bethaneydbryant
2 Timothy 2:15 NIV “Do the best to present yourself to God as one…
2 Timothy 2:15 NIV “Do the best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.” We build a relationship with our Creator by studying/researching His word. What good does it do us to study and gain knowledge of God and not share it? It is my belief that the way to live a significant life is to intentionally share Christ, serve others, and give what I have. Our faith is practical and must be exercised daily so that through us more people will believe.
Research can be defined as diligent and systematic inquiry or investigation into a subject to discover or revise facts, theories, applications, etc.: Market research combines economic trends and consumer behavior to help business ideas be improved. All organizations must first and always understand their customers and research uncovers who your customers are and what they want. Two pros of market research are managing risks and increasing sales. Weaknesses of market research include potential expensive costs and the fact that it can be time consuming. I enjoy the application of the subjects that I study.
Applied research is a topic that interests me because I mostly want to acquire knowledge only if its applicable in real life situations. “While this paper takes the position that applied academic fields have a greater obligation and responsibility to undertake research which is useful to practice and/or society, as opposed to pure/basic researchers, it should be noted that expecting all applied research to have practical usefulness would be an unreasonable expectation. The authors understand that not all applied research can be, or is expected to be, useful to real-world applications, with some research acting as incremental knowledge development.” (Fraser, K., Deng, X., Bruno, F., and Rashid, T. 2018, paragraph 7). Business schools have garnered some criticism over the usefulness of research conducted by them. There is a very big importance on students taking learned techniques and valuable research learned at universities and applying it in related business fields. “As the CEO of Business SA argues ‘the real game changer for innovation within Australian businesses will occur once we begin to adequately leverage the research capacity of our highly regarded universities to achieve better commercial outcomes for industry’ (Business SA 2014, page 4).
In the world of business, the term benchmarking is extremely important and beneficial in just about every industry. I’d describe benchmarking as a standard of success or a proven way of doing a certain thing in order to produce or maintain profitability. As kids we called it “copycatting”. If we only used research formed by notable scholars, leaders, or intellectuals for academic purposes that has no use or practical benefit would it be safe to say that higher education is unimportant and that we only care about massaging egos? Pogrow, Emeritus Professor of Education at the University of Arizona states, “As a result, a new criterion of practical benefit is recommended for evaluating research findings about the effectiveness of interventions in complex organizations where benchmarks of existing performance exist. Practical benefit exists when the unadjusted performance of an experimental group provides a noticeable advantage over an existing benchmark. Some basic principles for determining practical benefit are provided. Practical benefit is more intuitive and is expected to enable leaders to make more accurate assessments as to whether published research findings are likely to produce noticeable improvements in their organizations” (Pogrow, S. 2019, abstract) Ecclesiastes 7:12 “For the protection of wisdom is like the protection of money, and the advantage of knowledge is that wisdom preserves the life of him who has it.”
References
Holy Bible. New International Version. (2011). Biblica, Inc https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=+3%3A16-17&version=NIVLinks to an external site.
Fraser, K., Deng, X., Bruno, F., and Rashid, T. 2018. “Should academic research be relevant and useful to practitioners? The contrasting difference between three applied disciplines.” Studies in Higher Education, 45:1, 129144 DOI: 10.1080/03075079.2018.1539958
Business SA. 2014. “Boosting the commercial returns from research (online report).” Business SA, November, 1-11.
Stanley Pogrow (2019) How Effect Size (Practical Significance) Misleads Clinical Practice: The Case for Switching to Practical Benefit to Assess Applied Research Findings, The American Statistician, 73:sup1, 223-234, DOI: 10.1080/00031305.2018.1549101
