What is Conceptualizing?

Conceptualizing has been considered as the most difficult part of the research where the idea is being invented about the research for the first time (Marianne, 2004). It has been discussed very rarely by the researchers. In research training institutes, teachers usually focus over the procedural part of conducting research and they left conceptualization phase and start believing that students would be able to produce a sagacious topic themselves magically, which in reality is not possible. This way of teaching has been criticized for last many years but unfortunately the system of higher education is still the same. But on the other hand it’s alarming because the students have been under trouble while inventing different topics for the research and their uncertainties touches the skies when they are doing it for the first time. So this system should be taken seriously for improvements because otherwise the trouble of students while formulating ideas for research would keep on increasing day by day. It would be beneficial of the researchers would give a bottom line idea to the new research students so that they get the basic idea that how to formulate ideas for researches. Few researchers have said that the idea originates from existing problems of the society but again it is complex to give those ideas a smart shape and a restricted boundary.

[large]Although several researches have been done on different areas and subjects but one should take this conceptualization as a challenge for doing research and methods should be invented to formulate best idea for research studies. After consulting many databases and research methodologies I came to few important facts that give basic idea about the formulation of good research ideas. The best approach that can be utilized for conceptualization is “concept mapping” and this technique can help the researchers to map out the ideas about their research areas and also they can intervene into the details of the ideas to make it ideal for their research studies. Research problems should be identified first and then the research project should be planned and it should be observed that which variables needs to be considered while keeping in mind the research boundaries and limitations that you have. This would not only help to conceptualize the idea but it would also help to narrow down the research to a specific issue within specific environment. Virtual thinking is best sorted as the useful process of creating a perfect research idea as one can visualize the things in mind very smartly. Conceptualization may be done while using different methods like nominal group technique,  brain-writing, facet theory, brain-storming, Delphi methods, and focus groups. Later on the research if understood in the light of previous literature and work done by the researchers would really help in creating good base for the pre-thought research idea. At the end of the discussion I would like to say that new researchers should take this topic of conceptualization very seriously and they should start collecting the successful techniques regarding this issue.

References

Marianne Sham. (2004). Conceptualizing the research strategies: A personal configuration of positioning educational research. Annual Conference of the Australian Association for Research in Education.

Free Dictionary. (2005). Conceptualize.  Retrieved from: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/conceptualizing. Retrieved on: 3/31/2012

Building Envelope Research. (2009). Conceptualized Reference Database for Building Envelope Research (CRDBER). Retrieved from: http://users.encs.concordia.ca/~raojw/crd/. Retrieved on: 3/31/2012