I thank everyone who participated in the production of this book. Its pages present multiple ways of acquiring knowledge, by casting enlightening perspectives on research methods intertwined with energy sources. By means of storytelling, the book examines non-renewable and renewable energy sources through the lenses of a variety of research methodologies. It sheds light on the meaning of research, portrays different tactics for designing and conducting research in the social sciences, both in quality and quantity, inductively and deductively. It translates the great diversity that research cultures or traditions nestle. It utilizes fiction to discuss a set of qualitative and quantitative research methods for data collection, including the techniques of self-examination, diary or journal keeping, observation, interview, survey, and experiment. It also explains strategies for data analysis that encompass content analysis, narrative analysis, comparative analysis (independent t-test, paired-sample t-test, and one-way analysis of variance), correlation analysis, regression analysis, time-series analysis, and factor analysis.
Energia, the main character of this book, embarks on a comprehensive and substantive research journey to discover and scrutinize the benefits of renewable energies, by using sequences of quantitative and qualitative research methods. Her adventures expose how each research culture hosts a battery of strategies, with strengths and weaknesses or limitations. Her stories illustrate that the qualitative design has a unique ability to be open-ended and to go in depth into revealing the participants’ worldviews, experiences, and feelings in the research process and outcome, but this approach often covers a small number of cases, which may not help much policymaking on a macro level or scale. The quantitative procedures are closed-ended, with the potential to cover large scopes in research, which is good news for macro policymaking, but they remain on the surface and fail to account for the participants’ deep emotions and other meaningful underlying assumptions. The qualitative methodology explores reality in depth on a narrow scope, but the quantitative method explains reality superficially on a large scope. Both approaches interact fruitfully to exemplify epistemology, with regard to the methods for acquiring knowledge in depth, scope, and validity, through induction and deduction.
In the perspective of this book, no research tradition is better than the other one. Qualitative and quantitative strategies mutually complement and strengthen each other in a dynamic synthesis of mixed methods. Mixed methodology symbiotically builds on the strengths of both qualitative and quantitative research techniques. Scientists humbly acknowledge and resort to the tactical assets of all the research traditions for the success and progress of scientific discoveries, and for reliability and validity in the processes and outcomes of scientific investigations. Chapter by chapter, the stories of the book enhance how the diversity inherent to research methods provides the key for a holistic perspective on scientific knowledge across the human time and space.
Energia’s research adventures confirm the significance of diversity and moderation not only in the realm of research methodologies, but also in the human use and history of non-renewable and renewable energies. By means of fiction, the book examines the daunting journey of the humankind through the fossil fuels, solar, wind, and water energy sources in the perspective of yin and yang. The message for the reader is simple. In our quest of answers for the many questions we face daily in existence, we need to balance and embrace diversity and moderation mindfully in the processes and outcomes of our investigations for the sake of a healthy human environment and nature. There may not be any narrow one-size-fits-all solution to the resilient existential issues of energy facing our environment and its species. Existential queries usually imply a broad stream of multiple potential solutions, each of which presents both advantages and disadvantages. Written as a dialogue between a student and a teacher, with the teacher addressing the student’s questions and concerns, this book creatively captures and delineates the basics of renewable energies and research methods.