RESEARCH METHODOLOGY Syllabus (24MNP3S3L)

---

M.Tech (Mineral Processing) Third Semester

Objective:

1. The objectives of this course are to identify the problem statement, review the literature, and analyze the data.

UNIT-I (9 Hours)

• Nature and importance of research
• Aims, Objectives, and Principles
• Fundamental research vs. applied research with examples
• Qualitative vs. Quantitative research
• Theoretical research vs. experimental research with examples
• Selection of a research problem and Sources of literature
• Journals, Conferences, Books
• Types of sources: Literature Survey engines - Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar, PubMed, NCBI, Scihub, etc.
• Science citation index: Citations, h-index, i10 index, impact factor

UNIT-II (9 Hours)

• Data Collection Methods
• Framing a hypothesis
• Designing controlled experiments
• Choosing the sample size
• Sampling bias
• Importance of independent replicates
• Conducting an experiment
• Maintaining a lab notebook to record observations
• Identifying experimental errors
• Case studies on well-designed experiments vs. poorly designed experiments
• Fundamentals of MINITAB
• Designing experiments and analysis using MINITAB

UNIT-III (9 Hours)

• Data Presentation and Writing
• Technical presentation
• Technical writing
• Formatting citations
• MS Excel for plotting the data (pie chart, plots, bar charts)
• Analysis using software tools
• Descriptive Statistics: Mean, standard deviation, variance, plotting data, and understanding error bars
• Curve Fitting: Correlation and Regression
• Distributions: Normal Distribution, Gaussian distribution, skewed distributions
• Inferential Statistics: Hypothesis testing and understanding p-value
• Parametric tests: t-test, ANOVA
• Tests to analyze categorical data: Chi-square test

Course Outcomes:

1. Disseminate the knowledge by reading research articles
2. Able to draft the research objectives and set the scope of the work
3. Discuss the research reports

References (Indicative):

1. C.R. Kothari, Research Methodology: Methods and Techniques, II Ed. New Age International Publishers, (2009).
2. Shanthibhushan Mishra, Shashi Alok, Handbook of Research Methodology, I Ed, 2017, Educreation Publishers.
3. Basic Statistical Tools in Research and Data Analysis (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5037948/).

Course Title: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Course Code: 24MNP3S3L
Total Contact Hours: 27
Course Credits: 02
Formative Assessment Marks: 20
Duration of ESA/Exam: 1
Summative Assessment Marks: 30