How do we know if a research is good or not? How are they evaluated?

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How do we know if a research is good or not? How are they evaluated?

The question is tough (hehe). Anyway, based from my readings, I have come up with the factors to be considered for the evaluation of a good research paper.

According to Simon Peyton James of Microsoft Research, Cambridge, he stated that writing papers is a skill, it is a skill that is worth learning. Well for me, it’s true, it is in writing that we can express our great ideas and also if it is backed up with evidences and documents that would support our ideas. Also, a good writer should also be a good reader. Am I out of the topic? Hehehe, I get carried away.

As Simon Peyton said that papers communicate ideas, is one of the factors that need to be considered in evaluating a research. A good research should infect the mind of the reader with his idea like a virus in our computers. As the saying goes, great ideas are worthless if you only keep it by yourself. That is why we write papers and do research right?

Another factor would be the presentation of the idea. The researcher should figure out what is his idea. The researcher should make certain that the readers will have no doubt on what the idea is. In other words, the researcher should state the main purpose of the research. We may somehow relate it with the “ping” or a ring of a bell, in which the research should just have on ping or one clear and sharp idea. In presenting an idea, the researcher should explain it as if he/she was speaking to someone. He/she should convey his/her perception towards the readers that even if the readers skip the details, they can still take something important from what they have read about.

The researcher should also state the purpose of the paper, he/ she should present a situational analysis that would state the problem, of course, and he/she should make it an interesting and unsolved problem, then after stating it. He/she can now present his idea, should explain his idea properly stating on how to solve the said problem. Example, in the abstract of his research, by just reading his papers abstract, the reader would know and would understand what his research all about. According to Kent Beck, the abstract should contain four sentences. The first one is that the researcher should state the problem first, and then he would say why it is an interesting problem. Next, the researcher should state what does his solution achieves and should say what is next or what follows from the presented solution. Another example would be in the introduction of the paper, the researcher can use example or examples to introduce the problem.

In addition, another factor that is needed for the evaluation is the relevance of the research to the readers. When we say relevant, it simply means that it has importance to people or it has a great impact on the lives of the people. A reader would give his time and attention to one thing if he/she can relate into or it has something that took his/her interest with. For example, as an information Technology student, our research is all about Green Computing. For me, the topic is really interesting that it pertains to the impact of technology to out Mother Nature and that we should provide ways to minimize and lessen the impact of it to the environment. Knowing that one of the major contributors to global warming is the technology itself that we use everyday.

It’s really hard to come up with a topic but after a while, we have come up with an idea which turned into an approved research topic.

In addition, the research should also be evaluated by the appropriateness of the methodology used to come up with the results. Another factor would be whether the idea or the research is proved to be rationally consistent; this one pertains to the results of the study or the research that was made. Perhaps the results that came off from a survey, does the mean, median and mode correct. Does the questionnaire used for the survey was validated by an expert, does it go through a series of validation. Stuffs like that. One thing that I have kept in mind was that, every research or in everything that we do, we should take into consideration the standards or the guidelines presented by some organizations. There are some simple guidelines that we should follow and I think the most basic and the most important one is citing the references and acknowledge them properly in your research. Since if without them, you cannot come up with a topic that could improve not just your life but also the lives of other people.

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/papers/giving-a-talk/giving-a-talk.htm

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/papers/giving-a-talk/writing-a-paper.zip