Introduction

A research study can be thought of as consisting of five stages:

1. (a) Deciding on the objectives of the study

2. (b) Planning the collection of the data

3. (c) Collecting the data

4. (d) Analysing the data

5. (e) Writing the research report

In Chapters 1 to 10 the first four of these stages have been discussed in various places, to some extent in isolation from each other. However, in this concluding chapter it is appropriate to review all five stages from the perspective of the research study as a whole. This will be done by discussing each of the stages in turn.

Deciding on objectives

It should go without saying that it makes no sense to carry out a research study without the objectives being clear both in a general sense and in terms of specific questions to be answered. What is meant here is that it should be possible to describe the purpose of a study by a general statement such as ‘the study is intended to assess the attitudes that people have towards abortion on demand’, or ‘the purpose of the study is to compare the population dynamics of three species of grasshoppers living in a particular area’. A specific question to be answered for the first example might then take the form ‘what percentage of the sampled population will answer “yes” to a certain question?’, while, for the second example, a specific question might be ‘are there significant differences between the survival rates for the different species?’.