INTRODUCTION
A research is generally defined as a systematic way of gathering data, recording it and analyzing it further to guide business decision making. It includes three main steps i.e. gathering data, recording it and analyzing it further for the evaluative results. A research is mainly conducted to make business decisions to handle uncertain situations. It is mainly conducted to give proper and timely information to the top management for their decision making. A research is mainly done to discover new knowledge or interpretation and establish facts in a particular field. The research process involves various steps that helps the organization to investigate a problem or look for an opportunity facing the organization. The steps are
Identifying and Defining Problem - This is the first step in any research process. Important research takes place when the problem is identified and problem is defined. We have to identify the problem areas and opportunities to conduct a research. This well defined problem will give a proper direction to do investigation to the researcher. After this step, exploratory research is conducted where the questions are to be answered in order to solve the problem. This process takes evaluation of current studies, previous studies by experts and analyzing the situation. After this process, the objectives of research are determined. At the end, hypothesis is developed.
2. Planning the Research Design - A research design is planned after the hypothesis is developed. It is a actual framework of research that provides specific details regarding the process to be followed in conducting the research. This design includes where the information will be researched from, in what time limit, sampling process and appropriate measurement techniques.
3. Selecting the Research method - Observation, Surveys , Secondary data studies, Experiments are the different ways of conducting a research which can be chosen by the researchers on the basis of objectives of the study, costs involved, importance of the study, urgency of the study and availability of the data
4. Selecting the Sampling procedure - Sampling is the process that uses a small number of population to draw conclusions regarding the
Evaluating the Data - This is an important step to evaluate the collected data which will help in decision making process. Several research and mathematics tools are used to evaluate the data. It starts with editing and coding the data. The interpretation of the data that has been collected is used by different analytical techniques according to the requirement of the management is called analysis. This may range from simple frequency tables to complex multivariate analysis.
7. Preparing and Presenting the Research Report - The research report is then presented in oral or written form . The amount of information provided should be based on the requirement of the manager. This report is then used by the company to make their final decisions.
Principles of Good Research:
There are some factors which need to be considered for a research to be called as a good research.
• A clear statement of aim should be defined which will help to state the purpose of the research.
• The scope of the problem should be well defined and limitations should be known precisely.
• The research should answer questions like what is the research all about, what it involves.
• The methodology of the research should be very appropriate and in point wise. We can use combination of methodologies as