagiarism. He explained the uses of citation builder and discussed the meaning and seriousness of plagiarism.

The basics of SPSS and data entry were dealt with in the subsequent sessions. The last session was practice session.                                          

Day 4

The sessions for the day were taken by Prof. Sanket Vij. He discussed about questionnaire building. He dealt at length with questionnaire framing and types of questions. He explained about 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. The participants were also given practice of the same.

 Day 5

The expert for the sessions was Prof. Sanket Vij. He discussed about formulation of hypothesis and explained about null and alternate hypothesis. He emphasized that acceptance and rejection of hypothesis are research outcomes. He explained about the parametric tests of hypothesis testing. He elaborated on one sample t-test, independent sample t-test, paired t-test and ANOVA.

In the last session of the day he focused on questionnaire designing. Various issues related to types of question, sequence of questions were addressed during this session.

 Day 6

Dr. Ashwini Kumar, J.K. Lakshmipat University, Jaipur was the resource person for the day. He explained about various methods of data collection like observation and case study method. He discussed about writing a case and points to be kept in mind while case study like asking probing questions, noting down the details, avoiding any kind of argument, not evaluating the  information simultaneously.

The last session was devoted to questionnaire designing. Types of questions to be included, avoidance of overlapping categories, reliability and validity of the questionnaire were discussed.

 Day 7

The resource person for the day was Dr. Balwinder Saini, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar. 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.

 Day 8

Dr. Neeraj Kaushik, NIT, Kurukshetra was the resource person for the day. 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.

Day 9

The resource person was Dr. Neeraj Kaushik. 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.

Day 10

Dr. Girish Taneja, DAV University, Jalandhar was the resource person. The session was on measures of association. He also explained the concept of variance and covariance.  He explained about application of bivariate correlation, partial correlation, pearson’s coefficient, spearmen’s rank correlation and Kendall Tau. He explained bivariate regression with the help of a concept map. He also discussed assumptions of multiple regression He discussed the concept of Heteroscedacity and multi co linearity. The participants were also given practice in multiple regression on SPSS.

Day 11

The resource person for the sessions was Dr. Ajay Chauhan, IMT, Ghaziabad.  Multi variate analysis was discussed in the first session. He explained about Exploratory factor analysis and Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Analytic Hierarchy Process. He also introduced the participants to AMOS commands for analyzing constructs. The AMOS Commands for EFA and CFA were also explained. The participants were given practice in model construction using AMOS.

Day 12

The sessions were taken by Dr. Ajay Chauhan. The sessions were on Structural Equation Modelling and Path Analysis. He stated that SEM is a widely used multivariate statistical method in the area of social science. It is used for analyzing cause and effect relationships among a set of constructs represented by multiple measurable variables in a single model. SEM uses the concepts of both regression analysis and exploratory factor analysis. The applications of SEM were explained with the help of examples. The AMOS commands of SEM were explained and the participants were given an exercise on SEM. The basics of conjoint analysis were also explained.

 Day 13

The resource person for the session was Prof. Nisha Yadav, Department of Sociology, The IIS University, Jaipur. She delivered lecture on Philosophy of Social Research. She elaborated on ontology, epistemology, axiology and rhetoric. She explained about research paradigm. She stated that paradigm serves as a framework for guiding research. She also explained about Symbolic Interactionism and Critical Research. Positivist Paradigm and Interpretive Paradigm.

The resource person for the next session was Prof. Uma Joshi, Amity University, Jaipur. She gave her lecture on Qualitative Analysis: Content Analysis of Verbatim Expression (CAVE Technique). She discussed about behavior, event and interview. She also discussed about tests to measure competency.

The next session was quiz session. The participants were given fifty questions based on the topics covered in the sessions.

Day 14

Prof. Vinay Srivastava, University of Delhi, New Delhi was the resource person for the day. He reflected on various aspects of qualitative research. He elaborated on the domains of research.  He explained about Ethno-methodology and stressed that interpretative understanding of the society is essential in order to draw generalizations. He also addressed several issues related to writing quality research papers. He concluded his lecture by highlighting the importance of qualitative research. This was followed by interactive session which proved to be enriching for all the participants.

We hope that the workshop was an intellectually stimulating experience for all and enhanced the knowledge of the participants.