| All post- graduate level teaching positions require the | | | | certain dilemmas which they may be encountering on |
| aspirant to hold a Ph.D. degree. Without it, entry into | | | | day-to-day basis; these dilemmas or issues are the |
| teaching is almost impossible with many reputed | | | | ideas to consider as potential topics for research. A |
| institutions, not to speak of promotions. Importantly, | | | | popular view is that about 50 articles should be |
| reputed teaching institutions evaluate a job-applicant's | | | | reviewed for deciding on a topic, and about 200 to |
| Ph.D. in a hard-nosed way to figure out if it is robust, | | | | 400 articles should be reviewed before a research |
| and if its final output is a worthwhile contribution to | | | | design is finalized. Quite ironically, research topic is |
| the relevant realm; preferably, it should be a seminal | | | | identified much before even a single article is |
| and significant contribution to the existing fund of | | | | reviewed. Much worse, the university insists on giving |
| knowledge. This contrasts sharply with the | | | | a title of research topic at time of enrollment itself. It |
| run-of-the-mill quality of the Ph.D.s rolled out by | | | | is quite ideal if the universities themselves have some |
| state-level universities in the recent times. A | | | | topics lined up for research. But it is not the case in |
| discussion on doing quality Ph.D. research is very apt | | | | most of the Indian universities. |
| in this context. | | | | Research Design and Analysis |
| Identification of Topic | | | | The research supervisor must guide a scholar on |
| Topic should be identified either from the issues being | | | | what kind of data - primary or secondary- should be |
| faced by the industry or the research gaps left by | | | | obtained and how. Importantly, research hypotheses |
| academic community. Review of recent literature will | | | | have to be formulated, which job is, first of all, |
| throw ample light on this. Literature does not mean all | | | | invariably based on the literature review and, |
| those news-paper or magazine articles written by a | | | | secondly, after gaining sufficient understanding about |
| journalist or an expert; articles for this purpose are | | | | the topic. Hypotheses are the key questions which |
| the essays written based on an empirical research | | | | would be resolved through the subject research. The |
| study conducted with the help of a research | | | | sample size should be systematically determined. The |
| instrument like questionnaire. These articles appear in | | | | questionnaire too should be designed keeping view |
| research journals only. By searching through Google | | | | how it can be further used for statistical analysis. If |
| Scholar, you may find websites pointing to | | | | the data are collected through a questionnaire, the |
| innumerable article sources. Libraries functioning under | | | | same should be fed into an Excel sheet, which can |
| reputed universities usually subscribe to the journals | | | | be exported for any further analysis. SPSS is one |
| which carry research articles. Besides, those libraries | | | | software whose student version can be downloaded |
| may also be subscribing to hundred of electronic | | | | just for this purpose. Quite interestingly, even MS |
| journals from which recent as well as archived articles | | | | Excel has enough features in it to allow one to |
| can be downloaded for a later review at one' own | | | | conduct statistical analysis. |
| pace; Discussion with the executives too reveals | | | | |