PROBLEM STATEMENT

In research, there must be a problem statement. It is a situation which is unsolved unless research is done to solve it. This problem must be interesting and important which can cause a person to do a research or study about it. A thorough investigation must be done by the student or the researcher to create the best way to overcome the problem.

The Importances to Create Problem Statement

It is to ensure that the focus of the study is clear and help the researcher to identify a concept that needs to be study, instruments that will be used and suitable and effective methods to collect data.

Source of Problems
We can collect the source of problems by : 1. Newspapers 2. Internet 3. Journal 4. Books 5. Magazines 6. Observation 7. Previous thesis 8. Researchers or other person experience 9. Group discussion
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Choosing the right Problem Statement

Researcher or student must ask a few questions that related to their research. These questions can help them to choose the right problem statement in their report. Is the study/research is a time consuming and can it be done in a certain time limit (if was given)? Is the researcher interested on doing the study? Can it be elaborated in the report? And is it interesting to be elaborated? Is the study helpful to others too? Can we find the all the sources when collecting information to complete the research?

Criteria needed for Problem Statement

There are a few criteria needed when making problem statement. 1. By doing research or study from the problem statement, researcher or student can gain knowledge. 2. Research can expand the new idea or problem and creating new ways to overcome the problem. 3. The problem statement can be done as research. 4. It is related to current issue.

PROPOSES AND OBJECTIVE

When we do a research, it must have its own goal. The goal is something that is achievable by the students when they are doing the research. By collecting data and information, students will know whether they already reach the goal or not. It is also depend on how they collect the information and relate it to their goal. For example, if a student wanted to make a research about the flood in Polytechnic Kota Kinabalu, the respondents must be the students, the staffs and the lecturers. These people knows about the area and aware to this problem. How to gather the information? The students need to decide how to do that. They can do the interview, questionnaire and observation. Students also need to plan what their objective is and a few factor need to be considered before planning the objective. First, student must know their own capability and skills. Second, the budget that already had been prepared before conducting the research. Third, the time limit took to complete the research. Some research can took more time than others. Student must be smart to pick a research that is simple yet important and can finish it on time.

TYPES OF RESEARCH
Observation

This method can be conducted with the members of the group that involved in research. It is usually used during the visit to the research area. The purpose for this method is to ensure the research area is suitable to the conditions needed to continue the study.

Interview

Interviews are a far more personal form of research than questionnaires. In the personal interview, the interviewer works directly with the respondent. Unlike with mail surveys, the interviewer has the opportunity to probe or ask follow-up questions. And, interviews are generally easier for the respondent, especially if what is sought is opinions or impressions. Interviews can be very time consuming and they are resource intensive. The interviewer is considered a part of the measurement instrument and interviewers have to be well trained in how to respond to any contingency.

Almost everyone is familiar with the telephone interview. Telephone interviews enable a researcher to gather information rapidly. Most of the major public opinion polls that are reported were based on telephone interviews. Like personal interviews, they allow for some personal contact between the interviewer and the respondent. And, they allow the interviewer to ask follow-up questions. But they also have some major disadvantages. Many people don't have publicly-listed telephone numbers. Some don't have telephones. People often don't like the intrusion of a call to their homes. And, telephone interviews have to be relatively short or people will feel imposed upon.
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Group Discussion

During discussion, information that was gathered will be discussed by members of the group to ensure the information is enough. By brainstorming together, new ideas will emerged when it comes to solve problems in research. Members can decide which idea is the best and used that idea in solving the problems. It is also can be used to decide which method of investigation can be used beside group discussion.

Questionnaire

When most people think of questionnaires, they think of the mail survey. All of us have, at one time or another, received a questionnaire in the mail. There are many advantages to mail surveys. They are relatively inexpensive to administer. You can send the exact same instrument to a wide number of people. They allow the respondent to fill it out at their own convenience. But there are some disadvantages as well. Response rates from mail surveys are often very low. And, mail questionnaires are not the best vehicles for asking for detailed written responses.

A second type is the group administered questionnaire. A sample of respondents is brought together and asked to respond to a structured sequence of questions. Traditionally, questionnaires were administered in group settings for convenience. The researcher could give the questionnaire to those who were present and be fairly sure that there would be a high response rate. If the respondents were unclear about the meaning of a question they could ask for clarification. And, there were often organizational settings where it was relatively easy to assemble the group (in a company or business, for instance).

A less familiar type of questionnaire is the household drop-off survey. In this approach, a researcher goes to the respondent's home or business and hands the respondent the instrument. In some cases, the respondent is asked to mail it back or the interview returns to pick it up. This approach attempts to blend the advantages of the mail survey and the group administered questionnaire. Like the mail survey, the respondent can work on the instrument in private, when it's convenient. Like the group administered questionnaire, the interviewer makes personal contact with the respondent -- they don't just send an impersonal survey instrument. And, the respondent can ask questions about the study and get clarification on what is to be done. Generally, this would be expected to increase the percent of people who are willing to respond.

References

Information from references are including map of the research area, newspaper and magazines that stated the problems in that area, reference book which connected to the problems.

Case Study

Is an intensive analysis of an individual unit (e.g., a person, group, or event) stressing developmental factors in relation to context. The case study is common in social sciences and life sciences. Case studies may be descriptive or explanatory. They may be prospective, in which criteria are established and cases fitting the criteria are included as they become available, or retrospective, in which criteria are established for selecting cases from historical records for inclusion in the study.

Case studies are analyses of persons, events, decisions, periods, projects, policies, institutions, or other systems that are studied holistically by one or more methods. The case that is the subject of the inquiry will be an instance of a class of phenomena that provides an analytical frame an object within which the study is conducted and which the case illuminates and explicates."

Survey Research

Survey research is one of the most important areas of measurement in applied social research. The broad area of survey research encompasses any measurement procedures that involve asking questions of respondents. A "survey" can be anything forms a short paper-and-pencil feedback form to an intensive one-on-one in-depth interview.

Constructing a survey instrument is an art in itself. There are numerous small decisions that must be made -- about content, wording, format, placement -- that can have important consequences for your entire study. While there's no one perfect way to accomplish this job, we do have lots of advice to offer that might increase your chances of developing a better final product. First of all you'll learn about the two major types of surveys that exist, the questionnaire and the interview and the different varieties of each. Then you'll see how to write questions for surveys. There are three areas involved in writing a question: Determining the question content, scope and purpose Choosing the response format that you use for collecting information from the respondent Figuring out how to word the question to get at the issue of interest

Finally, once you have your questions written, there is the issue of how best to place them in your survey. You'll see that although there are many aspects of survey construction that are just common sense, if you are not careful you can make critical errors that have dramatic effects on your results.

Measurement

Measurement is the process observing and recording the observations that are collected as part of a research effort. There are two major issues that will be considered here. First, you have to understand the fundamental ideas involved in measuring. Here we consider two of major measurement concepts. In Levels of Measurement, I explain the meaning of the four major levels of measurement: nominal, ordinal, interval and ratio. Then we move on to the reliability of measurement, including consideration of true score theory and a variety of reliability estimators. Second, you have to understand the different types of measures that you might use in social research. We consider four broad categories of measurements. Survey research includes the design and implementation of interviews and questionnaires. Scaling involves consideration of the major methods of developing and implementing a scale. Qualitative research provides an overview of the broad range of non-numerical measurement approaches

METHODOLOGY OF RESEARCH

Methodology of research is important. If student failed this task, it means that the research will fail. Students must do well because it is not just planning a few methods to collect information about their research but also, analysing and elaborate the data to be more precise and detail. When preparing research methodology, student must include the instrument of the research, subject of the research and data analysis.

Instrument
A few instruments are used to collect data. It is also depend to the state of the research and its suitability when using it. These instruments are questionnaire, observation, interviews and document analysis.

Questionnaire

It must be arranged based on the objective of research It must be simple and easy to understand by the public. Always focus on one subject or one question. The questions must be accurate and not confusing. The questions must be positive and not related to sensitive issue. The font and format must be interesting so that the public will give positive respond.

Observation
It can be done when observing an object, event or behaviour of the research material. It captures the real pictures when doing a research. It is also to ensure that the students know where the location of the research ground or object if involved. When doing observation, student must prepare their own observation equipment. Student also needs to choose their own technique of observation such as taking pictures or videos and so on. Student need to be prepared to expect the disadvantages when using observation technique. Instrument used in observation skills such as, camera, checklist, scale and schedule or table to record the observation.

Interviews
Interviews were conducted to collect data from people whom related to the research. To make sure the interview is a success, students must know how to arrange their time to the respondent schedule so that it did not collide with each other. Some respondent is very busy. A well planned interview can give better result when collecting data. Second, students must give a very good first impression. Wearing not just comfortable clothes but also suitable during the interview. Wearing unsuitable clothes will make the situation awkward and possibly lead to a fail interview.
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Communication skills when conducting interview is important. Students must be confident when communicating during interview. They are not just having the communication skills but also understand the topics that were discussed. Students can do interview by meeting with the authorities or the person himself/herself, by telephone or group discussion.

Document Analysis
It can be analysis from books, records, notes and so on that related to the research. Student must know the content, the facts that can be used or already used in the research. When they know the content, they will try to understand the facts from the document. Students must not just rely on one source, they need to find more information from other source of document and compare it. Some facts are not proven yet and this can lead to the differences on each source. For the similarities, it means that the fact is true and can be used in collecting data.

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ANALYSIS OF DATA

By the time you get to the analysis of your data, most of the really difficult work has been done. It's much more difficult to: define the research problem; develop and implement a sampling plan; conceptualize, operationalize and test your measures; and develop a design structure. If you have done this work well, the analysis of the data is usually a fairly straightforward affair.

In most social research the data analysis involves three major steps, done in roughly this order:

Cleaning and organizing the data for analysis (Data Preparation ) Describing the data (Descriptive Statistics) Testing Hypotheses and Models (Inferential Statistics)

Data Preparation involves checking or logging the data in; checking the data for accuracy; entering the data into the computer; transforming the data; and developing and documenting a database structure that integrates the various measures.

Descriptive Statistics are used to describe the basic features of the data in a study. They provide simple summaries about the sample and the measures. Together with simple graphics analysis, they form the basis of virtually every quantitative analysis of data. With descriptive statistics you are simply describing what is, what the data shows.
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Inferential Statistics investigate questions, models and hypotheses. In many cases, the conclusions from inferential statistics extend beyond the immediate data alone. For instance, we use inferential statistics to try to infer from the sample data what the population thinks. Or, we use inferential statistics to make judgments of the probability that an observed difference between groups is a dependable one or one that might have happened by chance in this study. Thus, we use inferential statistics to make inferences from our data to more general conditions; we use descriptive statistics simply to describe what's going on in our data.

In most research studies, the analysis section follows these three phases of analysis. Descriptions of how the data were prepared tend to be brief and to focus on only the more unique aspects to your study, such as specific data transformations that are performed. The descriptive statistics that you actually look at can be voluminous. In most write-ups, these are carefully selected and organized into summary tables and graphs that only show the most relevant or important information. Usually, the researcher links each of the inferential analyses to specific research questions or hypotheses that were raised in the introduction, or notes any models that were tested that emerged as part of the analysis. In most analysis writeups it's especially critical to not "miss the forest for the trees." If you present too much detail, the reader may not be able to follow the central line of the results. Often extensive analysis details are appropriately relegated to appendices, reserving only the most critical analysis summaries for the body of the report itself.

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LITERATURE REVIEW

Literature review is another way to create more ideas that is suitable in the research that was chosen by the student. Previous thesis can be used in this literature review so that the students can understand and identify the weakness and strength of the previous research. It is also to give a little peek for the students on their project.

Important things must be considered when doing literature review especially when using reference of the previous thesis.

1. The previous research must be read and well understand by student. When preparing the research report, it must be better and covered all the area of weakness in previous research or in another word, a perfect report. 2. Aware to the standard of the previous research made before. If the previous research is not reach to a very high standard report, this is a chance for new students to raise the bar for it. it is also a continuity of the previous report except it covers more in method of collecting data and so on. 3. If the student chose to continue the previous research, they must have strong points on why their research is the continuity of the previous research. The weakness must be included and how the students will plan to solve it. 4. Question can be made when doing this method to create better review.

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SUITABILITY TO THE TECHNICAL PROPOSES

Methods of analysis that been used in research like Observation Methods, Interviews, and Documentation Analysis are suitable or applicable to used in Technical Scope and other types of research to obtain information direct from the materials analysis. For an example, methods of analysis through observation can make the researcher to observe, to see and to evaluate the location surroundings and also can recognize the source of problem within the research. As a result from the observation, researchers gain an effective answer that can overcome the problem.

For the Interviewing Methods, researchers can recognize new things through an individuals from an Interview for an example, a project that connected with Roadwork Project. If there is a problem or wanted to know about an important information connected to it, need to let the researchers to have an interview with the Civil Engineering that in charge of the project to know about the specification and work progress that involved.

For the Research Method that analyze Documentation like Erudite Books, Former Researchers, and Encyclopedia that involve with something that been analyze can be proven from the Scope Analysis. For an example, about the Landslide Project, researchers can search for Erudite Materials, research and Encyclopedia that was talking about Chevron Study that contain the characteristics of Landslide, types of Landslide and how to overcome the Landslide, Supervision for the Chevron Work and so on.

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CONCLUSION
Overall, there are a variety of methods that can be used to carry out a study of research. For an example, methods that had been always been used are like Observation Method, Interview Method, Document Research, can help the researchers obtain information that beneficial for research. Observation Methods for an example the researchers can observe an object, event or behaviour of the research material. It captures the real pictures when doing a research. It is also to ensure that the students know where the location of the research ground or object if involved more effectively. As for the Interviewing Method, the researchers can obtain extra information fast and effective. Other than that, researchers can safe time to go and find any references from the Library and surfing the internet to obtain more information. Lastly, from Documentation Research Method can obtain idea and information from other thesis or Encyclopaedia and also can compare the idea of any researchers with other people and the most important is that can learn something new from the method.

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BIBILIOGRAPHY

1. http://www.scribd.com/doc/14547782/Penulisan-Proposal-Penyelidikan 2. http://www.ftsm.ukm.my/hazura/notaTM6013.ppt
3. http://images.yusmanps.multiply.multiplycontent.com/attachment/0/S6Fs3gooCtUAAHP 4. http://www.ppl.upm.edu.my/index2.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_view&gid=5651&

5. http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/survey.php 6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_study

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