The Nature of Research

1. The Nature of Research • Systematic- data collection process • Logical – evaluation system for the data • Empirical – decisions are data driven • Reductive – general relationships are established • Replicable – the research process is recorded so that it can be repeated by others

2. Research Continuum Applied Basic Level 1 Level 2 Level 3

3. Reading Research • Become familiar with a few publications • Read only studies of interest to you • Read as a practitioner, avoid looking for proof • Read the abstract first • Avoid being over concerned with statistics • Be critical but objective

4. Unscientific Methods for Problem Solving • Tenacity – cling to beliefs regardless of evidence • Intuition – common sense • Authority – because someone said so • Rationalistic – Obese individuals are unfit Tom is obese Therefore Tom is unfit • Empirical – based on your own experience and data collection

5. Developing the problem Forming the hypotheses Gathering the data Analyzing and interpreting results Scientific Methods of Problem Solving