Page 172 - SREENARAYANAGURU OPEN UNIVERSITY

made, statistical methods employed, and reasons for selecting
such methods should be explained,along with how the date will be
organised and presented for analysis and interpretation.
c. Analysis and interpretation of data: This section is the
heart of the research report. The data analysis and interpretation
may either be presented in separate chapters or may be integrated
and presented in one chapter. The data are presented in tables and
figures accompanied by textual discussions. The tables and figures
◆ Inference should be constructed and listed in such a way that they clarify
significant relationships and become self-explanatory. The tables
which are complex and lengthy should be placed in appendix,
otherwise the continuity of textual discussion gets broken. In the
textual discussion of the data, the report should not repeat all the
detailed information that is provided in the tables and figures. It
should only point out important facts and relationships to give
meaning to the data and make certain generalisations about the
data. The formulae and statistical procedures which were used in
the analysis of data should be clearly specified and explained in
detail.
d. Summary and conclusions: This section includes a brief
re-statement of the problem, a description of the procedures used,
and discussion of the findings and conclusion of the study. The
conclusions are presented concisely and related directly to the
◆ Comprehensive hypotheses that were tested or to the research questions. They
overview announce whether the findings of the study accept or reject the

hypotheses. Conclusions are answers to questions raised and
suggest modification in the existing theory. The summary and
conclusion section are the most widely used part of the research
report. Most readers scan this section of the report first to get an
overview of the study and to determine its utility to them.
C. End matter
This section includes bibliography and appendix. The
◆ Sources and bibliography is a record of those sources and materials that have
materials used been used for the study. If the number of sources and materials
is large, the researcher may divide the bibliography into various
sections, one for books, one for periodicals and journals, and
possibly one for reports and special documents.
An appendix follows the bibliography. All the relevant
supporting materials that are important but not essential to the
◆ Supporting understanding of the report are presented in the appendix. These
materials materials include questionnaires, copies of covering letters used,
evaluation sheets, checklists, course of study, long quotations,
documents, tests, interview forms, and raw-data.
A list of cited papers, each with a list of citing articles, arranged
in an order is known as a citation index (or indexing). The

166 SGOU - SLM -MCom Research Methodology