Most of us need more money. At least we tend to think that. Researchers have a special name for money - they call it "research funding". Theoretically speaking, if grant money was freely available, we could expect more and better research. But it's not freely available, which causes - beyond the trivial difficulty in funding any research - a host of specific limitations on research that does get funded. Some of these limitations make it more difficult to perform actionable research, which is the domain of discussion in this blog.
Often (always?) a researcher faces a situation where the available funding can provide for a limited research and does not allow for everything the researcher would have liked to do. Then the researcher needs to decide whether to drop the particular research, or do what they can while being aware of the limited validity of the results. Neither decision is a happy one.
A few examples of money-related limitations on research, and ways FIRE can improve the situation:
1. Small sample size
When studying a large population - E.g., the millions of first-grade-age kids at any given year in Africa - it is not practical to directly study all of them. We usually study a smaller group - a sample of the population. Performing a research on a small sample is sensitive to statistical and methodical problems. It is error-prone, so the results can't be completely relied upon as a basis for action. All researchers know that, but when a researcher obtains a fixed amount of money, this will limit the sample size the research can handle. FIRE can complement the funds of a grant specifically in order to enlarge the sample.
2. Short attention span
Often a study can benefit from being extended in time. This extension can have the form of a short follow-up of the research a while after the main research work was completed. It can have the form of continuous study of the same group of people - a longitudinal study. It can have the form of replicating a study or of drilling-down and performing an extra phase of study to get a better understanding of what the initial stage of the study suggested. A specific example of a drill-down, which is of special interest to me, could be the performance of a significant quantitative research to check ideas generated by an initial qualitative study. FIRE can complement the funds of a grant specifically in order to perform such time-extensions.
3. Limited geographical span
Trying to study the population of a large country means working with participants and research collaborators over a large area. Travel is costly. Communication technology is expensive: line-phones, cell-phones, satellite-phones, together with their respective audio and video-conference facilities, etc. This can cause the research to be limited in geographical scope, and therefore limited in applicability. FIRE can provide funding for travel, equipment and access to equipment.
4. Limited use of recordings
The relative advantages of different recording techniques in an interview is discussed in a previous entry. FIRE can provide funding, equipment, access to equipment, transliteration, automatic analysis facilities and services, etc.
5. Suboptimal experiment environment
Some research should be done in a lab settings, where the environment is as much as possible in the control of the researcher. Any aspect of the environment - any variable - that is outside the control of the researcher, may damage the validity of the research, and the applicability of its results. To conduct a serious research, one sometimes needs a well equipped lab, capable of hosting many participants over a period of time. FIRE can maintain such labs for the benefit of researchers, and provide funding for the use of other labs.
6. Other trivial limitations
Laptops, off the shelf software, custom developed software, photocopying, graphic design, research assistants, training, public relations (to ensure high rate of participation), legal fees (dealing with ethics and liabilities), database access fees, translation costs, etc. FIRE can provide assistance in addressing these and many more, to make researchers' life easier.
A general note about FIRE's role in the context of research finances: FIRE does not perform research, and doesn't fund complete research. If it did, there would have been a very limited amount of research FIRE would be involved in - limited by the amounts of money FIRE would be able to command.
FIRE is a research infrastructure provider, concerned with facilitating actionable research. This means that support and funding provided are meant to encourage researchers and would-be researchers to perform applicable research. This may sometimes mean providing enough support to make it possible for an already funded research to be upgraded to the next level of potential usability. This way, FIRE aims at having a positive effect on the largest number of educational research projects with the widest range of scientific agendas.
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