Why do Research

As a researcher you may happen to receive this question from your boss or supervisor after you have presented a mouth watering proposal...Why conduct this research? It may be even irritating sometimes because you as a researcher had put in a lot of effort to formulate a research topic. You see, unless your research is going to discover the cure for AIDS, you will always significantly get the why question smacking on your face. Its not really a bad thing for professionals to ask you why a certain research should be conducted or why not but it should open your analytical mind to think and ask, why should I conduct this research. If you were in someones shoes would your research topic make any sense?

Lets start with the why conduct a research at all? Well as a researcher living in a world that is constantly asking and seeking for answers, it isn't hard to believe that there are people willing and ready to pay out of their nose for those answers. Look at it this way, knowledge is power and power is even more power. But that's beside the point, when you conduct a research and do your analysis, you are seeking for answers that's plain and simple. But you will discover significantly that as you try to seek answers and solutions to problems, the process becomes more complicated because things aren't that simple. That's the reason behind so many indepth analysis methodologies such as the use of statistical software's like SPSS, STATA all in the aim to simplify the process of understanding the world around us. Getting solutions to problems and finding answers has never been complex but as a researcher you cannot back down for anything.

So whenever you are trying to answer the why question, always think of it as a researcher should. You should look at what you are doing as significantly adding to knowledge and discovering something new. You want to solve a problem but you cant do it alone, use all the resources at your disposal and explore the possibilities of adding something new.