Article S7.1 Doing Research in an Imperfect World Seminar Leader: Professor Ch. Hanumantha Rao Administrative Staff College of India (ASCI), Hyderabad, India Note. Chennamaneni Hanumantha Rao, M.A. (Osmania), Ph.D. (Delhi) is Chairman, Centre for Economic and Social Studies, Hyderabad, India. A distinguished agricultural economist, he was Chairman of the Technical Committee, Drought Prone Areas Programme, Desert Development Programme and Advisory Council on 20-Point Programme Implementation of the Government of India. He has been a member of the VII and VIII Finance Commissions, Economic Administrative Reforms Commission, Economic Advisory Council, Planning Commission, and National Commission on Rural Labour, among others. He is the author of five books. Prof. Rao was honoured with the Indian civilian honour Padma Bhushan in 2004. The following is a summary of an address he delivered at ASCI, Hyderabad, on April 24, 2009 Professor Rao remembered the days of his own doctoral work, when the focus was much more on producing a thesis that is unique, contributing something "new" to a field of study. He contrasted it with the high level of routinisation and standardisation one can notice in doctoral research, thanks particularly to the application of statistical tools. Still, in many cases, he remarked, research remains an activity that requires creative personalised inputs. Addressing early-career researchers, Professor Rao emphasised on the importance of selecting a research area carefully. In the context of ASCI, there is some clarity on the institution's research agenda, as documented in its vision document. The agenda covers issues of governance, poverty, and human development. Such topics require different kinds of research, which may sometimes be sponsored by specific clients, or led independently by individual researchers. In the current institutional environment of research, it is important to keep the issue of social relevance in mind, while selecting a research topic. Of course, relevance has a dynamic quality -- what is relevant today may or may not continue to be relevant tomorrow. After choosing a broad topic, a researcher identifies specific issues relating to it that need to be addressed in the research. That is where familiarity with the relevant literature becomes important. Professor Rao recollected cases of some research students who started writing their thesis chapters almost as soon as they had chosen a research topic -- not "wasting" any time, so to speak! As it turned out, these students took very long to complete their doctoral work. So, the advice to research students is: Do "waste" time reading good work done on similar topics, anywhere in the world. He emphasised the importance of reading top international journals in one's field, before setting out on one's research project. Research students should present at least two seminars in course of their doctoral work: (a) one seminar before getting on with data collection (focusing on the literature and theoretical background relevant to one's work) and (b) another seminar after collecting and analysing the data. Working towards these seminars and incorporating any feedback received during the seminars can significantly improve the quality of one's doctoral work. In many areas of social research, researchers use secondary data. Thus, researchers become users (or consumers) of data, sometimes not being fully aware of the conditions under which the data were collected. It is important for researchers to be aware of the quality and limitations of the data. A critical user would know whether certain kinds of concusions can be drawn from the data or not. Professor Rao lamented that researchers are not always sufficiently aware of the limitations of the data they use. He also brought out the undesirability of the extreme opposite case, where a researcher is extremely familiar with the data, how the data were produced, their deficiencies and problems. Such a researcher speaks (or writes) with countless cautions, concluding that nothing can be said on the basis of the data! According to Professor Rao, a researcher ought to tread a middle path. An effective researcher is one who can use common sense, theory, and/or similar work elsewhere, arriving at meaningful conclusions based on whatever data are available, no matter how imperfect the data. Everyday decisions and actions have to be improved based on an analysis of the available data. Speaking of the application of statistical tools in research, Professor Rao recollected that in a fairly advanced course on econometrics, the teacher said, "The discipline is still evolving." It calls for a lot of care while using statistical tools in research. Moreover, there is sometimes a tendency to pick up data that appeal to oneself -- the so-called confirmation bias. A researcher's biases may have broader historical and cultural roots. In the Subcontinent, some of the biases arise from thousands of years of custom and deep-rooted social values. Sometimes, these can prevent researchers from interpreting data objectively. It is important for researchers to become aware of this. Reported by D. P. Dash. [April 24, 2009] Copyleft Xavier Institute of Management, Xavier Square, Bhubaneswar 751013, India Research World (ISSN 0974-2379) http://www1.ximb.ac.in/RW.nsf/pages/Home |
