Research is the creative and systematic work done to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of humanity, culture and society. This knowledge can be used to develop new concepts, methodologies and understandings, resulting in the invention of tools and techniques for solving problems and improving human quality of life.
It involves gathering information about a topic through hands-on experiments, interviews and surveys, looking through records and more. The process of research requires teams to be open to finding unexpected answers to the questions they are posing and even inspire new and better questions. Research teams use special processes to collect information so they can make sure the data they are collecting is valid, reliable and representative of a larger group of people. This is called generalizability.
The scientific method is an iterative process where the researchers continually revise and test their hypotheses, making predictions based on educated guesses. This way, they can identify cause and effect relationships, test theories, and improve their understanding of the world around them.
Typically, the research process starts with a literature review to identify gaps or flaws in existing research and provide justification for the study. From there, the researcher will formulate a hypothesis to be tested and collect data that will help answer the question.
Once the data is collected, the researchers will analyze it to draw conclusions about their findings and publish the results in scholarly journals or other venues. The paper will include a methods section that describes how the research was conducted, including any statistical analyses. This section is important because it enables other scientists to replicate the study, using a similar set of procedures.