Dissertation
1.1 Research in Hospitality, Leisure, Sport and Tourism
So – welcome to the world of research! Whatever level you are working at, you are joining a community of people who are crucial to our knowledge and understanding of contemporary hospitality, leisure, sport and tourism. In our increasingly complex and diverse society, research knowledge is the lifeblood on which those engaged in these fields depend. Whether working professionally, engaged voluntarily, or seeking personal understanding, innumerable organisations, agencies and individuals need and use research. The existence of this wider research community has a number of important implications for your own research. Research is a collective and cumulative enterprise: researchers learn from each other and build on each others’ findings, techniques, arguments and theories. Your study, however modest, is part of this tradition - and this offers you great benefits!! There is great value to you in looking at published research to see:
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how research is USED – i.e. what is the point and purpose of it all? Who uses research, and what for? Understanding the outcome of research is important: it helps you see the purpose in your own research and will allow you to embark on your own project with a firmer sense of what you are doing – and why. what is already KNOWN – what have previous studies found out about your topic? What is the current state of knowledge? Are you, in fact, researching something which has been studied extensively before? Are you filling a gap or providing more detail? Or is your research topic so staggeringly innovative that no-one has thought of studying it before? If not, what HAVE other researchers been concerned with? HOW has past research been carried out – what methods have been used? What types of data have previous researchers decided to collect, to develop understanding of the topic they were researching? What choices were available to them and how did they reach their decision about
So – welcome to the world of research! Whatever level you are working at, you are joining a community of people who are crucial to our knowledge and understanding of contemporary hospitality, leisure, sport and tourism. In our increasingly complex and diverse society, research knowledge is the lifeblood on which those engaged in these fields depend. Whether working professionally, engaged voluntarily, or seeking personal understanding, innumerable organisations, agencies and individuals need and use research. The existence of this wider research community has a number of important implications for your own research. Research is a collective and cumulative enterprise: researchers learn from each other and build on each others’ findings, techniques, arguments and theories. Your study, however modest, is part of this tradition - and this offers you great benefits!! There is great value to you in looking at published research to see:
•
how research is USED – i.e. what is the point and purpose of it all? Who uses research, and what for? Understanding the outcome of research is important: it helps you see the purpose in your own research and will allow you to embark on your own project with a firmer sense of what you are doing – and why. what is already KNOWN – what have previous studies found out about your topic? What is the current state of knowledge? Are you, in fact, researching something which has been studied extensively before? Are you filling a gap or providing more detail? Or is your research topic so staggeringly innovative that no-one has thought of studying it before? If not, what HAVE other researchers been concerned with? HOW has past research been carried out – what methods have been used? What types of data have previous researchers decided to collect, to develop understanding of the topic they were researching? What choices were available to them and how did they reach their decision about