Introduction

Specifying
the research
question

Designing
the study

Collecting
the data

Analyzing
the data

Interpreting
the results

Generalizing
the results

Aids

Chapter 2. The Sudan Fertility Survey: An Introduction to Research

Introduction

In Chapter 1 you learned about the scientific approach to conducting research and the typical stages in the research process. In this chapter, we show how the research process was used in conducting the Sudan Fertility Survey, a large scale research project designed to provide information on an important condition affecting the future of the Sudan — its birth rate. As with all research, the Sudan Fertility Survey began with the definition of the problem to be investigated.

Specifying the research question

In most research, the researcher decides what to investigate, as you will have to do in your initial study. Sometimes, however, researchers are asked to investigate a question for some organization, such as a government ministry. This is how the Sudan Fertility Survey occurred. The Department of Statistics of the government of the Sudan wanted accurate, detailed information of the current and the estimated future fertility rate in Sudan. In population research, the fertility rate is defined as the number of live births per 1,000 women of childbearing ages.

The resulting investigation became known as the Sudan Fertility Survey (Department of Statistics, 1982). We describe this study for four reasons:

1. To show the value of social research - the survey was requested by the government of the Sudan to provide information for developing family planning programs;
2. To illustrate the application of social research methods to an important social problem - that of high population growth;  
3. To show how research is planned and carried out in practice; and
4. To give you an idea of how the results of research can be used to understand social conditions in a country.

We begin by examining how the study was carried out because the value of the results depends on how information is collected and analyzed, and this depends on how well the study was planned in the first place.

Designing the study

All research projects require a design or plan for the collection and analysis of the data. In preparing a design for the Sudan Fertility Survey, a number of important decisions had to be made, one of which was who to study.

References begin with the name(s) of the authors(s). In the case of the Sudan Fertility Survey, the author is a government organization. The full reference to this report and others we cite later are provided in the List of References