Tuesday, December 21, 2010

There is no hope of doing perfect research (Griffith, 1998, p97)


There is no hope of doing perfect research (Griffith, 1998, p97). Do
you agree?



Doing a research simply means searching for knowledge, or a way of discovering or developing something or a method that will lead and join people with the advanced world. Research has a very open extent that it includes different areas such as science, life styles, arts, politics, history etc. Different people in different parts of the world can claim completely opposite results on the topic because of the varying examined data or contradictory environment they have. As we are constantly learning more and more one can disagree with the above topic. There are so many things that we couldn’t even begin to imagine and we don’t even aware on that. However through researches we learn and get benefited. But the thing is in this changing world any research won’t be perfect. It will always be better than the previous one.
One can argue about it in different ways. For example on one hand the inventions at the past were perfect in terms that we actually used them and benefited from them for so many decades on the other hand those inventions are not perfect because it didn’t actually fulfill all the necessities of humans. Therefore the perfection of invention or research is not the matter, but the endless necessities that human beings have. These endless necessities make the humans do more researches and as a result of that humans always try to find new inventions. As we live in a world where globalization highly exists, people in one part of the world easily have inter- connections with people in another part of the world. So they often exchange ideas and everyday they learn something new that can enhance their knowledge. Then researches only become a continuous process which involves strenuous human power and money.
Innovation is a multi-stage process whereby organizations transform ideas into new/improved products, service or processes, in order to advance, compete and differentiate themselves successfully in their marketplace. [Baregheh, 2009, pg 48]     

 It is true the fact that people need to invent different things to fulfill their needs and wants. They always need to boost up their knowledge most of the time for the mean of satisfaction. Subsequently they search and search till they find the best thing but end up with finding a better thing because humans won’t content with what they have and they always believe the fact that there is something ahead better than the things they have. In addition to that the process of inventing something they pay attention for the quality, durability, simplicity and value. This enhances with the competitiveness. Therefore after inventing something they intend to find another alternative that can be more qualitative, more durable and simpler. That is the true nature of invention and that is how an invention or a research becomes a multi-stage process. Moreover that is why humans give birth to various products with considerable changes than the first product. It is clearly evident with the inventions such as abacus, calculator, computer [desktop], laptops, palmtops etc.
Although research results may appear promising, nevertheless, their reliability or validity has always been threatened with the presence of errors and biases in the study. [Mehra, 2002, pg125] The word perfect means ideal or complete without any fault or weakness in other words it can mean that 100% correct. But for a research or an invention it is difficult to apply the word perfect as it won’t be 100% correct. Therefore it is correct to agree with the statement of having 'no hope in doing perfect research'. But reach to perfection becomes the aim of doing a research. By nature human beings are imperfect. They always struggle to survive. They don’t think deep before doing anything. So naturally or may be due to unavoidable circumstances they made mistakes. So imperfect human beings never end up a task with a perfect result, but they can end up their tasks by achieving a successful better result.
The fact that the perfection of research is impossible can be seen in some researches that I have been practically involved while I was doing my degree (Bachelor of Arts). One was the research that I have done on the topic of ‘English pronunciation skills among Sri Lankan school children’. It was a broad topic to gather factors. First of all I selected fifteen schools in Sri Lanka and that included six schools in rural areas, five in town areas, two international schools in town areas and two from suburb areas. But I was not sure whether my hypothesis was correct. The process of researching rotates around something called as Trial and Error. Results may vary according to the different strategies that different researches use and there researchers play a main role. Next at the end of my research I came to a conclusion. But it depends on the strategies I used because another one can follow a totally different hypothesis than mine. Then the result too would be differing. And at the same time no one aware about the best hypothesis, because it depends on the knowledge that different people have.  Therefore the process we called research we need to face mistakes, faults and misinterpretations as well as misunderstanding. In consequence to that we have to agree with the fact that a perfect research is impossible.
Another example can be given through a research that I have done on the topic of ‘Globalization Media and Cultural Identity; with reference to Sri Lankan experience. There I had to continue my research on what is globalization, how it relates with media and how can it affects to the cultural identity of our country. For that I had to gather factors in different spheres like various life styles of the people, politics in the country, modern technologies that are using in the country and also about famous media in the country, because it is through media we get familiar with the concept of globalization. Then I interviewed number of people who belong to different age groups, different social background and different nationalities. And I classified what they said according to their age. Under that I categorized them into three groups like youths age between, 15-30, middle age, 30-50 and age more than 50. But at the end of my research I couldn’t reach to a perfect conclusion as my topic was an updating one. Globalization changes our lives every day. And also the people too, as they often change their ideas. People who represent the younger generation now represent the older generation in future. Though we come to a conclusion regarding the topic it won’t applicable to future and it won’t be a perfect ideal research.  
In this regard, it can be seen that there is no hope in doing a perfect research. There are always certain motives and agendas behind all types of research. [Vangelisti, 1999] There can have both advantageous and disadvantageous. Some do it for money, some for humanitarian reasons. Some even do it for the destruction of humanity. There is always room for improvement, and research is an ongoing process. It is limited by time, resources and tools available for research. Sometimes cultural restrictions, social acceptance or certain biases affect the firmness of research.



                 References


Baregheh et al. Community-Based Research: A Documentary History. Macmillan and co; limited (2009).
Mehra, B. Bias in qualitative research: Voices from an online classroom. The Cyprus review, Cyprus.(2002).
Vangelisti A,. Teaching Communication: Theory, Research, and Methods. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1999.