Research Tools

What is Research?

The term 'Research' means a proper study regarding a specific topic or concern using specific methods. According to Earl Robert Babbie, the American sociologist, "Research is defined as a systematic analysis to describe, explain, predict and control the phenomenon observed." Inductive and deductive methods are involved in the research.

In order to analyze an observed event, inductive methods of research are used. The inductive methods are related to the qualitative. For the verification of the observed event, deductive methods are used. Deductive methods are related to quantitative research.

Characteristics of Research

There are various characteristics of research:

1. For precise data, a systematic approach must be followed. Rules and procedures are essential part of the process which set the goal. Researchers must practice ethics and codes of conduct when making observations or conclusions.
2. Research depends on sensible thinking, which includes inductive and deductive methods.
3. The information or knowledge is obtained from actual observations in natural settings in real time.
4. An in-depth analysis of all the data collected so that there are no discrepancies.
5. Research creates a way to generate new questions. The data which is existing supports to create more research opportunities.
6. In nature, research is analytical. It uses all available data so that inference is not ambiguous.

Types of Research

There are various types of research:

1. Basic research
2. Problem-solving research
3. Problem oriented research
4. Applied research
5. Qualitative research
6. Quantitative research

1. Basic Research: - Data collected to improve knowledge is a basic research definition. Knowledge expansion is the core motivation. It is a non-commercial study that does not make anything easier to create or invent. For example, an experiment to identify a simple fact.

2. Problem-Solving Research: - Problem solving research is directed by organizations to comprehend and resolve their own issues. This type of research utilizes applied examination to discover answers for the current issues.

3. Problem-Oriented Research: - As the name recommends, problem-oriented research is led to comprehend the specific idea of an issue to discover applicable arrangements. The term 'problem' refers to several options or issues when examining a condition.

4. Applied Research: - Applied research emphasizes on analysis and solutions to real-life issues. Applied research refers to a study that supports solve practical issues with the help of scientific methods. In solving issues, study plays an essential role that affects the entire well-being of humans.

5. Qualitative Research: - Quality research is a process which is related to the inquiry. It helps to create a thorough understanding of problems or problems in their natural language. Qualitative research is a non-statistical method.

Qualitative research depends a lot on the researchers' experience and the questions used to examine the sample. The size of sample is generally restricted to 6-10 people. Open-ended questions are asked in a way that gives rise to another question or set of questions. The objective of asking open-ended questions is to collect the information from the sample.

1. Quantitative Research: - Quantitative research is an organized method of gathering information and examining it to make determinations. Quantitative data is related to the numbers.

In quantitative research more people are involved-more people means more data. With more information to examine, you can get more precise outcomes. This method of research uses close-end queries because researchers usually want to collect statistical data. There are various tools which are used in quantitative methods in order to gather the data such as polls, questionnaires, surveys.

Types of Research Methods

There are following types of research method:

1. Qualitative research
2. Quantitative research

1. Qualitative Research: - Qualitative research is a research method in which data is gathered using conversational methods. The participants are free to ask open-ended queries. The responses which are gathered are non-numerical. This technique not just enables a specialist to comprehend participants' opinions yet additionally why they think with a specific goal in mind.

Types of qualitative research:

• Focus groups
• Ethnographic research
• One-to-one interview
• Case study
• Text analysis

2. Quantitative Research: - Quantitative research is another type of research which deals with numbers and measurable forms. We use quantitative research to answer questions in terms of justifying relationships with quantifiable factors in order to either describe, forecast or handle an event.

There are various methods of quantitative research:

• Descriptive Research
• Survey Research
• Correlation Research

Types of Online Research Tools

There are various types of online research tools:

1. EndNote
2. Zotero
3. Todoist
4. DataElixir
5. Plagiarism Checker
6. Paperpile
7. RefWorks
8. EduGeeksClub
9. Artcyclopedia
10. BioMedCentral
11. FindArticles
12. Project Gutenberg
13. Perseus Digital Library
14. Internet History Sourcebooks
15. Google Scholars
16. Google books
17. PubMed Central
18. Questia
19. Web of Science group
20. Science Direct
21. Ingenta Connect
22. IEEE Xplore
23. JSTOR
24. Project MUSE
25. Digital History
26. Library of congress
27. Research guide for students
28. S Government manual
29. The Association for computing machinery digital library
30. arXiv

1. EndNote: - EndNote is a multidisciplinary research tool that supports search for complete texts based on information and abstracts in online databases, also handle and auto-complete all your references. Like Todoist, EndNote also allows you to share your research information with your colleagues. If you are a person who like to work alone, you can also do this by saving, handling and tagging your research results for better access. Another feature contains a bibliography maker that can create citations in more than 6,000 styles and automatic suggestions for journals.

2. Zotero: - Zotero is an important tool which all online learners must have to use. After that, everything necessary for you to spare it to your own, completely accessible library, which is another element in Zotero, in one click. It supports PDF documents, image formats, audio and video files.

3. Todoist: - Research is a time escalated action, which implies a tool to put together both in your expert and individual life. We recommend you to give a shot to the Todoist. With the help of the Todoist, you can handle all your projects and access them from any platform, together with your laptop, desktop computer and portable devices. You can collaborate and share your tasks with other people. Karma points are another clever feature, that is given to the users when the users are successful in assigning jobs to the projects.

4. DataElixir: - Perhaps the most ideal approach to stay up with the latest with all the most recent news, improvements and information in science is to discover a site that minsters those consistently. We suggest data Elixir; regardless of whether you are an eLearner, researcher or a scientist, it advantages a ton for its week-by-week assortment of all the best information assets and news, and you do not need to invest any exertion at all. You simply need to buy into their free week by week pamphlet, and that is it.

5. Plagiarism Checker: - To free your work of copy content, run it via plagiarism checker, which will scan and decide whether there is any copy content present. And if there is copy content, you either need to give better references or rework your work to be more remarkable.

6. Paperpile: - Paperpile is a software for reference management, which is just like Zotero and works like an extension for Google chrome browser and making it accessible for Linux, Mac and Windows users. We suggest that you use it to discover and import information from stage platforms such as PubMed, arXiv, and Google chrome. You can undoubtedly trade all the PDF archives and information to Google Drive, which implies you will have the chance to edit your papers collaboratively. This collaboration will not end, as you can send data back and forth between P Zotero and Paperpile such as Mendeley.

7. RefWorks: - RefWorks is an online research tool, and it is a browser-based tool. With the help of RefWorks, students can find the correct research data, structure it, save it and share it easily with their collaborators and colleagues. The entirety of that research data and composed work should be upheld by appropriate references, and RefWorks produce those for you consequently, just as bibliographies in each style. If you are not confirmed about how to use it with full potential, there are many tutorials to do it right there on the website.

8. EduGeeksClub: - Now and then, you will go over an unfavorable hindrance while doing your examination. Rather than surrendering, you can go to EduGeeksClub for proficient research help. Connect with researchers and professional writers and learn all the intricate details of intensive research. Likewise, you can commission a paper from them which you would then be able to use as an asset for your article, paper, or exposition. They additionally give altering and editing.

9. Artcyclopedia: - Artcyclopedia is an extraordinary asset for information on craftsmen or workmanship developments. The website gives links to historical centers worldwide so you can see more than 8,200 works by a wide range of craftsmen, from painters and artists to photographers, architects and decorative artists.

10. BioMedCentral: - BioMedCentral publishes peer-reviewed journals on various topics, and all the topics are open source and free of charge. Their scientific articles are first-rate and accessible to anyone, and their rapid process of publication means that the most up-to-date information can be accessed instantly.

11. FindArticles: - By using FindArticles, we can search the articles from about 500 print journals along with coverage back to 1998, and their use is free of charge. Although FindArticles does not contain few of the famous magazines, the collection is comprehensive enough to be useful for many subjects. This is not an option for most library article archives. However, this is a simple article that can be a great resource for search.

12. Project Gutenberg: - Project Gutenberg is known as the inventor of movable type printers, gives web access to over 59,000 entirely free e-books. The biggest free books' collection on the web, Project's Gutenberg, will likely digitize each book that isn't under copyright. They provide a wide array of classic books which is published before 1900.

13. Perseus Digital Library: - Search historical texts are presented by the Perseus Digital Library, most of which are in the original language. You can find a wide variety of texts from ancient Greco-Roman to the Renaissance and beyond. They also have an images collection of Archaeological artifacts and Greco-Roman art.

14. Internet History Sourcebooks: - Internet history sourcebooks are another research tool which offers a broad assortment of public domain and copy-permitted historical texts. It gives useful primary and secondary resources on numerous recorded periods, from antiquated to middle age to current, and cultural histories sorted by religion, geography, gender, etc.

15. Google Scholar: - Google Scholar provides search results for publication in innumerable academic journals. If you see the right-hand side of the search result then Google Scholar will display a PDF that is available for each article. Just like Google, Google Scholar works, and it is the top scholarly search engine in the world.

16. Google Books: - With the help of Google Books, we can search the full texts of many books and get results that are related to our research. For books that are no longer under copyright, you can see the book completely directly on the site; others you can purchase or discover in nearby libraries.

17. PubMed Central: - PubMed Central is a research tool that is free to use. PubMed Central search its database of approximately 4 million academic articles in biological and medical sciences. PubMed searches only give abstract returns, while various full-text articles are existing via external links.

18. Questia: - The Questia is a digital library which is designed to help students, especially the students who are in the humanities and social sciences, do research of high-quality and write papers. The sources of Questia are selected by librarians, agreed by professors and reviewed by peers. Questia contains more than 94,000 academic books and more than 14 million newspapers, magazines and journals.

19. Web of Science Group: - Web of Science is a publisher-neutral citation index in which we can discover good, curated journal articles. Their advanced, thorough inquiry tools permit us to effectively find new data. We need to pay to get to it, yet if we are a regular researcher, it may be a beneficial venture.

20. Science Direct: - Elsevier, perhaps the greatest distributer of science content, offers access to their whole document via ScienceDirect. ScienceDirect is based on a wide scope of trusted, interdisciplinary, high-quality research. Its objective is to support you in discovering answers to the most squeezing research questions.

21. Ingenta Connect: - An incredible asset for published scholarly papers. It provides academic content from 300 publishers. It gives you access to the biggest connecting organization of its type on the web and is additionally ideal for publishers who are beginners in setting up online content.

22. IEEE Xplore: - IEEE Xplore is another tool for research which is particular search tool for highly-cited publications in the fields of electronics, computer science and electrical engineering. A membership awards access to technical and scientific content, which is published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and its distributing accomplices involves books, journals, standards, courses and conferences.

23. JSTOR: - With the help of the JSTOR we can search for wide range of books and journals. We can search by using publisher, subject or title. However, JSTOR is a subscription service, we can access our library, or search their open-source database.

24. Project MUSE: - Project MUSE is hosted by Johns Hopkins University. The main focus of project muse is on digital articles and book chapters for social sciences and humanities researchers. It was established as a non-benefit joint effort among libraries and distributers.

25. Digital History: - A document for sources, for example, historical advertisements, gravestones, letters, etc., Digital History is an important asset for the individuals who look for data on United States history. They provide overviews of numerous times of history through a concise "Textbook," and essays on science and technology, private life, movie etc. They additionally have a comprehensive audio-visual archive.

26. Library of Congress: - You known about the Library of Congress; however, did you think about the volume of online data it provides? Particularly for somebody who is attentive in American history, the Library of Congress is a beneficial asset that can outfit you with heaps of information you can't discover somewhere else. The American Memory Collection comprises an abundance of materials on American history with many photographs, online exhibits, documents, maps and sheet music. If you can't discover what you're searching for, with the help of the online form you can ask the librarian.

27. Research Guide for Students: - This online research tool provides guides on how to write various research paper elements, from how to compose a study to how to compose a compound equation. It additionally provides writing guides for understudies, literature guides, research paper examples, etc.

28. U.S. Government Manual: - U.S. Government Manual is one of the essential tools for online research. In case you are searching for information explicitly related to the U.S. Government and its branches and workplaces, the U.S. Government Manual is the spot to look. It gives broad information on the organizations of the authoritative, executive, and judicial branches. Moreover, it incorporates data for semi-official offices, worldwide associations the United States participates in, and boards, committees and commissions.

29. The Association for Computing Machinery Digital Library: - This online reason tool involve all ACM distributions, containing conference proceedings, books, magazines, articles, and newsletters, as well as a curated assortment of full-text sources from different distributers.

30. arXiv: - arXiv is the biggest assortment of open-source papers in mathematical fields: computer science, quantitative finance, mathematics, statistics, physics, economics, quantitative biology, systems science and electrical engineering. It is facilitated by Cornell University

Advantages of Using Online Research Tools

There are various advantages of using online research tools:

1. Accuracy
2. Speed
3. More honest
4. Affordability

1. Accuracy: - The capacity to get data straightforwardly from your crowd kills the high inclinations of blunders when leading an examination. The utilization of online research tools, for example, surveys and client audits, gives market research with the correct information.

2. Speed: - The information base which is required to conduct online market research is fixed at a single location-that is on the WWW and everyone can access with a PC and an internet connection. This will remove the need to go around looking for information thus wasting quality time.

3. More Honest: - The review led for market analysts demonstrated that the average marketers accept that clients are more forthright and fairer when filling a form of the survey via the internet. This is because the PC acts like a third party, consequently screening the client from seeing the response on a questioner's face when they have undesirable comments.

4. Affordability: - This advantage clearly covers both directing an examination online with the above recording tools as well as utilizing online survey software in light of the fact that making a survey for online dispersion costs close to nothing. With a Microsoft Word application, a business association can, without much of a stretch, make the required materials for circulation while various survey software comes free or at entirely reasonable update costs.

Free Online Consumer Research Tools

There are many types of free online consumer research tools:

1. Omgili
2. Trendwatching
3. Think with Google
4. Google Trends
5. Spezify
6. FlexMR Platform Demo
7. Alexa
8. Statista
9. YouGov Profiles

1. Omgili: - Omgili is one of the interesting tools for online-consumer research. To make the best utilization of this examination apparatus, we would recommend either exploring your own image and breaking down whether the outcomes coordinate your desires or investigating contenders to recognize holes in the market that can, without much of a stretch, be filled.

2. TrendWatching: - TrendWatching offers comparable support to Google Trends, however, instead of permitting you to investigate the information for yourself, it gives free distributions on almost any point. The site gives reports on provincial buyers and exceptionally customized publications to handle almost any contemporary subject. There is a goldmine of free data given in the reports. It tends to be utilized to comprehend the market you are working in or even structure the premise of a forward-thinking strategy.

3. Think with Google: - Think with Google is comparable in idea to Trendwatching. It archives a wide range of free reports and publications on a scope of purchaser problems. You can look through reports by one or the other business or platform, giving you more prominent command over the information you are investigating.

One extra component that has sparked a lot of interest is the Creative Sandbox. This is a showcase of creative thoughts that various organizations utilize to target and publicize to different customers. Once again, you can browse this by industry or platform. The Creative Sandbox truly is at the front line of innovation and is an awesome wellspring of inventive motivation, and specialized data.

4. Google Trend: - This incredible asset can be one of the most helpful research tools on the web - if you use it in the correct manner. Google Trends needs no sign-up and is effectively available. It gives information on the most regularly searched terms on the internet. This can be extraordinary for understanding what is pertinent to your target market on the basis of real-time. The main opportunity that provides this information is to be able to capitalize on current trends to increase or increase awareness of your brand.

There are restricted alternatives to alter the information given, or even modify it to your particular specialty. However, maybe the most incredible tool is the Graph Explorer. This permits you to add your own search terms for Google to analyze. The outcome is a graph indicating relative interest after some time, with news features and issues encompassing the subject. The information is further separated into regional interest, relevant searches, and precise search terms. You can penetrate into this information more by altering the geographic and fleeting focusing of the hunt to your definite necessities.

5. Spezify: - Spezify is comparative in idea to Omgili. It is a basic search engine that makes the estimation of brand supposition and web presence a simple cycle. In any case, instead of looking through message boards and forums, Spezify searches online web-based media. The outcome is a temperament board style results page, which gives links to pictures with your keyword in the anchor text. Pictures are gathered from a wide variety of sources containing Twitter, Flickr, eBay, Instagram.

Consolidating the outcomes from Omgili and Spezify can give an excellent review of brand presence. In a digital age where dyadic discussions among business and the shopper are turning into a relic of days gone by, recovering control and having the option to comprehend customer connection with your brand is an integral tool and can support shape future brand methodologies.

6. FlexMR Platform Demo: - If you want to know more about online consumer research, you can book a free preliminary of the special FlexMR software. Flex provides a devoted platform that facilitates both qual and quant research simultaneously for significantly more prominent outcomes. A FlexMR platform demo is a tool in which you can mix and match tools to suit your precise requirements and pay just for what you need. This framework is fit for accommodating any kind of research community, panel or ad hoc activity with online research tools traversing the whole qual and quant range, social and mobile combination and accessible in more than 60 languages.

7. Alexa: - Alexa is another extraordinary tool for competitive market research; Although the information offered refers to an organization's web presence instead of fundamentally its performance as a whole. Alexa can be utilized to either explore the position of your own web presence or that of your key competitors. You can likewise find in what viewpoints you outclass your competitors and vice versa, which can frame the reason for target and objective setting activities.

A portion of the information offered by Alexa comprises web traffic analysis, geographic breakdowns and related websites. It is important but that not all sites will have the option to access information of Alexa relying upon their size, so when leading your research, try to concentrate on your prominent competitors.

8. Statista: - While in numerous viewpoints, Statista is paid services, there are various data sources that you can access for free. Essentially on the home page enter your search terms and browse various reports on offer. This device is fabulous for investigating ventures and understanding the competitions' nature. Free data incorporates the overall size of an industry, average expenditure, and even individual organization expenses.

9. YouGov Profiles: - The YouGov profiler is another online consumer-research tool. It appears, from the start, like Google Trends. Nonetheless, the bits of knowledge it can give are considerably more definite and focused on your particular crowd. Start via looking through a current brand, personality or object. YouGov will, at that point, put shortly constructing you an accumulated profile of the normal customer dependent on your search. The sort of data gave goes from essential segment to character and way of life factors. You can even find what different brands are well known with the normal buyer, and what media they burn-through.

To make the best utilization of this examination apparatus, we would recommend either exploring your own image and breaking down whether the outcomes coordinate your desires or investigating contenders to recognize holes in the market that can, without much of a stretch, be filled.