A research’s defects or weaknesses are called research limitations. The limitations of your research may affect the results because of restrictions on the research design, technique, materials, etc. However, researchers frequently hesitate to include the limitations of their study in their publications because they believe doing so could diminish the study’s credibility in the eyes of readers and reviewers.
Importance Of Writing Research Limitations:
Writing about limitations at the end of your paper strengthens your study because it identifies any issues before other researchers or reviewers do. Limitations address a study’s potential weaknesses.
Additionally, highlighting study constraints demonstrates that you have carefully evaluated the implications of research limitations and that you have a deep comprehension of your research issue. Since there are limitations to any research, researchers and reviewers will be more impressed if you are honest and explain them.
Common Research Limitations:
The common limitations every student faces while conducting research are explained next. Research does not contain all the limitations, it might vary from research to research depending upon the research question, sample, methodology, etc.
Research Sample And Selection Issues:
When a sample is chosen using a probability sampling approach but does not accurately represent the target population or the wider population, sampling mistakes arise. As a result, your study has “sampling bias” or “selection bias” restrictions.
As an illustration, if you ran a survey to get the findings of your research, your samples (participants) were required to answer the survey questions. However, you might have had a limited amount of access to the right kind of range of participants. In this instance, it’s possible that the respondents to your survey weren’t genuinely a random sample. Hiring a PhD dissertation writing service can help you to overcome this issue.
Inadequate Sample Size For Statistical Analysis:
To make reliable conclusions from a study, the sample size needs to be large enough. Your results will be more accurate the larger the sample size. It will be difficult to find meaningful links in the data if your sample size is too small.
Statistical tests typically call for a bigger sample size. Before you start your research, it is a good idea to be familiar with how to choose an adequate sample size using scientific calculation tools; in fact, many journals now demand that such an estimation be included in every paper that is sent out for review.
Lack Of Prior Research On The Subject:
The literature review for your thesis or study is based on citing and referencing earlier research studies, and these earlier studies serve as the theoretical underpinnings for the research subject you are examining. However, the number of earlier research papers that are pertinent to your thesis may be constrained depending on the extent of your research issue.
You might need to create a whole new research typology when there is little to no past study on a given topic. Finding a research limitation in this situation might be seen as a crucial chance to spot gaps in the literature and highlight the need for more research in the field.
Data Collection Techniques, Tools, And Instruments:
It’s possible that when you’ve finished analyzing the research findings, you’ll find that the way you gathered the data or the ways you measured the variables made it difficult for you to perform a thorough analysis of the findings.
For instance, you can realize that you need to have approached your survey questions from a different, equally valid angle or that you were unable to include a crucial topic in the survey. In these situations, you should identify the deficit or deficiency by emphasizing the requirement that future researchers change their particular techniques for gathering data to incorporate these missing parts.
Data Access Restrictions:
You might have run into the issue of having restricted access to these respondents if your research entailed polling specific groups of people or organizations. You might need to adapt or rearrange your research in light of this restricted access. Explain the restrictions on access in this situation, and make sure that your conclusion is still accurate and dependable despite them.
Time Limitations:
Academic researchers might also need to fulfill deadlines for submitting a manuscript to a journal or encounter other time restrictions linked to their research, similar to how students have due dates for completing their class assignments. These operational considerations could limit the amount of time that can be spent researching a topic and tracking change over time. If time restrictions had any detrimental effects on your study, acknowledge these effects by stating that a future study is necessary to address this research question.
Conflicts Brought On By Cultural Prejudice And Other Personal Problems:
Due to their cultural origins or viewpoints on particular phenomena, researchers may have biased opinions, which can undermine the validity of a study. Researchers may also be biased toward data and findings that only lend credence to their theories or claims. The authors of a study should evaluate whether the manner the research challenge was articulated and the data-gathering method was carried out effectively to avoid these issues.
How To Write Research Limitations Section:
As said before it is very important to add a research limitations section in your research paper. Don’t only list and describe the flaws in your work while describing the limitations of your research. It’s crucial that you additionally explain how these restrictions affected your research’s conclusions. There may be several restrictions to your research, but you should only talk about the ones that have a direct bearing on your research question and findings. The following steps will guide you on how to write your research limitations:
Step. 1: Identifying Your Research Limitations:
Finding the specific limitation or limitations that affected your study is the first step. There are many potential research limitations that could have an impact on your study, but you don’t need to write a lengthy review of every one of them. An adequate length for a research limits section is between 200 and 500 words. Describe the constraints your study has had to work within and how significant these constraints are at the beginning of this section.
This section should make up roughly 10% to 20% of your explanation of research limitations. You only need to point out restrictions that could have had the most effects on (1) the accuracy of your findings and (2) your capacity to respond to your research question.
Step. 2: Explain These Research Limitations:
It’s time to describe the nature of your research limitations and how they might have affected your study after you’ve identified them. Justify your decision to use this “limited” methodology or other action in your research by outlining the impact these constraints had on the study’s findings and conclusions. Make sure that these restrictions didn’t diminish the caliber of your work as well. About 60 to 70 percent of your explanation of constraints should be devoted to this section.
Step. 3: Suggest Alternatives And Advice For Future Studies:
Before describing some potential solutions for these problems in future studies, you must first recognize the limitations of the research. One way to do this is to present alternative strategies and methods to “fill in the gaps of” the limitations of the study you have supplied. Explain the benefits and drawbacks of the various options and why researchers should choose these tactics. This part should make up between 10% and 20% of your discussion of restrictions.
Conclusion:
Mentioning Research Limitations in your research paper is nothing to be ashamed of. It is better to mention them yourself than to get pointed out by your teacher or reviewer. Only remember to write about these limitations in a particular way, as explained above, and it won’t affect the value and calibre of your paper.
