REFLECTION ON FUTURE RESEARCH ASPIRATIONS 2

Reflection on Future Research Aspirations

I have always wanted to be a generator of knowledge. In the next two or three years my
goal is to have at least three of my research papers published in major academic journals either
as an individual author or in collaboration with other researchers. Such publications will raise my
profile and allow me to get more research funding for bigger research projects.
Given the nature of my goals and aspirations, I found almost all that we learnt in this
course very useful. In particular, I found the lessons on sampling and research design approaches
very useful. As a prospective researcher, knowledge of sampling is extremely important because
poor sampling can lead to findings that are not useful. That is why I learnt with great interest
how to create samples that are free from systematic, frame, and bias errors. Since I will
inevitably use sampling in my research because it saves time, money, and reduces probability of
making errors, it is important that I master how to choose samples that are relevant,
representative of the general population under study, and are of appropriate size so that I do not
have great margins of error in my results.
Another important lesson I learnt in the course is research design approaches. I would
love to produce research results that are reliable, valid, and generalizable. It is only research
findings with such characteristics that will be found valuable by consumers of my research such
as students and fellow researchers. For this reason, it is important that I choose a research design
that is good at producing research results that are valid, reliable, and generalizable. To this end, I
found experimental research design quite useful. There is no doubt that I will be using this
design approach in most of my future research work because it produces results with
characteristics that I value such as strong internal validity.