Research Methods Resources

 

Research Methods Resources

    

GenStat Discovery Edition

 

The aim of this website is threefold:

First, it contains a collection of resources that document the different steps in a research project. Because of our background, our resources often focus on natural resources management, but we included many external resources from other disciplines. Many approaches and concepts can be of use across disciplines. Click on the Research Methods Resources link.

Third, it contains information on GenStat Discovery Edition. This is a free version of a professional statistical software developed and distributed by VSN International for use by not-for-profit research organisations, charities and educational institutes based in the developing world.

Third, we hope that by making these resources available, many lecturers, resource persons giving training courses to researchers of NARS and staff working in similar support units in NARS will get the necessary resources to change their courses into vibrant and stimulating events and think of research as an iterative process to solve livelihood and environmental problems our society is facing instead of just the statistics.

 

In many African countries, the website is distributed on CD-roms

Researchers in developing countries often still lack a fast and reliable Internet connection. A copy of this website is distributed on the CD-roms containing GenStat Discovery Edition to researchers and university lecturers in developing countries. We therefore avoid including hyperlinks to external websites but try to include copies of external websites or documents in Adobe pdf format, of course after having obtained permission of the owner.

Between October 2003 and October 2007, over 8,000 CD-roms with previous versions of this website, including GenStat Discovery Edition 1 and 2, were distributed to researchers, lecturers and students in 33 African countries.

 

How to use this CD for teaching

Teaching of research methods often happens in a non efficient way because of several reasons:

  • it is part of a general education system that focuses on examination rather than education

  • research method courses are disconnected from other courses

  • or they focus on statistics or biometrics in a very mathematical way which results in poor understanding of the usefulness of the subject but also in students being simply afraid of the course

  • some topics are often missing: initial problem analysis, research ethics, how to deal with fraud, research as a social process (relations with supervisors etc.), ...

  • the course is almost exclusively taught as a series of lectures

  • in many developing countries, the situation is worsened because of a lack of access to good teaching resources and because lecturers or trainers often have to use a dilapidated infrastructure

"Doing research" is a highly structured way of learning. The structure lies in its use of the scientific method. Good teaching is therefore extremely important while teaching research methods.

Organising a research methods course as a series of lectures is not the best way to get the message through. The average attention span of any person listening to a lecturer is less than 20 minutes. If you now at the same time expect your students to write their own notes without giving them reference material, they can only focus on writing things down, not on understanding what you are explaining.

While you as an individual lecturer or resource person often have limited influence on changing the curriculum but depend on decisions made at faculty, university, management or higher level, you still can change your own teaching style within that fixed framework. This CD can help you. Give a copy to each student or let the students make copies, refer to the resources on the CD as additional reading material or give assignments to study introductory concepts using resources on this CD (for instance let them write a paper) and use the time you save to teach more advanced stuff or discuss practical research projects.

 

Feedback

We welcome your feedback. 

We realize that there are many lecturers and trainers out there who have written good quality training materials in the broad area of data management, data analysis and research methods. If you have such material that you want to share with the rest of the world and you want it to be distributed through this website and CD, please contact ombima_wilson*yahoo.com 

 

The history of this website and CD-rom

 

 

 

Due to a concern that many research institutes and universities in the developing world cannot afford professional statistical software, VSN Intl. Ltd. decided in 2003 to release a version of their statistical software GenStat that is free for non-commercial use (students, researchers, lecturers, NGOs) in Africa.

The Statistical Services Centre of the University of Reading (especially Roger Stern), the ILRI-ICRAF Research Methods Group based in Nairobi (headed by Ric Coe) and the Biometrics Unit of the Faculty of Agriculture of the University of Nairobi (headed by Parin Kurji) gave strong support. GenStat Discovery Edition 1 was released on 17 October 2003.

At that time the ILRI-ICRAF Research Methods Group hosted a project from VVOB (Flemish Association for Development Cooperation and Technical Assistance), managed by Wim Buysse. Through this project, GenStat Discovery Edition 1 was distributed on free CD-roms through Africa. Initially the CDs also contained a copy of the website of SSC and the ILRI-ICRAF RMG. This later evolved into a website with resources from many authors who gave permission to use their work when teaching about research methods in Africa. The coverage of the resources also expanded from pure statistics and data management to the much broader topic of how to do good quality research. Over 8,000 CD-roms have been distributed to researchers, lecturers and students in 33 African countries.

Due to the success of the CD in Africa, VSN Intl. decided to make the GenStat Discovery Edition also available to developing countries in the rest of the world. And they released new versions. The current version, GenStat Discovery Edition 3, is based on the commercial GenStat version 7 and includes links to open source packages such as R and WinBugs.

The VVOB project ended in 2007 and ICRAF, the World Agroforestry Centre, decided not to support the further development and distribution of the resources.

But RUFORUM, the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture, based in Kampala, Uganda, took over. Through RUFORUM, the resources are now better spread among lecturers and students.

 

Finally we sincerely want to thank everybody who gave permission to put a copy of their resources on this website and CD. Rest assured people will use them!

Adobe pdf

Many files are provided in Adobe Acrobat (pdf) format. If you do not already have Acrobat reader on your system, you can get it here.

 

Sending email

 

Read this first before attempting to send an email to an email address mentioned on this website.

 

Citation

 

Research Methods Resources website. RUFORUM, Kampala, Uganda. Accessed at http://www.ruforum.org/research on [date]

Copyright of the website

 

© 2007 RUFORUM All rights reserved.

If you read this from a CD-rom, you are allowed to copy the CD and give it for free to colleagues, students, .... or they are allowed to copy your CD. You are NOT allowed to sell the CD.

Generally, you are allowed to use and/or adapt some of the resources on this website and CD-rom in your teaching provided the original authors are acknowledged. See more details in each specific resource. 

Research Methods Resources

    

GenStat Discovery Edition