Research Reflection

For the BCM212 research task it was key to gather as much information as possible as well as using the most reliable sources to do so. This mean’t undertaking lots of hours of research all up to finally be able to find a conclusion to the question of my choice… “How does extra-curricular activities help a university students well-being and academic life?” The conclusion in which I was brought to in answering this question involved academic sources such as journals or texts as well as primary researching through undertaking surveys to a target population as well as interviews to my specific target population.

This entire research project was extremely helpful for my future projects of research as it taught me many things about researching methods and especially the considerations that are key to research prior to actually undergoing it. This was factors such as ethical considerations that you must think about that could harm or offend a participant when taking primary research as well as the time management and risk planning that is involved. This was something that I learn’t throughout week 4 phase of the research project of the semester learning the industry truism of research that “if you fail to plan, you’re really planning to fail”. This was something that stuck in my mind the entire time during this research task and helped me to keep on track of my time management plan as well as always referring back to my risk assessment. Through week 5 (Research methods and planning – samples and surveys-) I too learn’t something that to I thought was easy and I could do already and this was properly writing out surveys questions that were actually good and engaging as well as being shown examples of surveys that are too bias in their questioning. I feel as though this definitely helped me in getting more survey interactions and finding the proper data I needed to answer my research question. This then led me also learning further about how to properly conduct an interview for my research task which falls in hand with my knowledge on research communication. Ways that I can conduct a qualitative research interviews and get the data I need whilst also conducting it respectfully and ethically. These three weeks were extremely pivitol for my research task as they guided me in a professional and knowledgeable way of collecting research for future projects or works.