Baimyrzaeva, M. (2018). Beginners' guide for applied research process: What is it, and why and how to do it? Occasional Paper #4. University of Central Asia.
Applied research, at its best, systematically uses high quality research standards and state of the art methods and tools to develop practical solutions for real world social problems faced by organizations and individuals. In practice, beginner applied researchers often perform below these standards resulting in inaccurate or irrelevant findings and wasted resources. Why? One of the challenges stems from common misconceptions about the peculiarities of applied research as a distinct craft with its own sets of priorities and constraints. Another difficulty lies in aligning different applied research elements – including the key problems, questions, methods, and techniques of data collection and analysis – to meet the research goals. When a clear set of actionable steps to guide the applied research process is lacking, teasing out relevant research tools and information can become an overwhelming task for beginners. Research methods textbooks mostly geared for basic/academic researchers provide extensive details on each method. However, few walk users through the applied research process – from the conception to the planning/design and implementation – in organisational and policy fields. Even fewer provide an accessible and easy-to-use guide for beginners. This guide intends to address these two problems. The first part provides an overview of what applied research is and what it is not, how it is different from basic research, why it is important, and what constitutes high-quality applied research. Part II provides a simplified five-step framework for making social science methods more applicable and useful for problem solving and decision making in policy and organisational contexts. These steps provide a structure to frequently ambiguous and messy work of applied research. They help the researcher break down the research project into specific tasks and set deadlines, while also showing how they are connected and build on each other. Each step also provides a review of common pitfalls in this process along with tips for avoiding them. This guide draws from the author’s synthesis of key research methods textbooks. The five-step framework has been tested and refined in the process of teaching applied research courses and mentoring graduate students’ research projects with public, private, nonprofit and international organizations for over a decade.