EXCITING NEWS: TNG WhatsApp Channel is LIVE…
Subscribe for FREE to get LIVE NEWS UPDATE. Click here to subscribe!
A group of university dons and research experts under the aegis of Jacksonites’ Professional Development Series – Knowledge Hub – has identified Action Research (AR) as the most applied, practical problem-solving research approach to seeking solutions to societal problems.
Led by renowned Professor Emeritus of Strategic Communication, North Dakota State University, USA, Charles Okigbo, the experts dimensioned Action Research in terms of its meaning, rational, utilization, essence and economic benefits and concluded that it was a very important approach to continuous research and can boost researchers’ earnings.
At the 2nd edition of the Knowledge Hub seminar of the Jacksonites’ Professional Development Series, held virtually on August 5, 2022, Okigbo and his colleagues – Nuhu Gapsiso of University of Maiduguri and Katherine Tulibaski of North Dakota University – noted that Action Research is more than just common sense knowledge but involves repeating and revising procedures and interpretations while using the proper research methodology such as a sophisticated experiment or a basic focus group discussions (FGD).
The university dons further stated that Action Research leads people to take specific actions which use both qualitative and quantitative research methods to come up with solutions to pressing problems of the time; they added that AR is recursive because it operates in a nonlinear manner by employing a repeating pattern – Looking – Thinking – Acting – a process they described as the interacting spiral.
Highlighting some of the key benefit of Action Research for Management Consultants, the experts said that the recursive nature of AR method made it suited for education and communication research because, “the problems in these areas hardly end with finality; One solution can lead to new problems that yield new data and new results that are applied as solutions that can lead to new problems.”
“Action Research is not neat, like a simple survey, not oddly like a simple interview neither is it linear like one simple experiment but rather it is a process of repeating and revising procedures and interpretations because our results address the situation as it is today and when we implement our results, we will get a new situation that will require us to collect a new set of data and do a new analysis to come up with new recommendation that will be implemented” the experts said.
Highlighting the economic benefit of AR to researchers and consultants, Okigbo called on university academics who are presently under the burden of strikes to consider engaging in consulting. “We hope that Nigerian lecturers and professors of communication will adopt Action Research in consulting because it entails using our skills to address problems that are germane to the interest of our clients.”
He pointed out that it was important for the lecturers to know how they can use the research methods, particularly action research methods, to address pressing problems that will get them rewarded financially.
In their separate presentations, Prof Nuhu Gapsiso, Head, Department of Mass Communication, University of Maiduguri, said that Action Research is an ongoing process of renewal that can help an organisation to come up with new approaches to some of their challenges in order to enhance their performance and also develop interventions that can help address them.
Prof Katherine Tulibaski of the Department of Management and Marketing, North Dakota State University, USA said that the purpose of action research is to address those important organizational community and social issues together with those who experienced those issues. “It has to come from a group of people experiencing that issue or who wants to be involved in the change,” she informed the audience.
The Knowledge Hub seminar series is a monthly knowledge sharing initiative of the Jacksonites Professional Development Series, moderated by Dr Chuks Odiegwu-Enwerem and coordinated by Professor Chinedu Mba.