International Webinar on ‘Fundamentals of New Research Methods’

 

The PG Department of Commerce and Management organized an international webinar on “Fundamentals of New Research Methods” on 17^th April, 2024 (Wednesday). The resource person for the webinar was Dr. (CMA) Nandita Mishra, Associate Professor, Linköping University, Sweden, Ambassador, IIRC, London, and Country Director of HETL (USA). The objective of this event was to provide the essentials of new research methods. The webinar was conducted via Google Meet.

Mrs. Shikha Puri, Dean, Commerce Club, introduced the eminent speaker and welcomed her. The honourable speaker explained the concept of the research design and then deliberated on research methods, viz., quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods. Further, she explained inductive, deductive, and abductive reasoning for research. She brought to light that there are three main aspects of good research: exploration, rationalization, and validation, for which inductive, deductive, abductive, and mix research methods are to be used.  She focused on abductive research through examples and highlighted the difference between the usage of such research. Her emphasis was more on qualitative research, or a combination of qualitative and quantitative research, as it serves as a better platform for exploratory research.

She also discussed the research design and the procedure to choose it in alignment with one’s research. A complete knowledge of the difference between quantitative and qualitative research methods was given. The details of the research strategies, including the aspects involved in the problem and the verdict of the research, were cause for concern. She concluded by saying that mixing design and qualitative or quantitative methods, or a mix of different computational methods, proved to be a game changer.

She gave vivid details about mixed methods of research, which include procedures that feature combinations of different methods in either sequential or concurrent fashion, the mixing of quantitative and qualitative strategies (think of these procedures as having a focus on "numbers and words"), and also the mixing of design and qualitative/quantitative methods, or the mixing of different computational methods.

Valid questions were raised by the students, and they were satisfactorily answered by the resource person. The vote of thanks was presented by Mrs. Alka Sharma, Head, PG Department of Commerce & Management. A total of 75 participants attended this webinar, including students and faculty members of the Commerce and Management department. It was a knowledgeable session that gave guidance and deep insights about the new research methods.