METHODOLOGY CLASS WITH UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH STUDENTS 2014

BAYERO UNIVERSITY, KANO

DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

METHODOLOGY CLASS WITH UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH STUDENTS 2014

Þ   Let me first welcome you to what would look like a mini-methodology workshop.

Þ   Since this is a normal annual exercise with my research students we may call this meeting a methodology workshop 2014.

Þ   However, I have not invited you to give you instruction on what to do, but to discuss together so that your topics become clearer and from here you could proceed to start writing your research report.

Þ   To give you an instruction on what to do violates the principle of doing research and is against the long-term interest of students to do that.

Þ   Instead it is more appropriate to allow you to think and try to do something; I could come in only to guide you.

Þ   That is the essence of research, because research is to build your capacity to work independently in your future profession.

Þ   I am not going to teach you social science research method. I hope what you had learnt at Level III had exposed you to techniques of doing research.

Þ   Nevertheless the two chapters of Margaret Stacey I gave you as a compulsory reading in Pol. 4301 class would avail you with challenges of scientific knowledge in political studies and the pages recommended in David Garson would introduce you to question of concepts and theories or values in political studies.

Þ   In addition to these I would say that political studies, like other Social Science research, is a Social Criticism. The challenge of making contribution to knowledge is to make criticism.

Þ   This brings the relevance of a theory, because through a periscope of a theory you analyze and re-interprite any old idea or any collection of data. In other words:

                                 a)        A “secondary analysis” of existing work or literature can be made by making criticism. By doing this your criticism becomes a contribution to knowledge.

                                b)        Primary data may be gathered and penetrated through with a theory or combination of theories to make critical analysis – which would result in contribution to knowledge.

Meanwhile, a participant in the management of researches by students of the Department of Political Science of all levels could observe many methodological problems:

1)          As said earlier Social Science research is social criticism and criticisms need thinking, but most of the students, of all levels lack thinking abilities, perhaps because their training and orientation in the University is not directed to that.

2)          Many students do not know that a justification for any research is to find out the gap that exists in that area and you build the purpose of the research on that gap.

3)          In many cases, students of all levels drive into research with a topic and a statement of research problem without initial reading on the subject. So, they got stuck before they go far.

4)          This will affect the requirement of making a literature review. As the literature put for review may not necessarily be relevant.

5)          Therefore, a rupture becomes real on formation of the theoretical framework of the research.

6)          Most or all students who choose and mention content analysis as method of data collection do not know what it is.

7)          Again, most of them do not distinguish between “Secondary Analysis”, Documentary Analysis”, and “Content Analysis”.

8)          All students want use Questionnaire method whether it is relevant or not.

9)          Methodologists argue that to ensure adequacy and reliability of data, it is always better to use more than one method of data collection in a research. It seems that most students of the Department are lacking in skills and ability to do this.

10)     In spite of many other means of presenting quantitative data such as bar chart, pie chart, graphs etc. most students only use tabular method.

11)     Writing research reports is a methodology, and students of all levels need special training on this so that the researches are presented according to Scientific standard.

12)     Making contribution to knowledge is by seeing the Degree of relationship between data and theory. However, knowledge does not mean adequate relationship between the two.

Þ   Finally, is getting into real business of why we are here. The area I have selected for research by my undergraduate students this academic session is “Intellectual Property Rights and Development”.

Þ   The concept of property and of intellectual property has a long history, in the development of ideas.

Þ   It could be traced in the philosophical works of John Locks, Benthem and Hegel and of course we could expect criticism from Karl Marx.

Þ   Development of capitalism had made this a reality and an International Property Rights Committee was formed to regulate these rights.

Everywhere, especially in the developed world, these are pursued through legal terms. So, we found legal acts covering copyright, patent, trade mark and trade secrets.

Indeed, the importance of trade in international relations and the interest of USA to dominate this aspect has made it that trade becomes inserted fully into the premise of intellectual property rights and placed as an international Law under the World Trade Organization regime. Here, the Law becomes known as TRIPS Agreement.

You are now students of WTO – TRIPS, nevertheless, I could still say it in confidence that the TRIPS explores on impacts of International Property Rights on issues including:

a)     Access to health care, covering the right of production and marketing of medicine.

b)    The innovation and dissemination of technology.

c)     Also on issues of the field of technology.

d)    The operation of the convention on Biological Diversity.

These and other issues when explored and investigated would reveal many traits of the development or sustainable development of the developing world.

I hope our discussion and choice of topics would come-up with case studies of African countries. I also wish to pray for a research that would unveil empirical data on the issues from African countries.

Now, we can receive your research preliminary reports for discussion.

The review of relevant texts each one of you has done, the observations you made and the discussion are satisfactory. The choice of research topic and research problem is quite impressive.

Now, the task before you is that within the next six weeks you submit chapter by chapter, the first three chapters of the work. Then, each one of you would plan finish during the end of First Semester break.

M. M. Yusif

31/07/2014