AIOU Solved Assignments 1 & 2 Code 5650 Autumn & Spring 2024

aiou solved assignment code 207

Aiou Solved Assignments code 5650 Autumn & Spring 2024 assignments 1 and 2  Research Methods & Techniques for Librarians-II (5650) spring 2024. aiou past papers.

AIOU Solved Assignments 1 & 2 Code 5650 Autumn & Spring 2024

Course: Research Methods & Techniques for Librarians-II (5650)
Level: MLIS
Semester: Autumn & Spring 2024
ASSIGNMENT No. 1

Q.1      How a librarian can facilitate his/her research clients in their research work? Besides, write note on the importance of library in research.

Answer:

A survey of the research and professional literature on the role of academic libraries in research reveals three, often interconnected, themes:

• the information needs and information-seeking behaviour of researchers – often reports of surveys of researchers’ use of libraries;

• descriptions of library roles and services in the support of research – some accompanied by surveys of users of these services; and

• lists of competencies of so-called research librarians produced by professional library associations such as the Association of Southeastern Research Libraries (2001) and the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (2010).

A useful overview of existing research across all three themes is provided in Webb, Gannon-Leary and Bent’s book, Providing Useful Library Services for Research (2007). 3.1 Researchers’ expectations and experiences of libraries Several studies set out to document how researchers use libraries, usually by means of questionnaire surveys and interviews. Some focus on researchers’ use of specific resources such as electronic journals (for example Mgobozi and Ocholla 2002; Ortiz-Repiso, Bazán, Ponsati, Cottereau 2006) and others focus on a specific field such as agriculture (for example Dulle, Lwehabura, Mulimila & Mato 2001). The studies provide a fairly consistent picture of what researchers require of their libraries, for example:

• access to up-to-date and generous collections of both print and electronic resources;

• access to archives and special collections – facilitated in recent years by libraries’ digitisation projects ;

• efficient ICTs;

• quick document delivery services; and

• specialist help and advice in tracing resources.

The UK report Researchers’ Use of Academic Libraries and Their Services (Brown & Swan 2007), commissioned by the Research Information Network and Consortium of Research Libraries, is perhaps the most comprehensive of these studies. It documents present use by means of a survey of 2350 researchers in all disciplines and 300 librarians; identifies the key roles libraries play in research; and explores the changes in researcher behaviour that might impact on libraries in future. The report concludes that, while most researchers are satisfied that their libraries are providing them with the information they need, the role of libraries in research is in danger of being “diluted” (Brown & Swan 2007: 3). Challenges to their role come from the rise of virtual research communities, the increase in interdisciplinary work and crossinstitutional collaboration, and researchers’ use of social networking space to share information. The report finds that the great majority of researchers:

• use digital finding aids at their desktops to find both digital and printed resources – explaining the drop in physical visits to the library that was mentioned in the introduction;

• adopt a variety of pragmatic approaches to overcoming barriers to access, often bypassing the library – explaining recent declines in formal inter-library lending; and

• make increasing use of informal electronic mechanisms for sharing information among themselves.

Some implications for libraries are clear. For example the sharing of resources across libraries must be made easier and their role in managing the increasing volumes of digital research output should be clarified (Brown & Swan 2007: 42). The Ithaka survey of over 3000 American academics in 2009, the most recent in a series of surveys since 2000, examines key strategic issues for academic information services (Schonfeld & Housewright 2010). It takes a broader view

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AIOU Solved Assignments 1 Code 5650 Autumn & Spring 2024

Q.2      What is scholarly database? Discuss at least four databases on Library and Information Sciences.

Answer:

Databases are primarily collections of online journals that you can search for articles. Databases are often subject-specific. Example: PsycINFO database specializes in psychology/counseling.

Many contain the entire text of articles, but some only contain abstracts, which you can use to find the article elsewhere (check the Journal Finder to see which, if any, of our databases contain that journal or request the article through InterLibrary Loan).

  • How to search library databases for articles

Scholarly Journals – What are they?

Scholarly journals (also called “professional” or “peer reviewed” journals) are a type of periodical. Other types of periodicals are magazines and newspapers.

Most college instructors require that the majority of articles for a research paper be from scholarly journals.

Finding scholarly journals

Check the Journal Finder to find the availability and location of specific periodicals on our collection.

Most online databases contain a limiter you can select so results only show certain types of journals. For best results, select “Journal Article” in the “Document Type” limiter (if it is available), as well as the “Peer Reviewed”* limiter.

*Items such as “letters to the editor,” book reviews, etc., are not peer reviewed, although they are found in peer reviewed journals.

  • How to find articles

Characteristics of Scholarly Journals

  • Articles report on original research or experiments (as opposed to news or opinion pieces).
  • Articles written by a scholar/author who has done research in a particular field or discipline.
  • Language is technical and specialized.
  • Sources cited in the form of footnotes or bibliographies.
  • Often published by universities or professional societies.

If in doubt, ask your instructor or a librarian whether it is a scholarly journal.

Examples of Scholarly Journals

  • JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association
  • Review of Metaphysics
  • Religious Education

Examples of Periodicals that are not Scholarly Journals:

News magazines such as Time, Newsweek and U.S. News and World Report.
Can be useful in providing an introduction to a current topic, but do not provide the same analysis as scholarly journals.

Opinion magazines like New Republic, National Review and The Nation.

Comment on current events and offer a particular viewpoint on world affairs, politics, and cultural matters.

Popular magazines such as Sports Illustrated, Christianity Today, Reader’s Digest and Good Housekeeping.
Attractive and entertaining, but are usually not appropriate as sources for an academic paper.

Trade journals like Beverage World, Dealer-Scope Merchandising, Automotive News and Progressive Grocer

Designed to inform the reader on current trends in an industry. Trade journals may or may not be acceptable – ask your professor to find out.

Least four databases on Library and Information Sciences:

DATABASE NAME SUBJECT AREA
ABI/Inform Business
Academic Search General (Multidisciplinary)
Google Scholar General (Multidisciplinary)
JSTOR General (Multidisciplinary)
LEXISNEXIS Academic News
PsycINFO Psychology
PubMed/Medline Medicine
ScienceDirect Science (Multidisciplinary)
Scopus General (Multidisciplinary)
Web of Science General (Multidisciplinary)

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AIOU Solved Assignments 2 Code 5650 Autumn & Spring 2024

Q.3      Discuss comprehensively the use of statistics in research.

Answer:

The role of statistics in research is to function as a tool in designing research, analysing its data and drawing conclusions therefrom. Most research studies result in a large volume of raw data which must be suitably reduced so that the same can be read easily and can be used for further analysis. Clearly the science of statistics cannot be ignored by any research worker, even though he may not have occasion to use statistical methods in all their details and ramifications. Classification and tabulation, as stated earlier, achieve this objective to some extent, but we have to go a step further and develop certain indices or measures to summarise the collected/classified data. Only after this we can adopt the process of generalisation from small groups (i.e., samples) to population. If fact, there are two major areas of statistics viz., descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. Descriptive statistics concern the development of certain indices from the raw data, whereas inferential statistics concern with the process of generalisation. Inferential statistics are also known as sampling statistics and are mainly concerned with two major type of problems:

  1. the estimation of population parameters, and
  2. the testing of statistical hypotheses.

The important statistical measures* that are used to summarise the survey/research data are:

  1. measures of central tendency or statistical averages;
  2. measures of dispersion;
  3. measures of asymmetry (skewness);
  4. measures of relationship; and
  5. other measures.

Amongst the measures of central tendency, the three most important ones are the arithmetic average or mean, median and mode. Geometric mean and harmonic mean are also sometimes used.

From among the measures of dispersion, variance, and its square root—the standard deviation are the most often used measures. Other measures such as mean deviation, range, etc. are also used. For comparison purpose, we use mostly the coefficient of standard deviation or the coefficient of variation.

In respect of the measures of skewness and kurtosis, we mostly use the first measure of skewness based on mean and mode or on mean and median. Other measures of skewness, based on quartiles or on the methods of moments, are also used sometimes. Kurtosis is also used to measure the peakedness of the curve of the frequency distribution.
Amongst the measures of relationship, Karl Pearson’s coefficient of correlation is the frequently used measure in case of statistics of variables, whereas Yule’s coefficient of association is used in case of statistics of attributes. Multiple correlation coefficient, partial correlation coefficient, regression analysis, etc., are other important measures often used by a researcher.
Index numbers, analysis of time series, coefficient of contingency, etc., are other measures that may as well be used by a researcher, depending upon the nature of the problem under study.
We give below a brief outline of some important measures (our of the above listed measures) often used in the context of research studies.

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AIOU Solved Assignments Code 5650 Autumn & Spring 2024

Q.4      What is research report? Discuss the various components of a research report?

Answer:

A research report is a document prepared by an analyst or strategist who is a part of the investment research team in a stock brokerage or investment bank. A research report may focus on a specific stock or industry sector, a currency, commodity or fixed-income instrument, or on a geographic region or country. Research reports generally, but not always, have actionable recommendations such as investment ideas that investors can act upon.

Research reports are produced by a variety of sources, ranging from market research firms to in-house departments at large organizations. When applied to the investment industry, the term usually refers to sell-side research, or investment research produced by brokerage houses. Such research is disseminated to the institutional and retail clients of the brokerage that produces it. Research produced by the buy-side, which includes pension funds, mutual funds and portfolio managers, is usually for internal use only and is not distributed to external parties.

Various components of a research report:

The six components of a research report are as follows:  An abstractintroduction, methodology, results, discussion, and references.

The Abstract

The abstract is an overview of the research study and is typically two to four paragraphs in length.  Think of it as an executive summary that distills the key elements of the remaining sections into a few sentences.

An abstract will look similar to the following:

 In many cases, you can determine what is interesting about a study by analyzing the abstract (see article by Noah Gray in The Huffington Post).

Introduction

The introduction provides the key question that the researcher is attempting to answer and a review of any literature that is relevant.  In addition, the researcher will provide a rationale for why the research is important and will present a hypothesis that attempts to answer the key question.  Lastly, the introduction should summarize the state of the key question following the completion of the research.  For example, are there any important issues or questions still open?

Methodology

The methodology section of the research report is arguably the most important for two reasons.  First it allows readers to evaluate the quality of the research and second, it provides the details by which another researcher may replicate and validate the findings.)

Typically the information in the methodology section is arranged in chronological order with the most important information at the top of each section. 

Ideally the description of the methodology doesn’t force you to refer to other documents; however if the author is relying on existing methods, they will be referenced.

Results

In longer research papers, the results section contains the data and perhaps a short introduction.  Typically the interpretation of the data and the analysis is reserved for the discussion section.

Discussion

The discussion section is where the results of the study are interpreted and evaluated against the existing body or research literature.  In addition, should there be any anomalies found in the results, this is where the authors will point them out.  Lastly the discussion section will attempt to connect the results to the bigger picture and show how the results might be applied.

References

This section provides a list of each author and paper cited in the research report.  Any fact, idea, or direct quotation used in the report should be cited and referenced.

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AIOU Solved Assignments 1 & 2 Code 5650 Autumn & Spring 2024

Q.5      Write short notes on the following

a)        Demographic vs perception variables

Answer:

Demographic variables

A demographic variable is a variable that is collected by researchers to describe the nature and distribution of the sample used with inferential statistics. Within applied statistics and research, these are variables such as age, gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic measures, and group membership. Demographic variables are often reported using descriptive statistics. Table 1 of most published research articles contain demographic information regarding the study sample. Demographic variables may also be entered into multivariate models for controlling and confounding effects..

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b)        Hardthorne vs placebo effect

Answer:

The term “Hawthorne effect”, coined by French (1953, p.101) in a chapter on field experiments in an edited book on social science research methods, refers back to a series of experiments on managing factory workers carried out around 1925-1933 in the Hawthorne works of the Western Electric Company in Chicago. However there is no one precise meaning for the term, since the results were puzzling to the original experimenters, and their interpretation continues to be sporadically debated. Generally, references to the Hawthorne effect all concern effects on an experiment’s results of the awareness of participants that they are the subject of an intervention. However there are many different possible mechanisms, and all may be important in particular cases. What is not disputed is that there is an important issue here, and it is clear that there is a need for a term to refer to these issues: the term “Hawthorne effect” has often been re-appropriated for any issue in the general area. What is not understood is what the full range of issues is, and authors have often (re)defined the term solely in terms of the one aspect and interpretation that concerns them. An attempt to list some of the different mechanisms and effects is made below. Part of the variation in meaning comes from the different interpretations put on the original studies, part comes from the different disciplines concerned with studies of humans (e.g. management science, medicine, psychology, aircraft crash investigation), but underlying it all is the absence of a comprehensive catalogue of the ways in which human awareness sometimes affects the outcomes of experiments on human participants.

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c)         Reliability of questionnaire

Answer:

Reliability of questionnaire is a way of assessing the quality of the measurement procedure used to collect data. In order to consider a result valid, the measurement procedure must first be reliable. Choose a measure while examining the construct of a study. Construct is the hypothetical variable that is being measured and questionnaires are one of the mediums. These questionnaires are part of the measurement procedure. As a result, this measurement procedure should provide an accurate representation of the construct, to be considered stable or constant. For example, if we want to measure the intelligence, we need to have a measurement procedure that accurately measures a person’s intelligence.

Concept of reliability

Since there are many ways of thinking about intelligence (e.g., IQ, emotional intelligence, etc.). This can make it difficult to come up with a measurement procedure if we are not sure if the construct is stable or constant (Isaac & Michael 1970). Reliability of a construct or variable refers to its constancy or stability. The assumption, that the variable that is to be measured is stable or constant, is central to the concept behind the reliability of questionnaire. A measurement procedure that is stable or constant should produce the same (or nearly the same) results when same individuals and conditions are used. There are threats to reliability of a measurement or construct.

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d)        Acknowledgment in research

Answer:

A page of acknowledgements is usually included at the beginning of a Final Year Project, immediately after the Table of Contents.

Acknowledgements enable you to thank all those who have helped in carrying out the research. Careful thought needs to be given concerning those whose help should be acknowledged and in what order. The general advice is to express your appreciation in a concise manner and to avoid strong emotive language.

Note that personal pronouns such as ‘I, my, me …’ are nearly always used in the acknowledgements while in the rest of the project such personal pronouns are generally avoided.

The following list includes those people who are often acknowledged. 
Note however that every project is different and you need to tailor your acknowledgements to suit your particular situation.

Main supervisor

Second supervisor

Other academic staff in your department

Technical or support staff in your department

Academic staff from other departments

Other institutions, organizations or companies

Past students

Family * 

Friends *

{===============} AIOU Solved Assignments Code 5650 Autumn & Spring 2024

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