Characteristics of Research

Research is an interesting and impactful area. It increases your curiosity to find better methods to solve problems, and the process of conducting research increases your knowledge and expertise in a certain area(s). 

But do you think simply having the will to conduct research results in highly successful outcomes? Well, having the will to know more about a topic can get you started, but if your research does not follow certain guiding characteristics, it may not yield highly successful results. 

But what are these characteristics? Let's watch the upcoming video to learn more about them.

As you learnt in the video above, your research project should be systematic, valid and verifiable, and controlled. There are a few other characteristics of a good research project, which you will learn in the upcoming video.

Collating the learnings from both the videos above, the seven characteristics of authentic research are as follows:

1. Systematic: Research should be conducted systematically. It should start with a problem or a question that needs to be answered and move towards completion, in a step-by-step manner.

2. Valid and verifiable: The conclusions of the research study should be correct and verified by the researcher as well as by other scholars in the same field. 

3. Controlled: All variables, except those that are tested or experimented upon, should be kept constant.

4. Rigorous: The procedures followed in conducting the research should be relevant, appropriate and justified.

5. Empirical: Any conclusion drawn from the research should be based on hard evidence.

6. Critical: Critical scrutiny of the research procedures and methods is important. The investigation process must be foolproof and should not have any drawbacks.

7. Contributory: Every time research is conducted on a particular topic, it should add some new insights to the topic.

Additionally, the research to be conducted should be reproducible, i.e., one should be able to reproduce the research results if the same research is conducted. The research results should not be a one-off or be arrived at by chance.