Report of National Workshop on Research Methodology in Social Sciences

Gokhale Education Society’s College of Education and Research has organized an ICSSR (WRC) sponsored National Workshop on Research Methodology in Social Science from 31^st July to 5^th August 2017. Dr. Indira Shukla was the director of the workshop and Dr. Shilpa Waghchoure and Dr. Chetan Chavan were the coordinators of the workshop. 26 participants from the various fields were the part of this workshop.

All the sessions were systematically arranged keeping in mind the need of the research scholars. The sessions were as follows:

Day 1: 31^st July, 2017

Dr. Chetan Chavan welcomed the participants and gave an introductory speech as well as introduced Dr. Veena Deshmukh madam, the resource person of session I: Research Design. Dr. Indira Shukla Madam, Principal of Gokhale Education Society’s College of Education and Research felicitate Dr. Veena Deshmukh Madam with a Tulsi sapling.

Session I: Research Design was taken by Dr. Veena Deshmukh Madam. Madam started her session with a brain storming activity. Dr. Deshmukh highlighted different types of Researches – Quantitative, Qualitative and Mixed Method. In quantitative she discussed descriptive, correlation, causal comparative and experimental. She also talked about cohort study, pre-experimental design, quasi-experimental design and factorial design. In pre-experimental she explained one shot case study, one group-pretest-posttest and static group comparison. In Quasi-experimental Design, Madam explained non-equivalent control group design and counter balanced design. She also focused on numerical data and narrative data. She also discussed the research designs of mixed method study i.e. sequential designs and concurrent designs. Madam has also talked about concurrent triangulation design, concurrent nested design and concurrent transformative design. Apart from this, madam also discussed developmental research and design based research. Session ended with open question answer talk.

Session II: Research Problem Selection and Research Process was taken by Dr. Vivek Patkar sir who is an independent researcher. Sir began his session with disciplinary models which are based on applied, soft, pure hard social sciences, arts, humanities and sciences. Sir also highlighted what research is not? He explained that research is not just information gathering, is not rearranging the facts and figures alone and is not playing of words. He focused on what is research? He stresses that research starts with a question or problem, accepts certain basic assumptions, expects critical interpretations, requires unbiased data collection analysis, performs validation, needs articulated documentation and leads to further research. He also talked about types of research i.e. extension or generalization, explanatory (why), description (what, when, who and how), comparative study, life history research, predictive research and evaluation study. He also highlighted online or E-Research. In which he talked about use of research methods to study different aspects of the internet and using the internet to apply research methods for the research questions. Dr. Patkar also explained research steps, locating a problem and types of research questions.

Session III: Structure of Research Writing was also taken by Dr. Vivek Patkar. Sir began with the process of research. He explained the purpose of research proposal that a research proposal is an argument that explains the logic of the study to an audience of experts and non-experts. He also highlighted the features of research proposal i.e. it shows that the proposed study has considered the available knowledge about it, viability and relevance of research is justifies, strengths and limitations of the approach are stated, all the ethical issues are weighed up and ensures that fair amount of original findings are expected at the end of the research. He also talked about the elements of research proposal. Sir also explained the purpose of literature review, model for a proposal and the structure of the thesis.

Day 2: 1^st August, 2017

Session IV: Online Literature Search by Mr. Santosh Hulagabali. He started his session with few questions. The entire session was very enlightening as many things were new to the particiapants and this session gave an idea how to search online reaches. Sir talked about various online catalogues like national library catalogue, library of congress, union catalogue and Incat: Indian catalogue. He also explained how to search scholarly data – original search and literature review. He explained various search strategies – PICO search approach, phrase search, type of document search, google: advance search, Inurl: topic/phrase etc. Sir also talked about various search engines like meta search engine, google scholar, academic search, intelligent search engine, subject directories, open access to various journals and various video search engines.

Session V: Mixed Method Research which was taken by Dr. Gauri Hardikar. Madam began her session with an interactive activity which helps the participants to know about their nature and characteristics. Madam discussed the social world and world view which means a basic set of beliefs that guide action. She also talked about positivism, constructivism, transformative and pragmatism. She explained the basic meaning of mixed method which applies both the quantitative and qualitative research methods. She also talked about the philosophy behind mixed method in pragmatism which is arises out of action, situations and consequences rather than antecedent conditions. She also discussed why mixed method and characteristics of mixed method.

Day 3: 2^ndAugust, 2017

Session VI: Qualitative Research taken by Dr. Sybil Thomas. Madam started her session with the meaning of research which means to describe, explore and explain. Madam also talked about paradigm, worldview and shared understanding of reality. She also discussed the difference between quantitative and qualitative. She explained the sampling techniques of qualitative method- purposive and theoretical. She talked about the types of qualitative research – grounded theory design, narrative research, ethnography, ethnomethodology, phenomenological research and case study.

Session VII: Research Hypothesis which was taken by Dr. Indira Shukla. The entire session was filled with simple and beautiful examples which were easily understandable by the participants. Madam began with the meaning of hypothesis which means an intelligent guess or prediction that gives a direction to the researcher to answer his research question. She also talked about the contribution of hypothesis in the research study i.e. it gives clarity to the research problem, describes explains and predicts the expected results or outcomes, indicates the types of research, describe research design, identifies the population of the study, facilitates data collection, data analysis and data interpretation. She also explained types of hypothesis – research hypothesis, null hypothesis and testable hypothesis. She also discussed the types of variables- independent, dependent, demographic, extraneous and environmental.

Day 4: 3^rd August, 2017

Session VIII: Application of SPSS in Social Science Research taken by Dr. Kishor J Maru. Sir began his session with the meaning of variable. According to him, when information is measured then this measurement is called as the variable. He also talked about the types of variables – Dichotomous variable and Ordinal Variable. He discussed various data analysis techniques which are quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis. He explained that qualitative analysis is based on content analysis, meta analysis and SWOT/C analysis i.e. strength, weakness, opportunity, treats & challenge. He also discussed the analysis techniques used in association/ relationship. In this he talked about pearson product moment correlation, point-biserial correlation and spearman’s correlation. He explained very adequately how to do data analysis using SPSS.

Session IX: Data Analysis and Interpretation which was taken by Dr. Sosamma Samuel. Madam started with the menaing of research and different steps of research. She also talked about the characteristics of quantitative data – expressed by number, thorough measurement and always numeric data. She also discussed various scales of measurement – ratio scale, internal scale, ordinal scale and nominal scale. She explained the stages of data analysis process – editing, data cleaning, data coding to raw data, data presentation, data interpretation and discussion. She also explained the descriptive data analysis – univariate, bivariate, multivariate and visual aids such as histogram, bar charts, pie charts & line graphs. She also described the difference between parametric and non-parametric tests. In parametric tests she highlighted t-test, z-test, pearson’s product moment correlation, ANOVA, one way ANOVA, two way ANOVA, MANOVA, ANCOVA & biserial correlation. In non-parametric test she highlighted rank correlation, point biserial, phi coefficient, sign test, mann witney test etc.

Day 5: 4^th August, 2017

Session X: Quantitative Research Method taken by Dr. Shefali Pandya. Madam initiated her session which the meaning of quantitative research which means describing numbers and it is quantity which refers to the amount of something. She also described the strengths of quantitative research which are enables testing and validating/ modifying existing theories about how and why phenomena occur and develop new theories by collecting data and testing hypothesis. She also pointed out few weaknesses of quantitative research i.e. researcher’s perspective in identifying dimensions/ categories which are used may not reflect the participant’s experiences/perspectives/understanding. She also discussed different types of quantitative method – survey, correlation, causal-comparative and experimental.  She also talked about online survey which is survey conducted via uncontrolled instrument.

Session XI: Sampling Methods and Techniques by Dr. Neetu Joshi. Madam discussed the meaning of sampling which means a process used in statistical analysis in which a predetermined number of observations are taken from a larger population. She pointed out the various sampling methods used in probability sampling – simple random sampling, stratified sampling, cluster sampling, systematic sampling and multistage sampling. She also highlighted non-probability sampling techniques – quota sampling, convenience sampling, purposive sampling, self-selection sampling and snowball sampling.

Session XII: Case Study Method which was taken by Dr. Shubhangi Parkar. Madam began her session by explaining the meaning of mental illness which means a clinically substantial thinking, behavioral or emotional pattern that occurs in an individual and the change is linked with existing anguish or disability. She also explained the meaning of mental disorder which means more than an expectable and culturally approved reaction to a particular event such as death of a loved one. She pointed out various mental illnesses which included schizophrenia, major depression, bipolar disorder, severe anxiety disorders, cognitive disorders and personality disorders. She also explained the techniques of approaching a patient, mental status examination, symptoms of schizophrenia, major depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder and causes of mental illness.

Day 6: 5^th August, 2017

Session XIII: Referencing Basics taken by Dr. Anjali Kale. Madam explained the meaning of reference which is a standardized way of acknowledging the information and ideas used from different sources in research work. She also pointed out the parts of referencing i.e. citing and reference list. She explained that citing is acknowledging within our text the document from which the information is obtained and reference list is a detailed description of the document from which the information is obtained. She also described the difference between references and bibliography. She also discussed the need of citing, when to cite and when not to cite with examples. She also explained how to do reference accurately. It was followed by the practical session in which she taught the use of Zotero.

Session XIV: Report Writing in Research which was taken by Dr. Asawari Bhave.  Madam started her session with the meaning of research report which means a condensed form or a brief description of the research work done by the researcher. She said that research report should be concise, clear, honest, complete and accurate. She also discussed the structure of research report and the format of a research report. She also explained the chapter wise writing of research thesis and the various elements of each chapter. She also pointed out the rules of typing, difficulties in writing a report and features of a good report.

Session XV: Valedictory Session. The chairperson of the valedictory session were Dr. Chetan Chavan and Dr. Shilpa Waghchoure. They felicitate the participants with the certificates.