RESEARCH,
LEGAL RESEARCH AND INTER-DISPLINARY RESEARCH
Research
therefore involves gathering information for a purpose, and it is the purpose
that usually determines the type of research undertaken and how it is
conducted.
Legal research is
generally the process of finding an answer to a legal question or checking for
legal precedent that can be cited in a brief or at trial. Sometimes, legal
research can help determine whether a legal issue is a "case of first
impression" that is unregulated or lacks legal precedent. Virtually every
lawsuit, appeal, criminal case, and legal process in general requires some
amount of legal research.
But other
writings tend to define legal research as "the process of identifying and retrieving information
necessary to support legal decision-making. In its broadest sense, legal
research includes each step of a course of action that begins with an analysis
of the facts of a problem and concludes with the application and communication
of the results of the investigation.
The purpose of legal research is to find
"authority" that will aid in finding a solution to a legal problem.
Primary authorities are the rules of law that are binding upon the courts,
government, and individuals. Examples are statutes, regulations, court orders,
and court decisions. They are generated by legislatures, courts, and
administrative agencies. Secondary authorities are commentaries on the law that
do not have binding effect but aid in explaining what the law is or should be.
The resources available to find legal authority are vast and complicated
leading many law schools to require students to take a class in legal research[1].
Interdisciplinary research
(IDR) is a mode of research by teams or individuals that integrates
information, data, techniques, tools, perspectives, concepts, and/or theories
from two or more disciplines or bodies of specialized knowledge to advance
fundamental understanding or to solve problems whose solutions are beyond the
scope of a single discipline or field of research practice.
Research is
truly interdisciplinary when it is not just pasting two disciplines together to
create one product but rather is an integration and synthesis of ideas and
methods. An example is the current exploration of string theory by theoretical
physicists and mathematicians, in which the questions posed have brought
fundamental new insights both to mathematicians and to physicists.
CHALLENGES OF
LEGAL RESEARCH
Whether you are a current student or a doctoral
graduate, conducting research is an integral part of being a
scholar-practitioner with the skills and credibility to effect social change.
Fortunately, many of the research challenges you will face—from choosing a
topic, to finding study participants, to staying sane throughout the process,
and every step in between have already been addressed by various scholars,
Here, they share their insights on how to overcome seven top research
challenges.
Choosing the right topic is a challenge
Choosing
an interesting research topic is the first challenge, a person who wants to
conduct a research, he/she need to have a good topic which he is interested
with. Choosing a topic that you don’t like result to poor research result since
the conduct of research must be done unwillingly. Narrow your topic to
something manageable (If your topic is too broad, you will find too much information
and not be able to focus, Background reading can help you choose and limit the
scope of your topic), review the guidelines on topic selection outlined in your
assignment. (Ask your professor or TA for suggestions), refer to lecture
notes and required texts to refresh your knowledge of the course and
assignment, talk about research ideas with a friend. S/he may
be able to help focus your topic by discussing issues that didn't occur to
you at first[2]. (choosing poor topic resulting to poor
research answers).
Choosing the right
methodology is a challenge
Your
research will dictate the kinds of research methodologies you use to underpin
your work and methods you use in order to collect data. If you wish to collect quantitative data you are probably measuring
variables and verifying existing theories or hypotheses or questioning them.
Data is often used to generate new hypotheses based on the results of data
collected about different variables. One’s colleagues are often much happier
about the ability to verify quantitative data as many people feel safe only
with numbers and statistics.
However,
often collections of statistics and number crunching are not the answer to
understanding meanings, beliefs and experience, which are better understood
through qualitative data. And quantitative data, it must be remembered, are
also collected in accordance with certain research vehicles and underlying
research questions. Even the production of numbers is guided by the kinds of
questions asked of the subjects, so is essentially subjective, although it
appears less so than qualitative research data, (using bad research methodology results to incorrect acquisition of
data).
Finding study participants is a challenge.
This
is among the challenges when conducting a research, it is tough to find a
researcher who conduct a same research as you are doing. Sometime a researcher
need to use money so as to find or to recruit participants in his/her research.
Participant recruitment is a
major challenge in many research studies involving human subjects.
Recruitment involves a number of activities, including identifying eligible
participants, adequately explaining the study to the potential participants,
recruiting an adequate sample based on study goals and design, obtaining
informed consent and maintaining ethical standards, and retaining participants
until study completion. Findings from several studies suggest that
recruitment often takes longer than anticipated, projects incur higher costs
than expected, and scientists routinely overestimate the number of participants
available for enrollment in their studies. Even in studies that succeed
in recruiting large numbers of patients, participation rates arelow; only 3-20%
of the eligible participant pool chooses to participate. A survey
of research studies found that 34% recruited less than 75% of their planned
sample, and this reduction in the sample size leads to reductions in the
statistical power of the study. Despite the widely acknowledged
fact that recruitment is a challenge, details about recruitment efforts and
outcomes are rarely published, resulting in limited knowledge about why
recruitment rates vary between studies and what the most successful approaches
are for recruiting study participants.
Getting institution to
participate is a challenge
Sometimes recruiting study participants requires going
through institutions, which may put up barriers, particularly if your research
is controversial or sensitive, and this presents an additional challenge.
Sometime if a person conduct a research which is sensitive or relate to a
certain instrument or institution it is very hard to get a support from them
since they believe that, the success of your research will affect them. Example, “Dr. Eileen Berg ’09, Doctor of Education (EdD), conducted her doctoral
study on the relationship between teachers’ unions and educators throughout
schools and districts in Ontario, Canada, and came up against strong resistance
due to the political nature of her topic. And Dr. Christopher Plum ’09, PhD in
Education, needed to observe Individualized Education Program (IEP) meetings—in
which a plan is developed to help students with disabilities—in order to conduct
his research. These meetings are often very difficult for parents and students,
and getting access required permission from school districts, as well as the
parents, student, and school psychologists attending each meeting”.
Dealing
with your data is a challenge
When you’ve completed your study, the final challenge is
knowing how to make sense of the data you’ve collected, but also it is very
difficult to deal with a bulkiness of data collected directing one thing. Big data contains
data from various sources, making it multifaceted and difficult to interpret.
For example, a data set containing information regarding world population would
include data based on varied geographical locations, lifestyle, etc. and it may
be collected using different techniques. Researchers may fail to consider all
aspects of the data, resulting in incorrect conclusions. Hence, there is a need
for developing reliable procedures of data interpretation that can overcome
statistical biases.
PROSPECTS
OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
The expectations of the
researchers on interdisciplinary research varies depend to various facts. Some researchers believe that, due to
too much interconnectedness of people and working as a term of people from
different places across the globe may led to poor answers of the research since
the data used to find solution of a specific problem may be originated from
different places.
But other researchers
continue to believe that,
the globalization and the development of science and technology may affect
interdisciplinary research in a positive way, these researchers believe only in
one direction that, the increasing interconnectedness of people and exchange of
ideas cannot affect the research but tend to improve it.
interdisciplinarity have a specific potential and competence in the solution of complex,
uncertain and ambivalent questions with societal relevance. However, that does
not mean that interdisciplinarity would be prudent or necessary in every case.
Therefore, one should also refrain from using interdisciplinarity as a “buzz
word”, in order to prevent a dilution of its meaning. Instead, the term always
has to be specified with regard to the objectives of interdisciplinarity.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BOOKS
C. R. Kothari,
Research
Methodology, methods and techniques,
Edition one 2004, The book of the research methods and other relating
materials of research.
C. R., Kothari,
Quantitative Techniques 3rd Edition 2009, the techniques of
doing research, selection of appropriate methodology etc.
C. R. Kothari,
An
Introduction To Operational Research, 2009, The book containing the
research problems, how to overcome research problem and the operation of
research.
ONLINE SOURCES
[1] Finding
tools enable a researcher to find and interpret legal authority. Initially,
many researchers turn to tools that provide summaries of a particular area of
the law. Some examples are legal encyclopedias, treatises, and the American
Law Reports (ALR). Law reviews and legal periodical articles
provide interpretation of the law as well as detailed articles on particular
legal topics. These interpretations may be found through indexes such as the Index to Legal
Periodicals. Restatements provide detailed summaries of
what the law generally is or what the restatement writers believe the law
should be. The citations to other authorities and annotations provided in legal
encyclopedias, treatises, American Law Reports, law reviews, and legal
periodicals are an important element of their value in the research process.
[2] Think of the who, what, when, where and why questions: WHY did
you choose the topic? What interests you about it? Do you have an
opinion about the issues involved?, WHO are the information
providers on this topic? Who might publish information about it?
Who is affected by the topic? Do you know of organizations or
institutions affiliated with the topic?, WHAT are the major questions for this topic? Is there a debate about the topic?
Are there a range of issues and viewpoints to consider?, WHERE is
your topic important: at the local, national or international level? Are
there specific places affected by the topic?, WHEN is/was your
topic important? Is it a current event or an historical issue? Do
you want to compare your topic by time periods?
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