You can see a map of that path, i.e. a research plan, in the following questions. Each researcher answers them gradually, and also comes back to them often (called iteration). Very often, a following step will illuminate the previous one.
- What is the topic, goal and problem dealt with in the work? What is the sense in studying it?
- What is the present state of knowledge? Who has written about it and how?
- What research question are you asking?
- How will you respond to it? Using qualitative or quantitative methods?
- What tools will help you do this? An interview or questionnaire?
- How will you collect data? How will you secure an interview or have the questionnaire filled in?
- What will the sample be? Who exactly will you be asking and whey them? And in what number?
- How will you process the data? What will you do with the interviews and questionnaire?
- How will you deal with research ethics? For example, will you make it anonymous?
Example:
- What is the topic and goal of the work? What is the sense in studying it?
The topic is peer tutoring, i.e. mutual evaluation of tasks among classmates. It’s necessary to deal with this because it plays a great role in the classroom – it’s not only the teacher who influences students’ development.
- What is the present state of knowledge? Who has written about it and how?
Peer tutoring is a broad topic that’s been dealt with by people like professor Keith Topping. We can see a large interest in the topic on Scholar.
- What research question are you asking?
I’m interested in how students from the other class view peer tutoring in the online environment. How do they view it? How does it benefit them? What, on the contrary, do they see as negative?
- How will you respond to it? Using qualitative or quantitative methods?
I will be responding via qualitative methods.
- What tools will help you do this? An interview or questionnaire?
I’ll create a questionnaire in Google Forms with open questions for the students in the other class.
- How will you collect data? How will you secure an interview or have the questionnaire filled in?
I’ll ask their class teacher to help me distribute the questionnaire.
- What will the sample be? Who exactly will you be asking and whey them? And in what number?
There are 24 students in the class. I’ve chosen the other class because I’m interested in classes in secondary school and this class is more accessible than at another school – but, I could try that too.
- How will you process the data? What will you do with the interviews and questionnaire?
I’ll make codes for each question in the questionnaire. This means I’ll be looking into the responses and searching for similarities and differences. For example, I can find out whether students view the opportunity to look at someone else’s work as a positive factor, what their comments are, and how many of them mentioned this.
- How will you deal with research ethics? For example, will you make the research anonymous?
I don’t plan to take down names or collect email addresses in the questionnaire. In an ideal scenario, I won’t show the data to anyone else but the teacher, so no one can be recognized. That wouldn’t be fair.