Scientific Research: Five Defining Characteristics
Five short bullets in the supplied teaching source carry the whole weight of what makes research scientific. Each one sets a standard your study either meets or has to argue its way around — and a project management study will meet some of them more easily than others.
The five characteristics as the source states them
The material introduces types of research by contrasting scientific research with social science research, and it does so with two short bullet lists. The scientific list runs as follows.
That is the entire treatment. There is no definition of the rules of science, no account of what makes an inference logical, no replication threshold and no explanation of how knowledge accumulates. The material presents the five as recognisable properties and moves on to the contrasting list for social science research.
This makes the page a reading exercise rather than a transcription. The table below sets the source's words against what each property demands in practice and where it shows up in a thesis. Column one is the source's; the rest is our reading.
THE FIVE CHARACTERISTICS AND WHAT THEY ASK OF YOU
| Characteristic | What it demands of a study | Where an examiner looks for it |
|---|---|---|
| Conducted within rules of science | You work inside an established and declared framework rather than an ad hoc procedure of your own devising | The methodology chapter, and the philosophical framework you name in it |
| Based on logic | The step from evidence to conclusion is an argument a reader can follow and challenge, not an assertion | The discussion — specifically whether each claim has a stated warrant |
| Systematic analysis of evidence | Every case is treated the same way, and the analytical procedure is fixed before you know what it will produce | The analysis section, and any coding frame, instrument or protocol in your appendices |
| Can be replicated | Another competent researcher could repeat what you did from your written account alone | Method detail: instruments, sampling approach, procedure, and the decisions you made along the way |
| Knowledge is cumulative | You build on published work and you state what your study adds to it | The literature review at one end and the contribution statement at the other |
Only the first column is the source's wording. The source supplies no gloss on any of the five.
Replicability is a documentation standard
Of the five, replicability is the one practitioners most often assume they cannot meet. A single organisation, a single delivery programme, a workforce that has moved on by the time the thesis is bound — none of that can be run twice.
That objection confuses two things. The characteristic asks whether the study can be replicated, not whether it will be. What you are being held to is an account complete enough that another researcher could attempt the same study, and could tell from your write-up whether their different result came from a different setting or a different method.
What a replicable account contains
- The population you drew from, and how you reached it
- The instrument itself — questionnaire, interview schedule or observation protocol — reproduced, not summarised
- How many approaches you made, how many responded, and what you did about those who did not
- The analytical procedure, including any categories or codes and when they were fixed
- The decisions you changed mid-study, and what prompted each change
- Where the data now sits and under what conditions it could be re-examined — see writing the report and storing the data
Cumulative knowledge binds your study at both ends
The fifth characteristic is the one that connects this page to the definition of research itself. The source's opening claim is that all research generates knowledge and that the body of knowledge grows as each project concludes — treated on what is research.
Cumulative means the growth is directional. You do not start from nothing and you do not finish in isolation. The literature review establishes what is currently known and where the gaps are; the theorising step at the end establishes where your evidence supports the existing theory and where it contradicts it. What comes out is new theory or an extension of existing theory.
- Published theory
- Your literature review
- Your evidence
- Theorising against the theory
- Extended or amended theory
The practical consequence is that a study with a thin literature review cannot satisfy the fifth characteristic no matter how good its data is. If you cannot state what was known before you started, you cannot state what you added. That is why the source treats the literature check as an early and non-optional step — see checking the literature.
Where a project study strains against the five
The source does not present the five characteristics as a bar every study must clear. It presents them as what distinguishes scientific research from social science research, and most project management studies sit closer to the second. The strain shows up unevenly.
Usually holds in project research
- Systematic analysis — a coding frame or an analysis plan applies as well to interviews as to instrument readings
- Based on logic — the demand for a followable argument is medium-independent
- Cumulative knowledge — practitioner research is often unusually well placed to extend a specific, applied literature
- Rules of science, read as working inside a declared framework rather than as laboratory method
Comes under strain
- Replication, when the setting is a single organisation at a single point in its history
- Control of conditions, which experimental work assumes and live delivery does not permit
- Stability of the phenomenon, when the people and the organisation both change during the study
- Independence of the researcher, when you are studying a programme you also work on
The source's own methodology table makes the control problem explicit. It describes experimental methodology as isolating and controlling every relevant condition so that effects can be observed when conditions are manipulated, and in the same table describes action research as carried out in the real world with little or no control over independent variables. Both are legitimate; they simply sit at opposite ends of this characteristic. See correlation and experimental methodologies and evaluation and action research methodologies.
When a characteristic is out of reach
Testing a real design against the five
One chapter in the exemplar volume — a published collection of master's-level project management studies — examined how agile principles apply to brownfield capacity projects in mining. As reported in its abstract, the design reviewed published works across a span of nearly three decades to identify trends and interconnections, surveyed twelve practitioners, and interviewed one practitioner to validate the theories presented.
Run the same exercise on your own design before you commit to it. Take the five characteristics in order and write one sentence for each saying how your study will satisfy it. The characteristics you struggle to write a sentence for are the ones an examiner will ask about.
What the source does not give you
What to carry forward
- The five characteristics are labels, not definitions. The source elaborates none of them, so state your own interpretation in the methodology rather than assuming a shared one.
- Replicability asks whether your account is complete enough for someone else to repeat the method. It does not require your case to be repeatable.
- Cumulative knowledge is a two-ended obligation: inherit the theory properly at the start, and say what you changed about it at the end.
- Control of conditions is where project research strains hardest against the scientific ideal. Choose a methodology that acknowledges this rather than one that assumes it away.
- Where you cannot meet a characteristic, name it as a limitation. A declared limitation is a normal feature of good research; an undeclared one is a defect.
Frequently asked questions
Does my study have to meet all five characteristics to be valid?
The source does not say so. It presents the five as what characterises scientific research, and immediately sets out a contrasting list for social science research, which most project management studies fall closer to. The workable position is to meet what you can, and declare and justify what you cannot.
How can a single-organisation case study be replicable?
At the level of procedure rather than setting. Another researcher should be able to take your instrument, sampling approach and analytical method and apply them to a different organisation. What you cannot offer is a repeat of your specific case, and that is a limitation worth stating explicitly.
What are the rules of science the source refers to?
The material never says. It uses the phrase once, in the first bullet, and does not define it anywhere. The closest related content is its description of positivism, where hypotheses are tested using objectively collected factual data and successful tests lead to scientific laws — but the source does not connect the two passages.
Is qualitative research unscientific by these criteria?
Nothing in the source says that. Systematic analysis, logical argument and cumulative contribution are all achievable with word data, and the source's own definition of research explicitly admits critical investigation alongside scientific study as a route to knowledge.
My analysis changed once I saw the data. Does that break the systematic requirement?
Not automatically, but it has to be visible. The requirement is that cases are treated consistently and that the procedure is not reverse-engineered from the findings. If your coding frame evolved, record when it changed, why, and whether earlier material was re-analysed under the revised frame.
References and source attribution
- Naoum, S. G. 2013, Dissertation Research & Writing for Construction Students, 3rd ed., Routledge (set as the introductory reading, pp. 1–6).
- Bryman, A. 2016, Social Research Methods, 5th ed., Oxford University Press, Oxford (listed among the source's references).
- Clarke, R. J. 2005, Research methods and methodologies, pp. 35–45 — the work the source adapts for its table of research methodologies, including the experimental and action research entries cited here.
- An edited volume of master's degree research projects in project management, 2018, academic publisher, 378 pp. — the exemplar volume; the illustrative design is paraphrased from a published abstract.
- The supplied teaching source: master's-level teaching material introducing research methods for project management, supplied as study notes and accompanying slides.
Suggested questions for Ask KEVOS
- List the five characteristics of scientific research from the supplied teaching source.
- How do I make a single-organisation case study replicable?
- Which characteristics of scientific research are hardest to meet in a live delivery environment?
- What does the source mean by knowledge being cumulative?
- Help me write one sentence per characteristic showing how my design meets it.