On 30 October 2020,La Politique, The Department of Political Science, Kirori Mal College
organized an online workshop and certificate course on ‘Basic Research Methods in Social
Sciences’ from 10:30a.m to 4:30p.m.The workshop was organized by the Department’s Council
and Dr. Roopinder Oberoi, Staff Advisor, Department of Political Science. Mr. S.K Sasikumar
(PhD), Senior fellow V.V. Giri National Labour Institute and Mr.Vinoj Abraham (PhD)
Professor, Center for Development Studies were invited as guest speakers.
The session began as Dr. Roopinder Oberoi introduced the guest speakers. Both Mr Sasikumar
and Mr.Abraham have immensely contributed to the field of Social Sciences and are actively
involved in working with various government ministries. Mr Sasikumar began the workshop by
briefing the students about the importance of research in every field. He highlighted the fact that
how the work of researchers was extremely important since they actively added to the existing
stock of knowledge and moreover helped the society confront various challenges. He briefed the
students about various types of researches like Policy Research, Applied Research etc. Further he
went on explaining the process which students as young researchers should follow and
underlined the importance of identifying the root cause of an issue and contextualize the
problem. Thereafter Mr. Abraham spoke on the Quantitative Methods in Social Science research
and gave a detailed explanation to the students about various tools used in analyzing data like
Mean, median and mode. He also briefed the students about the manner in which comparative
analysis of data can be done and threw light upon the need of ensuring uniformity in collection.
The workshop progressed with a short lunch break and post lunch Dr. Oberoi talked about the
various methods of reviewing literature. She emphasized the importance of boiling down the
research to a single issue in order to ensure a strong and solution oriented conclusion. Speaking
towards the end of the session Mr. Sasikumar briefed the students on the most crucial aspect of
research- A good questionnaire. He highlighted the various difficulties young researchers face
while collecting their primary data and underlined the importance of effective, good and strong
communication skills. According to him a great responsibility rests on the shoulders of a
researcher to know the knack of getting the desired information out of the respondents. Finally
he urged the students to not get swayed by their preconceived notions, ideological leanings and
merely focus on evidence based research.
The workshop was attended by several students who participated proactively and had positive
feedback. The event was highly successful owing to the growing enthusiasm for policy research
among students. At the end, the President of the Department, Miss Pankhuri Jain extended a vote
of thanks to Mr. Sasikumar and Mr. Abraham for gracing the event and enlightening the students
with the various research methods in social sciences. La Politique hopes to conduct more such
informative events in the near future again.
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