Feasibility of a Research Problem

This implies that before you have a full scale investigation into the problem of your study, you
would have considered in clear terms the practical issues involving feasibility. It involves consideration of practical issues of what can be reasonably accomplished given the time and resources available. This will help you to decide to reduce the scope or to increase it. You have to carefully and honestly assess the time and fund required to accomplish the study. The major aspects to be considered are

Time constraint:

You need to find out if the time available is sufficient and adequate to complete the study. Factor related to time are:

• Population: - Time to cover the population in relation to the required characteristics. 
• Proper development of measuring devices. You need to consider the time to develop and validate or trial test your data collection instruments 
• Time required for data collection. This should be considered 
• Time for analysis of data should be considered. 

 Financial Constraint:

All the financial expenses for the study should be assessed. The major areas of financial involvement include: Production of instrument, payment for research assistants, transportation cost, cost of analysis of data, office supply and equipment and miscellaneous.

Anticipating and Avoiding Problems:

Whether you are knowledgeable in research or not, you have to be able to identify potential trouble spots in your proposal. You can make some modifications to avoid them. You need to conduct a pilot study. This involves a preliminary run through on a small scale of all the procedures that will be employed in the study. If there are problems in the pilot study they can be estimated and taken care of. If the problem is that of time or money, you can scale the problem down by reducing the sample size, the number of hypothesis etc.

SELF ASSESSMENT EXERCISE:

In any topic of your choice, propose three hypotheses each of null hypothesis and alternative hypothesis

CONCLUSION

In this unit you have gone through the necessary steps in a research process. You have also  studied the various components and aspects of setting up a problem. The onus lies on you to choose your topic by applying all that you have learnt here.

SUMMARY

In this unit you have studied the steps you will follow in conducting the research. These steps are:-

1. Identifying the problem 
2. Constructing the hypotheses 
3. Identifying and labeling the variables 
4. Proposing operational definition of terms 
5. Manipulating and controlling variables 
6. Constructing the research design 
7. Identifying and constructing data collection devices. 
8. Constructing questionnaire and interview schedules 
9. Sampling and collection of data 
10. Carrying out statistical analysis or data analysis 
11. Discussion of Results or Research findings 
12. Drawing conclusion, Generalizations and Recommendation 
13. Writing the Research report. 

You have also learnt that delimitations are the boundaries of the study, while limitations are those conditions beyond the contract of the researcher which may place restrictions on the conclusions of the study and their applications to other situation.

Assumptions are statements which you believe to be facts but which cannot be verified. The
significance of the study involves the use or practical values of the study. It involves the beneficiaries of the results and how they will benefit. You have to define all unusual terms that could be misinterpreted. Hypothesis is a tentative but intelligent guess posited to direct your thinking toward the solution of the problem. Hypothesis can be stated in two forms-the null hypothesis and the alternative hypothesis.

You were told that variables are symbols to which we assign numerical values. They can take on
different values. They can be true dichotomies, polytomies etc. We have independent and dependent, discrete and continuous variables. You also learnt that you have to do feasibility of the research problem before the full scale investigation. This is to enable you consider practical issues of what can be accomplished given the time and resources available. In this case, you consider time constraint, financial constraint and how to avoid other problems. In the next unit we shall be looking at the types of research methods available for you.

TUTOR MARKED ASSIGNMENT

i. Select a research topic in your area of study.
ii. Propose 4 alternative hypotheses and 4 null hypotheses