Understanding the Process of Graduate Research
Postgraduate canditature involves three major stages:
- the familiarisation stage when the student:
- familiarises himself/herself with past literature and theoretical frameworks,
- recognises a niche for his/her our particular research interests, and
- prepares and submits a research proposal;
- the research process involving:
- the preparation of research instruments which are trialled and modified where appropriate,
- contacting stakeholders at the research site,
- collecting data by recording interviews, distributing questionnaires, or testing subjects, etc;
- collates, transcribes, codes and analyses the data;
- the writing up process which is many ways represents a short history of the preceding processes where:
- background to the research is explained;
- knowledge of literature is demonstrated;
- methodology is outlined in detail;
- data formulated into visual tables, graphs, histograms or descriptions and case studies which are integrated into the whole text;
- to produce a scholarly piece of writing which contributes to the field of research.