This document outlines the course objectives, content, and process for Research Methodology RM-898. The objectives are to equip students with skills to plan, design, define problems, and select indicators for research and methodologies. The course outline covers topics such as research purpose and ethics, types of research tools and methods, developing research questions, research design, sampling, data collection techniques, statistical analysis, and research presentation. It also details the seven step research process of defining problems, reviewing concepts and previous findings, formulating hypotheses, research design, data collection, analysis, and reporting.

1. Research
Methodology
RM-898
Dr. Aamir Alaud Din
Assistant Professor, IESE, SCEE, NUST

3. Course Objectives
 The objectives of this course are to equip students with the skills to
undertake a project by planning, designing and defining a research
problem; and select indicators and parameters of research and its
methodologies.

4. Course Outline
Formulate a
Question
Select an Appropriate
Research Design
Collect Relevant
Data
Interpret
Findings
Publish
Findings
Review the
Available Literature
4

5. • Introduction to Research, Purpose of Research, Ethics in Research
• Types of Research, Tools of Research, Scientific Methods, Techniques & Pre-
requisites for Scientific Research
• Starting a Research Project/Research, Research Project Conceptualization, Elements
of a Research Proposal
• Critical Thinking and Developing the Research Question, Defining the Research
Problem; Choosing the Research topics
• Research Proposal: its importance – A pre-requisite for Research, Research Proposal
Writing Techniques
Course Outline

6. • Research design, Importance of Research Design, Formulation of Research Design
Reliability, validity, generalization, Experimental design and use of indicators in
research, Trade-offs in design decisions
• Introduction to sampling design, Logic of sampling; Concepts and Terminologies,
Types of Sampling Designs (Classifying experimental design, factorial design,
randomized block design, covariance design)
• How to put things together? Introduction, Objectives, Material and Methods,
Review of Literature, Bibliography, Literature Search: Database, Search Engines;
Analytical tools in research: qualitative and quantitative methods;
Course Outline

7. • Evaluation Research: How to carry out evaluation research, Data Collection:
Techniques in data collection: Quantitative & Qualitative Data, Experimental
Research, Case Studies, Surveys, Interviews, Questionnaire
• Data Analysis: Conclusion, Validity
• Statistical analyses, Descriptive statistics (Correlations), Inferential Statistics,
Univariate Analysis, Bivariate Analysis, Multivariate Analysis (T-test, Generalized
linear model, Factorial design, randomized block analysis, Analysis of covariance,
Regression Analysis)
• Data Interpretation, Current data interpretation with comparative studies (Inter-
laboratory comparison), Inference based on findings;
• Research Presentation Techniques – Data presentation
Course Outline

8. Detailed Research Process
Define
Research
Problem
Review
Concepts
And
theories
Review
Previous
Research
findings
Formulate
hypothesis
Design
Research
(Including
Sample
Design)
Collect
Data
(Execution)
Analyse
Data
(Test
Hypothesis
if any)
Interpret
and
report
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Feed Back
Feed Forward
Review the literature