Good afternoon, welcome to EduCert network. Friend, this week we have organized series of lecture on research method and methodology. You all are aware the research is finding proof, finding a solution to a problem, but you know there are certain procedure that needs to be followed.
If you do not follow, you will not be able to do the research. the procedure or certain rules and regulations, you will not find the truth or the solutions. So, what are those procedure? We will try to understand and we will try to understand the different aspect of research and for discussion on this very topic we have in studio Dr. M. N. Thakur.
He teaches research. method to MPLA student in Jawaharlal Nehru University and has written two books and contributed many articles in different national and international journals. So, on your behalf I welcome him for the introduction.
Welcome. Thank you Ambeden Ji. What I am going to do today is I am going to introduce the idea of research method and I will be basically talking about five things, five issues in this. The first one is and which is the most important on which I will be. focusing maximum is how to select a research problem.
I think that is one of the things that the researchers must keep in mind. If you have selected a right kind of problem, you have raised a right kind of questions on that problem, probably half the research is done. So the most important thing is selecting a research problem and also carving out a set of questions for the research. for yourself related to the research problem.
Second thing is that constructing a hypothesis or tentative answer to the problem that you have that will be the second point that I will be discussing. And third point is that kind of philosophical issues involved in the research. I will not go into too much of detail on that.
I could have decided to discuss about philosophy of science in this section, but at the moment I will be basically talking about three perspectives around which the researches are being done. The fourth question will be the debate between qualitative and quantitative method. That has been a debate since the beginning of social sciences.
The debate has been resolved in some way today. Today we see that we don't bifurcate these methods so much, and we adopt both methods in most of the research problems, but yet there are issues involved in this, and these issues have to do with practical issues and also with philosophical issues. And the last one is selecting a method for research, or a set of methods for research.
I will not again go into detail of this. I will just mention... four methods that we will be discussing in this series.
I will just introduce them and leave them there so that in next four classes we can have detailed discussion on these things. So the first thing that we must remember is that research problem, what is the source of research problem? Where do you get the research problem?
I think any question that you have in mind, any question that you have in mind, you can ask that question to Dr. Any question that you want to answer is a question for your research, is a problem for you. I mean, you take anything. You have to buy a car.
Now, you want to select a car. How do you select a car? You make certain criteria that suits you. You want a car. You have a large family.
So you want more people to be adjusted in the car. So that is one criteria that you use. Then you are saying that, well, I have this much of the budget. I want to have this much of the facility. facility in the services.
So you make your own criteria. Then you go to the market, select the data from, collect the data from different car companies and finally you decide about your purchase. So for anything we conduct research.
We do marketing research even to buy small things for ourselves. In social sciences, we do research on the We raise certain issues, we have certain problems, and then we collect data at a larger level. And we formulate certain kind of principles, certain kind of theories out of that, and then that helps us in understanding the social reality and also in making the policies. So any question that you have can be a question or any issue that you have in mind can be problematized for research.
Then you may also like to challenge certain established norms. Suppose there is a established idea that That a large family is a good family or a small family is a good family. Now you can problematize this issue and undertake a research to find out whether this kind of assertion or assumption is good or bad.
So many of the social assumptions you have, you encounter, you may like to question those assumptions. Now to select a research problem for yourself, two things are very important. One, that you should have some knowledge, some idea of the area in which you want to work.
Either you should have some experience of the... area or you may have read something on that or you may have encountered certain kind of puzzle that attracts you towards that. So you should have some kind of idea of the field that you want to enter.
So the problem actually will become sharpened if you have certain kind of experience of the area in which you want to work and then. You should also be able to select a proper research method to conduct a research in that area. So there is a kind of two-way process.
One, what problem you have selected for your research, and two, what kind of method that is suitable for that kind of research. And then when you are selecting a research problem and you are selecting a research method, I think in social science or any of the sciences, one of the most core ideas is that it should stand with the scrutiny in terms of procedure required to be undertaken. So, you should be able to tell your your consumers of the research that this is the method that I have adopted to undertake this research.
So research should not be something in social sciences, something so abstract that you are unable to... articulate it for others. It should be visible. It should be obviously being discussed. It can be discussed overtly.
So some kind of issues which can be shared by other people and the methods, the knowledge that also can be shared by other people. That I think is a crucial idea when you are selecting a research problem in social science. Very abstract philosophical problem may give you a big difficult times. Then you should also remember that we can't convert all our questions into research problem. We may have n number of questions but a proper social science research problem cannot be converted, those questions cannot be converted into, always cannot be converted into a proper social science research problem.
See social science research problem will have to have certain kind of available knowledge with which you can engage with, should be transparent to everybody, you can share your problem with everybody, everybody can understand this as a problem. When I am saying everybody, that basically means the community of scholars whom you call social scientists, should have certain sense of agreement on these issues when you are working. So while selecting a research area, you should keep these things in mind.
What are the things that you should keep in mind? I think the one that you can raise a question which you encounter in your everyday life, you can challenge certain kind of assumptions, you have to have certain idea of the field, you have to have certain idea of the method that you are going to take, you have to have kind of sense that whether this kind of research can be, this kind of issue can be converted into a researchable issue or not. If that is there, then we can move ahead in selecting a research. topic. See, research problem is a very big thing.
The whole area of the thing, then topic becomes more classified, more, more, it can be, the area, from area to topic can be narrowing down in the research. Now, when you are selecting a topic, suppose I have something in mind, communalism is an area of research. Now, within communalism there are several issues. There is a class issue involved, there is a community issue involved, there is a violence issue involved.
So we have to try to find out which topic we want to select within the broad area of research process. And there we have to keep in mind what is the state of scientific discipline. We have to conduct a good survey to see how the question that I have raised is being answered or has been answered by the community of scholars belonging to that discipline.
Now, it is entirely possible that the question that I have raised has already been answered in a very satisfactory way by many people. If you are satisfied with the answer, then obviously we don't need to undertake new research. If you are not happy with the answer, then we have to say that this is my happiness with the answer, unhappiness with the answer, and therefore I need to undertake a new set of new research. So a social problem that we can pick up, a topic can be related directly to a social problem. For instance, we can say that the impact of globalization or neoliberal regime on the labor in the rural area.
It can be a concrete social problem with the broad rubric of what you call the labor issues or globalization issues. Within that there can be more concrete research topic that is now the rural labor under the regime of neoliberal economy. Now, while selecting a research problem or research topic, we should also try to find, see if it has certain value in society. There can be a question, if the question is so important for me that I definitely want to know the answer of it, then probably I may undertake that research.
But it is entirely possible that there is an issue which attracts me so much but has no meaning in society. No, society is not interested in that. I think we should be...
Careful about it, either we should try to see how society can be interested in the kind of research I am doing, or we should also select research topics which has direct link with society. So there should be some kind of social premium on my research. And there should also be some practical considerations.
How much time do we have? How much money do we have? When do we want to put the deadline for this?
So all depends on that. I would like to undertake a research on elections by surveying from every state of India. But how much difference that will make, one.
How much money I will require for that, two. How much feasible it is in terms of time. So I have to strike a balance between the three to find out whether what kind of method we should adopt or what kind of topic we can select for. We can't select a topic too vague and practically impossible to be researched. That will be a big difficulty.
Now from where do we get the research topics or research problems? I think research topic and research problems we can get from many sources. One of the sources is the research conducted by others. We should immediately, the first thing we should do is we should go to the library Look at the catalog, look at the catalog of books and the PhDs, and try to see how much research has been done in this area already. Try to get them out, read them carefully to see if they have already answered the question that I have, or if they have not, then there's a reason for undertaking a research.
The other is literature review. Say I have a problem in mind, and then I try to read the literature. And I discovered that this problem is already being discussed there.
So there's no point in keeping in mind. But if the researcher undertakes a research after being sure that nobody has worked on it, or at least nobody has worked on the dimension which I'm interested in, then that will be rewarding. It is also possible to look at the...
Review literature review or review literature. It's possible that you collect the literature in the field you want to work and then review those literature to see if the literature has answered your question or if the literature has something else to offer, some other answer to offer or if the literature has some elements available but mostly absent. In that case... We can take these things from different kinds of literature. So literature review has two purposes.
One, to map the field, what are the things that have already been done in the literature. in this field and two, to see what can be extract from various researches for my own framework. Similarly, one can take research problem from experiences, there can be government priorities, there can be prevalent theories that one would like to examine, there could be imagination and the observed phenomenon. So many kinds, many considerations should be there when we are looking at a research problem or we want to adopt a research problem for next few years of work. So selecting a research topic after we have showed that we have entered into the program thing, right kind of problem we have raised, then we are entering into selecting the research topic and in doing this as I said three four issues are important.
One, what is the state of affairs in How much social premium is attached to that research? And three, that lot of new theories, imaginations have emerged since the withdrawal of research from different societies. So there is a possibility that we get new imaginations. So these are the criteria for selecting research.
Now consider selecting a research problem from From various areas, on basis of various issues, like maybe it's my interest, therefore I want to work on it. Maybe it's feasible, therefore I should work on it. It's possible to measure the concepts.
I do have a level of expertise which I can use. It is socially relevant and data is available for this. And there are ethical issues also involved in this and I'm clear about ethical issues. So if you have these considerations.
and be careful about these considerations, that's how you will be able to collect a right kind of research problem for your work. Now what is the importance of formulating a research problem? Why am I talking about it? What is the fun of it? I think if you get a right kind of research problem, you will be able to design the research properly.
Suppose we get a research problem which is based on or about which we have the data available, then we can design our research in a very different way. If we don't have data available, it would be a very different design. So design will depend on the kind of problem we will be adopting. I'm not going to talk about study design too much, but let me just tell you that there could be many kinds of designs, and these days, experimental designs are becoming very popular.
Then we should also try to be sure after we have been able to formulate a research problem properly that what kind of instrument of research we shall use. It is possible to select a research instrument once we have a very clear idea of the problem that we want to resolve. And then once we have got the research problem, it is also true that we shall be able to understand what kind of research we shall use.
kind of analysis we should use. Therefore, formulating a research problem is a very, very important thing. Once you have formulated a research problem properly, you can design your study, you can sample properly, you can always develop it further. So I think formulating a research problem is quite crucial. Let me see what are the...
steps in formulating research problem. Let me repeat what we have discussed earlier. I think the first thing is the identification, identification of the field or subject area of interest.
That is the first thing. What am I interested in? We must ask ourselves what am I interested in?
What is that attracts my attention? What is that that is closer to my heart? I got a student. couple of years back who came to me and said that I want to work on three novelists of India who were writing during the last phase of the freedom struggle and I want to analyze three texts produced by them towards the end of their life and I would like to examine what kind of arguments they are generating now There was a big problem because a lot of people thought this was not a proper researchable area.
But I think it was. And the more important thing that the student was so deeply engaged with that. Since the faculty never has worked on this, there is a tendency in the faculty to avoid this topic. But it's very important to create a research problem, to adopt a research problem, to identify a research problem from in the area of one's own interest. And once you have identified that, then you break that.
Then you go into the core idea of it. Or you create sub-areas and select one sub-area, core area from your vantage point. That sub-area will be core area from your vantage point.
So select that core area, select that main area for your research. And the selection process should be quite... quite logically constructed.
We should not go by emotions. We should go by logical arguments about why am I selecting certain area of research. One can see your emotional attachment with the field as an additional factor, but in the academic world we have to say why we are interested in that particular area of work.
And once you have the area of work, then you raise research questions, very sharp, pointed questions, one idea in one question, so that you can interview or you can collect data. from the subject area, from the area you are undertaking research and then you can analyze them. So research question is more sharp statements or sharp queries about the field that you are working, we are interested in working and the sharper your questions are, more comprehensive better answers you get. which can be used for analytical purposes.
And while going to the field, while looking at the research problem, you must formulate your objectives. What do you want to do? Maybe the problem that you are facing does not will not occur in the kind of thing that you are doing to do in research.
So it is possible that you select a research question which you are going to do. which is beyond your interest. So not only that you have to look for the research problem in your own interest area, not very narrowly defined but very broadly defined but also that is to raise questions which can actually take you to the field in which you are interested in. Otherwise you may be lost somewhere else. And then as I said that the research problem research field, research questions should be objectively designed.
So, the objective design means I can't say that I have chosen this research area because this is my hometown. I can't say that I have this research problem, I want to work on a problem of divorce because I am facing divorce. I mean it's possible that you are also facing divorce and therefore you want to work on this, but that could not be the sole reason for your research.
You have to give more logical reason why are you interested in this area, what is the importance of this area that you want to undertake research. Now, I will take couple of examples to make this point. One of the examples is Zoya Hassan's book, Professor Zoya Hassan's book Politics of Inclusion. This is an interesting book and what she finds, what kind of problem does she raise in this? Let me talk about that.
She observes that in India, the backward caste and the scheduled caste, the scheduled tribes, are given reservation so that they can be included in the mainstream society, mainstream within Kurds. They can become part of, say, the success story of Indian democracy, the rising middle class, you can say. So she has observed that these classes, due to reservation policy and various kinds of protective discrimination, have come up and they have got adjusted.
Their circulation in the middle class circle has increased. On the other hand, she observes that the Muslim community are not given that kind of right. They are treated as minority. So their minority rights are protected. Their cultural rights are protected.
But by protection of the cultural rights and minority rights, It is not guaranteed that they will be included in this larger big Indian dream. In fact, she collects data to show and she gives the evidence that how in last few decades this community, the Muslim community has been further marginalized and in that case this minority discourse does not work. Then what should one do? And she wants to examine on the basis of various commissions of various reports given by different commissions that how far the minority right framework has worked properly and if we change this framework and start thinking of giving direct benefit to these people as part of the backward community of India, or scheduled community of India, then probably it will be much better. They will be better included in the larger system.
So the politics of inclusion is actually part of the politics of exclusion. So she suggests that if you want to eliminate exclusion, then you really have to create new avenues for inclusion. So that is her interesting argument.
So it suggests, it requests the state to rethink its framework of handling this Muslim community. As minority, within minority majority framework, see request the state to use the same kind of discourse of social justice for these people also. Let me take another example, a very interesting example. Professor Patricia Oberoi has written a book called Freedom and Destiny, Gender, Family, Popular and Popular Culture in India. Why I am saying it is interesting, because what I found is that she has given a clue about selecting a research problem.
She was going somewhere and saw that in a back of the bus or truck, whatever, there was a sentence written. And sentence is very interesting, many people must have heard about it. The beautiful wife danger life, that was sentence he write on that. Now that sentence raised a question in her mind and that became initial point for a major research that she undertook. What are the questions?
Why why what kind of questions this statement that beautiful wife danger life throws for us. I think in the PPT. We have corrected the spelling of the beauty, but in fact on that truck or bus the spelling of the beauty was B U T Y F U L, beautiful and that wrong spelling itself became a source of major research, I am coming to that.
The scenario question that Patricia was facing at the moment was that what Perhaps this kind of a statement reflects an individual's account of personal tragedy. Maybe the person's wife might have left him, maybe the person's wife doesn't like him, and therefore there is a tragedy, and therefore somebody has written that. But, this is a She also started thinking why a person should write this there if it is in the form of graffiti. Is it for warning the people that don't marry or is it just to cut a joke that well you will definitely marry but your life will also be in danger if you have a beautiful wife. And then she starts.
Exploring the question of wrong spelling, she says that well since the spelling is wrongly written it means that it must have been written by somebody who is not well versed in English. So the painter, the painter obviously is a labor class. So is it, she asked the question, is it that this kind of opinion represents the opinion of that class, that section of society in Asia about marriage? And then she discovered that probably this kind of issue, this kind of statement is not very uncommon.
It's quite widely accepted among Asian society. And it has been reflected in many literary writings, in films, in various places, in everyday discussion. People would talk like this, that beautiful wife is not good for your health.
And the reason behind that probably is that. people may be interested, may get interested in that or I do not know what is the reason, I think I will leave it to Patricia's research, but what I am suggesting is that this particular statement became an ignition point for Patricia to undertake a research on love, sexuality, gender, patriarchy in South Asian countries and it produced a very big, very big text. She tried to survey the research done in this field.
She surveyed the documents produced by various NGOs. She then went on collecting calendar arts to see if this kind of idea has been reflected in many places. And she brought home this point that this is a commonly accepted dictum in this area.
This only reflects the idea about gender and patriarchy in this society. We can undertake another, we can discuss another text by Owen M. Lynch, The Politics of Untouchability, Social Mobility and Social Change in the City of India. And this is also interesting. This is a very interesting topic.
Text as it talks about the Jatav caste community in Agra and the question it raises is that how this, why did the Jatavs changed from acceptance of Hinduism and caste system to the rejection of them. What was the reason? And it undertakes ethnographical research and tries to find out these reasons.
So you can raise questions from your observations, you can raise questions by looking at other research, you can raise questions that everybody is facing today. So there are many ways of getting a research problem and trying to carve out a proper research topic from that and then to formulate a set of questions to be asked. And there are four questions, three kinds of questions, what, why and how. So what question, what is happening, so you are just trying to narrate what is happening, trying to document what is happening.
Why it is happening is an explanation and understanding. You are trying to explain or you try to understand why it is happening. So it is a causal relation you are looking for between different factors.
And how it is happening is a process. And what can be done? is a kind of interventionist thinking about it. So when formulating a research question, you can raise these questions for yourself and try to get an answer. So out of several questions, you should select one or two as main questions and that will lead you to the right direction of the research.
Now, there is a technique of collecting these questions. I want to give a couple of minutes on this. You know, we have n number of questions in our mind, and we can't answer all the questions. And probably, there is one or two questions which can be the major question, and the rest questions can be minor questions which are part of the major question.
So, what we should do is, while reading the literature, while selecting our topic, We should record all possible questions that come to our mind. We should try to document all possible questions and then try to see do they fall within the research topic and eliminate some of them. Then we can classify those questions. We can look at the scope of the questions and then we can separate the major question from the minor question. It is a major question which we are interested in.
Minor questions. may be answered in the process of the research, in the process of getting answer for the major question. Once we have selected the questions, when we have the research problem, we have the research topic within that, we have the research question within that, then the next step will be formulating a tentative answer to the question and that is called hypothesis.
We can start with a kind of statement that we want to find out if that statement is right or is wrong regarding the question that we have raised. So we We have different kind of variables when we are trying to understand the problem. Suppose somebody wants to say that well, somebody wants to find out a relationship between the labor and the globalization.
That is a broad area of interest. Then you select the topic impact of globalization on the labor process. Then you formulate a question. What is the impact of globalization on the labor forces in the area of, in the sector of say medicine or in the unorganized sector?
So, this is a more further narrowing down. Then you have a question, typical question that what is the impact of a particular kind of policy? On the particular group, so you have two variables the policy and the group.
So, we can have a tentative hypothesis saying that this particular policy, particular policy A has adversely influenced the labor force. This statement is a hypothetical statement, we have to prove this either right or wrong, we do not know at the moment. We do not have the answer of the question that we have raised, therefore we are undertaking a research.
Otherwise there is no need to undertake a research. We are undertaking a research because we think that we do not have the answer of the question that we have raised. It is a kind of conjectural statement, a conjectural statement about the relationship.
It may be true, it may be false. We have a tentative assumption. And logically from the assumption we have derived this conclusion, this statement.
So, this statement may be wrong, may be right and we should exclude our opinion, our value judgments, our normative statements from hypothesis. Hypothesis is a very, very objective statement about relationship between two variables or more variables that is hypothesis. That, that statement the objective statement that we give there is a possibility of it being correct, there is a possibility of it being incorrect.
Now, there is a possibility that there is a measure, we can measure the variables, the quantifiable variables then we can develop a model if you want. If the variables are not quantifiable even then we can develop certain kind of hypothesis and see whether it can be sustainable. Now once we have all these things.
Then the real issue of method really emerges. What kind of techniques shall we select for research? And as I said that we have to be careful about philosophy of science where we are selecting a research, we are selecting our research tool. There is a lot of debate in social science and there is a very interesting text called Opening Social Sciences produced by what you call the Gulbenkian Commission. Gulbenkian Commission has suggested.
that the social sciences earlier were influenced by hardcore positivism of Newtonian philosophy of science and that produced a positivist social science but gradually since 1940s onwards in fact 45 it takes as cutting edge 45 onwards you find that new kind of thinking is emerging And now there is an open system and we are not positivist anymore. We can't dare to be positivist anymore. In fact, social scientists would not be positivist at all.
That is the idea of the Gulbenkian Commission. So the issue of science is involved here. What kind of method we should adopt in that?
For instance, we have three major philosophers of science. Durkheim, a social scientist, a positivist social scientist, who has developed his social science on the basis of Newtonian. Philosophy of science, we have Popper who rejected. The Newtonian philosophy of science and suggested that we can only talk in terms of possibilities.
In social reality we cannot talk in terms of definiteness. Why did he say that? Because he said that the basic assumption of social science is that social science is based is assuming that regularity is.
A necessary condition for being science and sufficient condition for being science. If you find an event occurring several times, an event happening several times, what you do? You theorize about it, you make a general statement about that event, because there is a regularity and regularity must be there, because of certain kind of law operating behind that.
You take You give a general statement about it. So, regularity is a necessary condition for science and a sufficient condition for science that is the basic idea of positivist social science. Lutkeim has worked on suicide and has said that suicide may be very personal thing, but the reason if we want to find out a causal relation between suicide and the other factors, what we have to do actually is we have to use a large scale data to find out a pattern in that and the pattern will explain what is the real reason for suicide.
So, positivist science bases its argument on the idea that regularity is a necessary condition for science and sufficient condition for science. Whereas, Popper suggests there are evidences to agree with that. Regularity can be a necessary condition for science, but not a sufficient condition for science. Regularity cannot be sufficient condition for science. So, Popper converts all established theories into hypothesis.
Everything became tentative, everything is conjectural and it is not that whether it can be proved right. In fact, it suggests that If it cannot be proved wrong, then we should accept it other way round. And then you have people like Kuhn and Fairbairn.
They have suggested that probably what is scientific, what is not scientific depends not on anything universal, but depends on paradigm that we are using. Kuhn particularly suggests that it is a paradigm, the frame of thinking. Frame of reference from which we look at things, so it depends on which paradigm we are using that will define whether something is taken as fact or not fact, whether it is scientific or not.
So, scientists themselves operate within these paradigms that is Kuhnian argument. So, if you look at the problem of selecting research tool, you will find that you have to decide with whom do you agree. Out of these three, if you think a positivist method is possible, if you think a positivist method is desirable, then probably you are adopting Durkheimian framework of thinking.
If you think we can only talk of hypothetical statements, we can only talk of hypothesis, then probably we are agreeing with proper moralism. If you think we are against method, no method can be used. Is a firebrand, firebrands argument. So, you have to really work on the idea of the technique, which technique do you want to pick up for research will depend on what kind of, what kind of philosophy you agree with. Then there is a debate on qualitative and quantitative method.
I will not go into detail again, I will just simply say that if you agree with the positivist thinking. Then, probably you will adopt quantitative methods more rigorously, because it assumes that through examining, through capturing the regularity you can theorize, you can bring out certain concrete laws of society. And you can work with the data, the data sets and since data sets are about huge number of people, you can then make larger statements.
So, suppose I want to work on suicide, it will say that collect. 5000 data and work on them, you will get a pattern. Data can say lot of things, but then those who do not agree with positivist method, philosophy science they say that look everything is conjectural, data cannot say much because the social reality is too complex. In fact, it does not really go into the deeper layer of social reality. So what we have to do is we have to adopt qualitative method like talking to them, collecting information through ethnographic research.
In order to enter into the consciousness of the community on which we want to work, and then only we can capture their social reality. So if you want to work on suicide in that case, we have to go there, stay with them, talk to their parents, talk to the people, and that's how we can collect information about the suicide. We can't have any general frame as Durkheim has worked out. So there's a big debate between them.
Nowadays, people have agreed that no matter what kind of research topic you have, you can use both kinds of methods and they can complement each other. Now, I am going to suggest that in next few lectures, these are the four kind of methods we will talk about and these four methods are qualitative research method. One is the content analysis. I will not go into detail, just give you the idea that what is content analysis. The content analysis is adopted when you have large number of documents and you think that lot of facts are there in the documents.
And the documents we have to read between the lines to bring out those facts, those social facts. So since documents are product of certain kind of social processes. So, through document by exploring the content of the document you can enter into the social processes, you can capture the social processes going on. So suppose you want to understand how do the Hindi newspaper report the Naxal violence and what is the difference between the Hindu newspaper and the English newspaper in reporting the Naxal violence. Why it is important to ask this question?
Because these newspapers are also in a way reflecting the fact that different kinds of social groups are reading them. So their opinion must be based on that. So how do you get that?
You look at the content of the newspaper. For instance somebody is saying one area is infested by Nuxlides. This word infested is a loaded word.
It has a content within itself. So, you can analyze that we can understand that well the person who is writing is not in favor of the Naxal movement. So, you have n number of such kind of words being used, concepts being used that can give you certain kind of idea about the social processes.
Then you have interpretative method particularly when you are using documents like constituent assembly debates. You interpret, how do you interpret those debates? How do you bring out those issues that was involved in debate? You use the interpretative study of that.
Then the ethnographic study, when you want to know about the community and you are assuming that community may be epistemic community, then you undertake ethnographic research in which you go there, stay with them, learn their language, try to be participant observer, participate in their everyday life. And then try to understand how are they thinking of something, how the community conceptualizes something. And the last one is visual research.
These days, large, huge number of visual documents are produced. Films, YouTube videos, photographs, documentaries, recordings of the social functions. So the visual research allows you to... Capture these images socially or trying to see the content of these images and read the social process through those contents.
It is also helpful in documenting for the research purpose and trying to reflect upon them. So visual research is something which is emerging trend. Nowadays a lot of people are using these visual documents for research.
So these are the four kind of methods that we will talk about. In next four days, let me recap the whole thing. In the beginning, I said that how would you look for a research problem.
Then, I said that you should look for a research problem How would you carve out the research topic from the problem and how do you carve out the research question from the topic? And once you have the research question in your hand, then what do you do? You formulate a hypothesis. Once you have the hypothesis, then you are looking for the method and that is where you discuss about your philosophy of science thing.
And from there, then you select a method and once you select a method, then you undertake the research. So, this is how we can start thinking about conducting a research. Thank you very much. Sir, content analysis, interpretative study, ethnographic and visual research. So, in kind of visual research, we will also analyze the content.
So, there are different codification for content of text and visual units. See, there could be very technical. way of using the visual units also the content analysis as it is possible in the text for the text it is very easy for instance. We will discuss it but before that we take a question from the center Madhav.
A.S.C. Ahmadabad, what is the role of review of literature in various steps in social science research? See this is very very important, review of literature is very important. Generally what the students do, researchers do. they try to read various books and in the section called literature review, they reproduce those readings in several paragraphs. I think that is the worst way of conducting presenting a review of literature.
Review of literature basically means mapping the field, the area in which you are going to work, you try to find out what are the works has been done in that area already, how those works are engaging with the question that you have raised. In fact, this is where you try to make this point that the question that I am raising has not been answered properly. It has been answered in some ways, but it ways that does not satisfy me therefore, I need to undertake a fresh research.
So, review of literature the main aim of the review of literature is mapping the field and locating the gap in research that you want to fill up. So, it is extremely important aspect of research project. Okay, some problem we find that literature are large number of, so in that case what you suggest only it last 2 or 3 years of the literature be reviewed or all research, all the literature.
No, no, what I suggest is that you review as many as possible. possible, but basically after doing some work you should be able to capture the trends and you should categorize the literature available. So, instead of talking about every book that you have read you talk about the trends suppose suppose, I want to work on the class and ethnicity relationship.
So, I have discovered that there are five kinds of literature available, one kind of literature is which suggest that class does not exist only ethnicity exists, we give a title to it ethnic model. Second suggest that ethnicity does not exist only class exist, third suggest that no ethnicity and class are mixed together, so it is a class model. Fourth may suggest that well ethnicity and class both are irrelevant, there is some other category that is useful. So you put your available literature into different categories, talk about the general characteristics of the category and then bring some books as example or if you think that within that general category there are three sub categories then mention those sub categories and then give examples and then show it that how each category responds to your your question, the question that you have raised. So the first thing is the classification of the literature, available literature.
Yes. In case of the when we try to find out the historicity of something, some events, in that case what we find that the person or the author who has written the books in the early say after independence and now what they are writing, their perspective are completely different. So in that case, what one need to do. I didn't get your question.
Are you suggesting that somebody has written a book at some stage. I am talking about the approach. In the beginning they were Marxist approach, now the liberal approach, the new liberal approach. In fact, in fact you should read, when you are reading the text, one of the main things The main task is to locate the text in the larger theoretical framework and so one can do this kind of thing that one can put all books falling under the Marxist approach together.
So these are the paradigms that within which you are operating, so it is a good idea to put books written within that perspective. perspective together and show that how they are different but not major different. You have to justify why are you putting some book under one category that is justification you have to get. Explanation is required.
Yes that is required. Okay so the literature review. What are the other criteria one should follow while doing a literature review?
There are certain some kind of methods or some kind of approaches one need to apply while doing a literature review. The most important thing is that you should definitely cover. those books which are widely known in that field and what is how would you know that you should pick up one book and see whom are they referring to what are the references in that that is how you can start getting into it and you should also talk to the experts in that area that is where the role of the guide comes who will suggest that these are the prominent books in this field, path breaking books in the field that should definitely you should not miss out any book. Publish just before, even just before your research in a literature review. You should definitely talk about that and try to first tell the reader that this is what they are saying and how it is adequate or inadequate from my perspective.
The other thing in literature review is you know literature review is very important because that is the place where you also generate certain ideas that can be used by you later on when you are formulating your own argument. So Suppose, I have discussed four kinds of theories and I am saying that these theories are wrong and I am giving a fifth theory. Now, what is the criteria of accepting your theory as a better theory?
The criteria is that, you have to accept your theory as a better theory. that you should be able to explain what 4 theories have explained plus something more than that. So, towards the end of the thesis you have to demonstrate and look the 4 approaches discussed in the beginning what they they are explaining and keep this new approach that I am adopting it is capable of explaining all four plus there are certain areas which cannot be explained by them I am able to explain that also that is the criteria that you have to adopt. Now the focus is on interdisciplinary approach so how can one mix this kind of things. So in fact you know I am of opinion that there is no question of interdisciplinarity.
That doesn't mean that I'm accepting... We have a question from... Okay.
Yes, if a writer writes on social issues like homosexuality, child sex, communal violence, what could probably be the research hypothesis? See depends what kind of problem you want to pick up. Suppose I remember a student who has worked with me on homosexuality, she picked up this issue that can we can we...
I agree with the formulation that homosexuality is immoral on the basis of religious values. So, that is one of the argument that she questions she picked up and then what she did, she analyzed the religious texts to demonstrate that nowhere religion suggests that actually homosexuality is ethically wrong or morally wrong. She took an example from Indian mythology Bhagirath.
When Ganga came there, there was a child which did not have bone and when it was touched by Ganga, he had the bone something like that. So, lot of such questions can be raised, a number of questions can be raised. So, well friends within.
I was just half a second because that may create some problem. When I am saying there is no question of interdisciplinary research because I do not believe in disciplines. Not that I am against interdisciplinary.
I am saying... saying that actually since truth is integrated whole, so we should not put them in different different. So, well friends with this we what we conclude the lecture, I thank all of you for watching the lecture and on your behalf I thank Dr. Raymond Thakur for giving such a wonderful lecture.
Thank you very much. Thank you very much.