How to become a good researcher

Nada Almutawa

Spending
18 years in Kuwait University as a researcher in the academic field I have
always thought that we need a more competitive higher education environment and
a quality assurance for doctoral studies. The purpose is to create a process,
which enables the researcher to reach an efficient level.

A
good beginning to ensure quality in research can be achieved by providing
structured training for doctoral supervisors. 
There is a huge need to look into the work of supervising doctoral
students especially when they interviews with doctoral supervisors in various
fields. The article provides a platform to researchers to move ahead.

Let’s
take into consideration the analysis: which has been drawn based on two studies
that have tried to examine the impact of the doctorate on student’s supervisors
and external stakeholders. The method adopted is to interview 26 supervisors. According to Qualitative, research Sharan B
Merriam, qualitative research is a basic interpretive study. The researcher added that “In my experience
in applied fields of practice such as education administration and so on the
most common type of qualitative research is a basic interpretive study .It is a

central characteristic of a qualitative research that individuals interact with
the their social world.”

It
is important to understand the characteristics of qualitative research. In
order to do this type of research the researcher should design a research about
higher adult education series. It should be noted here that knowledge always
helps the researchers focus on the main problem of interest. In this case a
theoretical framework is of much importance as reviewing the literature is
about identifying the theoretical framework and then shaping the problem. In
1967 Glaser and Strauss published the discovery of grounded theory which talks
about the strategies of qualitative research and also it’s uses in building a
theory from an inductively analyzing social phenomenon. This was also concluded
by many anthropologists and sociologists who actually interview people in a
setting of a village in their social and cultural context.

Another
publication is the Monograph by Guba (1978) which talks about the methodology
of naturalistic inquiry in an education evaluation. The two most important
terms in research areOntology and Epistemology: the former is the about
the nature of reality while the latter is about the nature of knowledge Apart
from this a researcher can be also benefited from the three forms of research
given by Carr and Kemmis.

Below
you can find the four major philosophical orientations, which can be considered
during research:

1- Positivistapproach is interpretive and can
add to post structural and postmodern. Positivist orientation assumes that
reality exists out there and the observable measurable knowledge gained is
scientific.

2- Interpretiveresearch refers to the research
where qualitative research is most located and assumed that reality is socially
constructed. It further says that thereare multiple realities not a
single one. Phenomenology relates with a study which relates to how people
describe things and then experience them through their senses.

3- Critical researchrefers to that variety of
approaches where the knowledge is drawn from feminist theory. It is a post
colonialist to critique and challenge to transform and empower

4- Modernismdiversity refers to the multiple
truth philosophy.

A
research can be divided majorly into the following three types:The
first will be thephenomenologicalwhich tried to understand the essence
of structure of the phenomenon, the second is theethnographycategory
which tries to understand the interaction of individuals with others or with
their culture and the last is thenarrative analysis,which includes
telling stories by the people.

Additionally, any researchers can be more efficient if they are
familiar with the grounded theory founded by Glase and Strouss. This theory
emerges from or is grounded in the data. The researchers can also depend on the
Building Theory. All these theories are interpretive

Recommended readings:

Hales and Malfroy (2010)Theorizing
doctoral supervision