This document discusses limitations, delimitations, assumptions, and defining key terms in research. It notes that limitations point out strengths and weaknesses and should be acknowledged. Limitations constrain generalizability and present opportunities for further research. Delimitations define the scope of the study through choices made about what to include or exclude. Assumptions are things accepted as true that the study relies on. Defining key terms precisely helps avoid misunderstanding.

1. Limitations & Delimitations

2. Limitations
 The limitations of the study are those characteristics of design or
methodology that impacted or influenced the interpretation of the findings
from your research
 They are the constraints on generalizability, applications to practice, and/or
utility of findings
 that are the result of the ways in which you initially chose to design the study
and/or the method used to establish internal and external validity.
 Limitations point out strengths and weaknesses of the research.

3. Importance of limitations
 Always acknowledge a study's limitations.
It is far better for you to identify and acknowledge your study’s
limitations than to have them pointed out by your professor and be graded down
because you appear to have ignored them.
 limitations is an opportunity to make suggestions for
further research.
If you do connect your study's limitations to suggestions for further
research, be sure to explain the ways in which these unanswered questions may
become more focused because of your study.
 Demonstration of critically research problem,
understood the relevant literature published about it, and correctly
assessed the methods chosen for studying the problem.

4. Importance of limitations
 Claiming limitiations is a subjective process
because you must evaluate the impact of those limitations. it leaves the
reader wondering whether, or in what ways, limitation(s) in your study may have
impacted the results and conclusions.
 All studies have limitations.
However, it is important that you restrict your discussion to limitations
related to the research problem under investigation.

5. Possible Methodological Limitations
 Sample size
 the number of the units of analysis you use in your study is dictated by the
type of research problem you are investigating. Note that, if your sample size
is too small, it will be difficult to find significant relationships from the
 Lack of available and/or reliable data
a lack of data or of reliable data will likely require you to limit the scope of your
analysis, the size of your sample, or it can be a significant obstacle in finding a
trend and a meaningful relationship.

6. Possible Methodological Limitations
 Self-reported data
 self-reported data is limited by the fact that it rarely can be independently
verified. In other words, you have to take what people say, whether in
interviews, focus groups, or on questionnaries, at face value
 Lack of prior research studies on the topic
 citing prior research studies forms the basis of your literature review and
helps lay a foundation for understanding the research problem you are
investigating.
 Note again that this limitiation can serve as an important opportunity to
describe the need for further research.

7. Possible Limitations of the Researcher
 Access
 if your study depends on having access to people, organizations, or
documents and, for whatever reason, access is denied or limited in some way,
the reasons for this need to be described.
 Longitudinal effects
 Be sure to choose a problem that does not require an excessive amount of
time to complete the literature review, apply the methodology, and gather
and interpret the results.

8. Possible Limitations of the Researcher
 Cultural and other type of bias
Bias is when a person, place, or thing is viewed or shown in a consistently
inaccurate way. Bias is usually negative, though one can have a positive bias
as well, especially if that bias reflects your reliance on research that only
support for hypothesis.

Fluency in a language
if you are not fluent in one language, you are limited in being able to read
and interpret that language research studies on the topic. This deficiency
should be acknowledged.

9. Delimitations
 The delimitation of study is the explanation of the scope of study. This section
allows the writer to explain why certain aspects of a subject were chosen and
why others were excluded.
 Delimitations are the definitions you set as the boundaries of your own thesis
or dissertation, so delimitations are in your control.
 Delimitations are set so that your goals do not become impossibly large to
complete.
 Examples of delimitations include objectives:
research questions, variables, theoretical objectives that you have adopted,
and populations chosen as targets to study.

10.  Your first delimitation was the choice of problem itself; implying there are
other related problems that could have been chosen but were rejected or
screened off from view. Your purpose statement explains the intent that
clearly sets out the intended accomplishments, and also includes and implicit
or explicit understanding of what the study will not cover.
 Delimitations are often strongly related to your theory and research
questions.
 Limit your delimitations to the things that a reader might reasonably expect
you to do but that you, for clearly explained reasons, have decided not to do.

11. Assumptions
 Assumptions are things that are accepted as true, or at least plausible, by
researchers and peers who will read your dissertation or thesis.
 In other words, any scholar reading your paper will assume that certain
aspects of your study is true given your population, statistical test, research
design, or other delimitations.
 For example:
if you tell your friend that your favorite restaurant is an Italian place, your
friend will assume that you don’t go there for the sushi. It’s assumed that
you go there to eat Italian food

12. Some facts about assumptions
 Assumptions in your study are things that are somewhat out of your control,
but if they disappear your study would become irrelevant.
 If you are conducting a survey, you need to assume that people will answer
truthfully. If you are choosing a sample, you need to assume that this sample
is representative of the population you wish to make inferences to.

13. Defining Key Terms
 Much misunderstanding in human communication results from people bringing
different meanings to the words they use in speaking and writing.
 Effective researchers seek to avoid this difficulty by clearly explaining the
meanings they assign to key terms in their investigations.
 If, early in the research process, you define precisely what you intend by
words and phrases crucial to your project,
(a) you help identify appropriate methods of gathering and interpreting
data.
(b) your advisors can judge at the outset how well they agree with your
definitions, thereby saving you possible trouble during subsequent
stages of project.

14. Ways of defining keyterms
Different ways that researchers define key terms are those of
(a) offering no definitions,
(b) providing synonyms,
(c) furnishing sentence descriptions,
(d) citing shared experience or knowledge
(e) defining by the operations used in conducting the research