research method

Iran's constitutional revolution can be considered the beginning of an idea to end traditional authoritarian regimes. Regardless of the success of the Constitution, the important issue is the critical discourse of the spectrums that have been provocative and in a way the ideologues of the constitutionalists. Among them, intellectuals, marketers, clergy, writers, and poets can be mentioned. While criticizing the patrimonialism of the ruling government, during their thoughts, they made many efforts for the liberation and freedom of the country as well as drawing a bright future for the country. In This article, the authors try to investigate the patrimonial government of the constitutional era by using the Spragens Theory to explain the critical discourse of three poets of this era: Adib al-Mamalek Farahani, Vahid Dastgerdi and Malek osh-Sho'arā. Based on this, in the first stage of observation and identification of the problem according to the interpretation of these three poets, it is the authoritarian and patrimonial government ruling the Iranian society. In the second stage finding the root of the problem, the lack of unity in Iranian society, and the presence of illegal forces in the country are discussed. In the third stage or the drawing of an ideal order, the two concepts of freedom and justice are the idealism of the three poets. Finally, in the fourth stage, or the plan of solution and treatment, the three poets emphasize the issue of constitutionalism and parliament.

The expansion of human knowledge and understanding about the characteristics and unknown points of phenomena is a result of methodological approaches. Therefore, one of the important categories that needs special attention in the field of urban security studies is based on research methodology. This is a methodological question that leads the researcher to how to study urban security. Therefore, the role of methodology as a link or flow of knowledge between two elements of epistemology (factor of knowledge) and ontology (object of knowledge) is very important in the field of urban security studies. Therefore, two central questions are emphasized in the research process. What are the types of research methodology frameworks in urban security studies? And what are the characteristics of the methodological framework of urban security studies? In order to answer the central questions of the research, the literature review method has been used, focusing on two methodological and theoretical review approaches. In response to the first question, the researchers propose a conceptual, technical and operational framework. Also, in explaining the features of the methodological framework of urban security studies, they propose theory – grounded, flexibility, feasibility and redundancy. In this framework, quantitative, qualitative and mixed research methodologies are related to philosophical propositions or research paradigms in a holistic, comprehensive and integrated way.

There are many research methods, both quantitative and qualitative, in the field of international relations that students use for their research. One of the qualitative methods is the method of historical research or history research. The historical method is used when the researcher seeks to study a phenomenon in the past with the aim of discovering historical facts and describing present events. History is the most important influential element in establishing and developing relations between countries because governments regulate their relations in the context of time based on their perceptions of other countries, but international relations researchers either use this method infrequently or are unfamiliar with the proper way to use it. This article tries to answer these questions: how to use the historical method in international relations research? What are the advantages and achievements of applying the historical method in international relations? What applications does it have for the field of international relations? And what are the reasons for the lack of attention to this method of research in the field of international relations? The purpose of this article is to help produce literature on how to use and apply the historical method in the field of international relations, especially in research related to dissertations

At present, Iran’s neighbourhood policy toward  the Central Asian region has been preserved based on Iran’s geographical potentials. Turkmenistan is one of the countries in this region being of importance to the foreign policy apparatus by virtue of the neighbourhood policy and sharing a border. Hence, the question raised is what are the capacities and requirements of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Neighbourhood Policy concerning Turkmenistan? The presumption of the research is that situation  of  Iran and Turkmenistan on each other’s borders and existence of economic, political and cultural potentials create a ground for integration and cooperation between the two countries, and this can help ease Iran’s political and economic bottlenecks. The results of the research show that historically and economically , Turkmenistan has had many cultural commonalities with Iran. In addition, this country enjoys gas resources and various economic grounds. With regard to rivalries among the hostile regional and extra-regional powers  like the US and Israel in this country, on one side, and the existence of wide trade and economic sanctions of the west, Turkmenistan can be a fertile ground for offsetting pressures exerted on Iran and reducing them. The method of the research is qualitative of the descriptive-analytical type, and the data have been collected using the library method and through cataloguing.

Ever since the characteristic difference between natural and social science was distinguished, the understanding and usage of research methods which suits the research question best, became a major topic in Methodology. The field of Public Policy Studies witnessed the same encounter. Some researcher influenced by the ongoing debate between positivism and post-positivism ideas, introduced the “Narrative policy framework”. The NPF relies mainly on the assumption that the social reality is constructed by Narratives. The NPF which less than 10 years have passed since its publication will be discussed in this paper so the researchers will find his way with the theoretical and scientific dimension of the framework. In this regard following the theoretical explanation, the necessarily steps for operating a research with NPF will also be demonstrated.

Some students may think that method section/chapter is not very important because in this chapter some anthological, epistemological and methodological accounts repeatedly will be discussed. However, among academics the methodology section/chapter is one of the most important section of a research. One of the main reasons to put ‘research method’ section or chapter in dissertations or articles is to achieve ‘replicability’, ‘transparency’ and ‘validity’ in empirical studies. This chapter/section needs to outline several issues such as research design, sampling approach, access, the nature of applied method such as interview or observation, coding frame, and analyzing method (Bryman 2012: 687). If the research method is not fully and appropriately clarified, the findings of research can be easily questioned or dismissed. This paper, with the general aim of exploring some aspects of ‘research methods in dissertations’ especially in political science and international relations, in a case study, examines the ‘methodology section or chapter’ in faculty of World Studies’ dissertations in the University of Tehran. This paper also is designed to examine the extent in which students tend to use empirical studies. In doing so, this paper by using quantitative content analysis, selected 137 master and PhD dissertations (out of 453) from different groups, languages and years to examine their tendencies towards empirical researches. Based on four key and common elements of research method section: the data collection procedures, study design, selection of participants, and the planned data analysis or analytic strategy (Fox and Jennings 2014: 137) it assesses how students clarify their research methods and how they applied these methods in practice. The findings of this research shows that 26 per cent of dissertations were carried out using empirical research methods which in comparison with previous figures, around 6 per cent (Delavari 1385: 118) and around 12 per cent (Seyed Emami 1389: 145), is a good achievement.

Few decades have passed since the birth of regional studies as sub-field of political science and international relations¡ but the dominance of international relations approaches on scientific literature and research method of this scientific field in inevitable. The evolution procedure of regional studies field showed that doing research in this field may require research in history¡ political science¡ sociology¡ economics¡ geopolitics and many of other scientific tendencies that can be referred based on the case. This subject shows the difficulty of research in regional studies field. This paper is determined to introduce the Fuzzy cognitive maps as a method with capability of application in regional studies field¡ so this method can meet the researcher’s needs in the field of study of subjects without any background before¡ or entitled as a vague phenomenon. The advantage of this method firstly is the ability of recognizing the elements of vague phenomenon and helping to understanding the relations among them and secondly the derivation of the agreed point from various views about that phenomenon.

The astonishing achievements of scientific research method have radically changed human''s life-world in a relatively short period of time. Troubles of traditional way of life and their solutions were substituted by emerging issues which were not even mentioned in the previous discourse of our ancestors about the relationship between human and the world. Scientific research method entered the scene for responding material and spiritual troubles of human being. As the best method for understanding new problems and recognizing their solutions، scientific method discredited traditional methods of knowledge and substituted them. But after a while، the achievements of scientific research method made troubles for it. An increasing number of scientists concluded that scientific research method has two basic shortages: 1) it does not make distinctions between natural beings and human beings in terms of methodology; and 2) Narratives or social general rules of scientific method do not respond to increasing social groups and individualization of personal life in the contemporary complicated world. Thus it is essential to find another path that deals more deeply with human life''s individual and particular problems. These arguments، finally، culminated in applying qualitative research method in human and social phenomena. The ignoring of widespread application of qualitative research method in studying natural phenomena in order to reset it as a different research method created a controversial discourse over the relationship between quantitative and qualitative methods. The root of this discourse goes back to the issue of unity or multiplicity of scientific research method، on the one hand، and empirical or interpretive approaches towards social reality، on the other. The aim of this article is to show that both of these elements، namely radical duality of quantitative and qualitative research methods and duality of empirical and interpretive approaches، are wrong premises. Both of these approaches and methods have empirical base and rational superstructure so they are not radically different but they are used according to the content of research

In this article authors consider literature and systematic review as a managing process in research institution and Iranian academic milieu. This kind of studies could accelerate researches. Authors propose ways and methods to do adequate literature survey in order to better management in research institutes. Current situation of Iranian academic institution is marked by overlapping researches. That’s why it is necessary to discuss new ways for overcoming this challenge. Our theoretical perspective insist on the fact that literature review is a critical documentation based on an epistemological perspective of interactive knowledge. To this end literature review should be synthetic، analytic، and evolutionary.

This article tries to evaluate the idea of “intelligence as a scientific phenomenon and the possibility of scientific study in intelligence field”. Author has two hypothesis: first he argues for methodological similarity between intelligence and science, and then as a second hypothesis, tries to describe ontological similarities between scientific knowledge and intelligence knoweledge. Having explained these two complementary claims, author argues that without academic presence, the idea of intelligence as a scientific phenomenon would remain as a mere claim. So exposing intelligence for academic research agenda would shape its scientific nature.