Article summary
Discuss about the Credibility &Trustworthiness Of Qualitative Research.
Many authors publish various articles and material for a variety of reasons, on several topics and areas of study. Research and conference articles are particularly of importance because their content is usually meant to solve a problem, provide new insights, or give direction in a new emerging area of research; or just to add to the existing body of knowledge. For scholarly purposes and to increase understanding of how to undertake similar tasks in future, reviewing such material is of utmost importance. A review of a published work entails undertaking a critical review of the article in order to summarize its content, and importantly, to establish its strengths and weaknesses. In this paper, a critical review is done for an article entitled;
User-Friendly Property Specification and Process Verification – A Case Study with Vehicle-Commissioning Processes, authored by Richard Mrasek, Jutta Mulle, Klemens Bohm, Michael Becker, and Christian Allmann.
This paper will summarize the content of the article, and then describe show the findings of the article have been arrived at, as well as analyze and interpret its findings in order to allow readers and other interested parties an opportunity to assess the value of the article. After this, a conclusion is made at the end. The paper follows the evaluation criteria for a scientific paper as put forth by Wieringa et al. (2005), Cope (2013), and Day and Gastel (2016)
In summary, the paper describes how the verification process in vehicle manufacturing as a way of ensuring quality is done. The paper recognizes that testing is a crucial process in the automotive industry and is aimed at guaranteeing the quality and safety of vehicles that are to be shipped out to customers. This is especially important in light of recent situations where vehicles have had to be recalled or people’s safety have been put at risk (Clancy, 2014); (Plumer, 2014); (Economy, 2018). Because of the several components and electronic devices found in a car, the authors’ state, the process of testing and verifying vehicles is complex. As such, the authors’ propose, a formal analysis of the systems and processes currently is uses are required. Further, the authors aver that a core requirement of any of any robust verification system requires that the properties the verification process must be specified and maintained in a manner that is user friendly. The authors describe patterns PROPERTIES they have observed that testing processes adhere to. To provide a better framework for better verifications, the authors develop a framework in which the property patterns are instantiated during the verification time, and then the process then verifies properties against the instances. To ensure that the process is effective, the authors have undertaken an empirical evaluation to test it with an industrial partner, and established that their proposed method indeed does detect the violation of properties during the verification process. Further, the developed system is user friendly and depends on the context of the processes. The process has been developed based on the Computation Tree Logic (CTL) notation
Evaluation
The article satisfies the basic requirements of a scholarly research paper in that it follows a basic standard format with an abstract to provide the reader with a synopsis of what the whole article is about. The abstract is well written in such a way that anew reader will have the gist of the whole article after just reading the abstract. The paper then progresses to have an introduction in which they provide a background and create the framework for which the research is done. They do a good job in providing the reader with the background of their research area and announce their topic in a way that can be understood better, as the main topic is usually not descriptive enough. The authors also do an excellent job of providing a compelling context of their research. They further go ahead and state the questions that will guide the research and then justify why an approach such as theirs is important, based on factual research data and information. The authors then go ahead and describe why a better approach is needed (further justification), and provide an outline of how they will go about in arriving at their solution and tests to validate its functionality and ability to meet the set criteria. The author also set the criteria that a good vehicle verification system ought to satisfy, despite the myriad challenges such a process must overcome.
A well written research paper addresses a specific question or problem; this forms the central principle throughout the research paper. The researchers also address a few related questions; a good research paper ideally ought to just address a single question (problem) or a few interrelated problems in order to be considered a good research paper. A good research question, according to Merriam (2015) should be specific, demonstrate novelty or originality, and have general relevance to a broad scientific community. A research question/ hypothesis, should be highly specific and not just a general area of inquiry. Possibly, the authors do not really break new ground with their research; however, their research adds to the existing body of knowledge in a manner that is robust and scientifically useful. The questions are then justified by the main research objective and theme, as well as the main research problem that the authors’ are trying to address. The authors also undertake a literature review to crate the context for their research and look at related work.
The features of the paper, the authors, and the content have a direct bearing on the quality of the paper, according to Yu and Yu (2014). Good scientific papers must have a well-structured abstract and an introduction that gives the reader a background of the research, its justification, and hypothesis/ research questions, as well as the aims and objectives of the paper (Lewis, 2015). The authors then go ahead and delineate what is found I n the paper, providing a hierarchical description of the sections of the paper and what it contains. The authors then go into further detail and provide the scenario for their research, as well as the research requirements and then describe the notation used in the paper. They then get into the research proper, talking about specifications and describe the instances while providing a database of knowledge on the area of their research. After the description of their proposed system, the authors implement their system and undertake an empirical evaluation and discuss their findings in the context of related work, before making a conclusion. The paper also refers to other authors and materials widely; it uses 33 references, showing that the authors have undertaken extensive research. Especially the content of the paper is enriching and written in a language that although scientific, is easy for a reader to understand and follow.
The description of the concepts and how the authors logically develop their arguments and process, followed by an empirical evaluation makes for a gripping, enlightening, and interesting read. According to Revner (2070, scientific research design should incorporate three main cycles and features, including being relevant, rigorous, and the design cycle (centrality). The authors do an excellent job in logically developing their arguments and ideas, culminating in an empirical test in a real world situation, with results to show that their verification process is functional and suitable for industrial application. A good research paper should be logical and have a flow of ideas in a hierarchical manner, while maintaining relevance. The authors do a good job in maintaining relevance and avoiding digression into content that have no relevance to the current research. The empirical testing and experimentation is also a good way of undertaking research because they have done it in a way that avoids any bias in research while ensuring reliability. The use of experimentation to test their proposed verification method is an excellent way in which to undertake such a research; experimentation determines if the developed solution for vehicle quality verification actually works. Further, the experiment has been done in a real world situation with a partner involved in the manufacture of vehicles.
The content of the paper is what gives it quality; the authors of this research paper have researched widely in undertaking their research and the result is a quality piece of work. Extensive research, as evidenced by the significantly large number of references used by the authors’ shows that they have looked at the problem from different perspective and their approach to solving it and testing whether their solution work is fit for purpose. For any reader interested in that field, the research solves a real world problem (of vehicle recalls and faults established after the vehicles have been shipped). Even the testing and experimentation is done in a real world setting with an industrial partner, meaning it is research that adds value not only to scientific and scholarly pursuits, but one that can immediately be applied to industry to solve a real world problem.
While the research paper follows the standard structure for a research paper, they omit certain aspects, or at least, they are not clearly stated and specified, with a justification for their use. The authors do not explicitly state the research methodology used in the paper. The research methodology is a way by which the results of a given research problem is established. Different criteria are used to solve the research problem depending on the kind of problem. The research methodology shows a reader and peers that the method used to solve the problem is justified and arrives at the correct outcome (Ketokivi and Choi, 2014). While the authors have definitely followed a methodology and arrived at a solution, this is not described or defined. Neither is the process for evaluating the research results. The literature review is also brief, as is the evaluation of related work; the literature review should look at various aspects and angles in order to direct and focus the purposes of the present research. Another gap with the research is that while the system is shown to be working in an industrial setting; there is no way of knowing whether it is better than what is existing, or that it can give better results. The experimentation only shows that it works. In an ideal situation, given that this is practical, industry ready solution to the headache of vehicle verification; it should be measured and compared against the best available systems in the market. That will demonstrate that the provided solution actually adds value; as conducted, it is akin to stating that one athlete ran and completed a race, but there were no competitors. This will ensure that the research and its findings are valid and reliable so that if another set of researchers undertake the same research, they will come up with similar findings and show that their approach solves the problem better than existing verification methods. Another issue with the research paper is that while it is conducted robustly, there is a lot that is assumed; the author discovers the kind of research as being experimental later in the paper; these should be stated in the methodology so that a reader is able to follow the progress of content in a more structured way. So while it is a well done research, the structure and progression of content can do with some improvements. The experimentation required a control variable or some verification method to compare it with (Bernerth and Aguinis, 2015); (Boysen et al., 2015). The article Efficient Algorithms for Sorting and Synchronization by Andrew Tridgell (found at https://maths-people.anu.edu.au/~brent/pd/Tridgell-thesis.pdf) is an example of a very well done research paper management .
Conclusion
This paper evaluated the article entitled User-Friendly Property Specification and Process Verification – A Case Study with Vehicle-Commissioning Processes, authored by Richard Mrasek, Jutta Mulle, Klemens Bohm, Michael Becker, and Christian Allmann. The evaluation followed guidelines on what constitutes a good research article as put forth by other authors. The evaluation established that the paper is well written, and follows scientific guidelines for a robust paper, with hierarchical development of ideas in a logical manner. The authors particularly do a good job in the abstract, introduction, and theoretical discussion sections, before putting forth their idea and testing it in a real-world situation with empirical results to show it is working. However, the paper has gaps in that there is no comparative method of verification to test it against and show it is better.
References
Clancy, R. (2014). Toyota recalls 6.4 million cars globally. [online] Telegraph.co.uk. Available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/industry/10755341/Toyota-recalls-6.4-million-cars-globally.html [Accessed 26 May 2018].
Cope, D. (2013). Methods and Meanings: Credibility and Trustworthiness of Qualitative Research. Oncology Nursing Forum, 41(1), pp.89-91.
Day, R. and Gastel, B. (2016). How to write and publish a scientific paper. 8th ed. Snata Barbara management , CA: ABC-CLIO LLC.
Economy, P. (2018). Tesla Recalls 123,000 Cars Due to Excessive Corrosion Amid Production Problems for Model 3. [online] Inc.com. Available at: https://www.inc.com/peter-economy/tesla-recalls-123000-cars-due-to-excessive-corrosion-amid-production-problems-for-model-3.html [Accessed 26 May 2018].
Hevner, A. (2007). A Three Cycle View of Design Science Research. Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems, [online] 19(2), pp.1-4. Available at: https://aisel.aisnet.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1017&context=sjis [Accessed 26 May 2018].
Ketokivi, M. and Choi, T. (2014). Renaissance of case research as a scientific method. Journal of Operations management, 32(5), pp.232-240.
Lewis, S. (2015). Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing Among Five Approaches. Health Promotion Practice, 16(4), pp.473-475.
Merriam, S. (2015). Qualitative Research. Handbook of Research on Scholarly Publishing and Research Methods, pp.125-140.
Plumer, B. (2014). Why car recalls are becoming more common management . [online] Vox. Available at: https://www.vox.com/2014/4/10/5597244/car-recalls-gm-toyota [Accessed 26 May 2018].
Wieringa, R., Maiden, N., Mead, N. and Rolland, C. (2005). Requirements engineering paper classification and evaluation criteria: a proposal and a discussion. Requirements Engineering, 11(1), pp.102-107.
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