How Is Research and Writing Done in Academia?
Research does involve a lot of things and in conducting a research study, it is always beneficial to maintain high standards of ethics and try to keep the information presented by the paper to be as accurate as possible. However, is there any chance of conducting a perfect research? That is a weighty question. To answer this question, we first need to know what research is.
There are many definitions of research available and one of them states that research is the eternal but sequential process of collection of data from various sources, which is then manipulated, stored or further discussed to suite the topic being covered by the study. The reason why research is endless is because the pool of information is extremely large and there is endless possibility of extending the research done. There is also a myriad of thought-provoking points in each study which provide opportunity for further research to be conducted. For example in a research done on the cause of cancer, every now and then, we hear of new causative agents. These arise due to continuous research being conducted on the topic of cancer.There are two distinct kinds of research. One is qualitative, and the other is quantitative research. Qualitative research raises a question in the form of 'how' and 'why?' while quantitative research raises a question in the form of 'who?', 'what?', 'when?' and 'where?'. Quantitative research is interested in finding percentages, measures of central tendencies and other numerical measurements to analyze and describe the relationship between the independent and dependent variables while qualitative research is concerned with individual cases and provides greater depths and understanding of each case while looking only at the practical and pertinent information.
A perfect research would need to have testable, verifiable, and unchallengeable results and it should not leave any questions unanswered. Therefore in this sense, a perfect research would need to have an absolute ending which is utterly not possible considering the nature of research. However, this depends on the type of research being conducted and the role of the research. For a qualitative research, in my humble opinion, I think it is not possible to run a perfect research. This is for the simple reason that a qualitative research is involved with analyzing individual cases and this brings a lot of potential for bias. Be it interviewer bias, Hawthorne effect or any other form of bias which is relevant to the research. For example in a study recently conducted on the knowledge, attitude and practices of women attending Huruma sub-district hospital in Johannesburg towards female condoms, the researchers did try as much as possible to minimize the risk of existence of this bias but the research cannot be accepted as perfect since it sets the stage for further research to be conducted regarding the same topic.
In quantitative research, the researcher is interested in using analytical tools to produce results. This includes using measurement instruments and other tools to intensify their results. In a recent research conducted on the safety of drinking water sold by hawkers in Kampala, Uganda, they did use tools which were calibrated to reduce chances of occurrence of any instrumental bias. However, their studies only handled the hawkers in Kampala town center and did not analyze the sources of this water and this left a potential for further research so this research cannot be taken to be perfect.
All research studies are conducted by human beings and there is an agreeable statement that states that "no man is perfect". Therefore in this context, we can derive that no research can be perfect provided it is done by humans. If machines could conduct research on their own, then maybe, just maybe, we can assume that research to be perfect.