BS504 CONDUCTING RESEARCH IN BUILDING SCIENCE

Course Objectives

• To familiarise the student with the dimensions and methods of research.
• To orient the student to make an informed choice from the large number of alternative methods and experimental designs available.
• To enable the student to present a good research proposal.
• To familiarise the student with the nature of research and scientific writing
• To empower the student with the knowledge and skills they need to undertake a research project, to present a conference paper and to write a scientific article.

Course Content

The problem: where it lies; what be its ‘parts’; how best describe it. Information: sources, modes, types and cost(s). Objectives: formulation and realization. Data: measures of location and dispersion; reliability and consistency; interpretation and inference. Data: frequency and other distributions. Probability: dependent and independent events; the random experiment, observation and variable. The design of research and experiments: population and sample; parameters and statistics; systematic sampling and sampling distributions; the sample variance and confidence intervals. The Hypothesis: formulation, tests, errors and level of significance. Quantitative and qualitative methodologies.

Course Learning Outcomes

• Understand the commonly used terms and statistical techniques, and to interpret statistics used in research.
• Describe the stages involved in developing and completing a research project successfully, and describe the purpose and content of a research protocol/proposal.
• Understand when to use questionnaires, identify what makes a good questionnaire, design and critically appraise a questionnaire, and plan a study involving questionnaires.
• Identify strategies to disseminate research results and findings, and to prepare successful conference presentations and papers for submission to peer review journals.