Every research has it strengths and weaknesses and the limitations of the study addresses these weaknesses, but so does delimitations, yet they are different from each other except on account that both of them explore and explain the factors that limit the questions your research will be able to answer and how these factors can have an impact on your research, this shows that no research is foolproof but the extent to which they affect your research can have a say on the validity of your research outcomes.
What are research limitations?
Researchers try to find the best possible data for their research to answer a specific question. But no matter how good your research is, it will only provide you with information. The question you ask, the design of your study, and many other factors can limit the amount of information you get from your research. Research limitations are limitations that come from the way you design a study, and they are often due to ethical or methodological reasons. These limitations may make it difficult to draw conclusions and may influence the results. – Sample size: The larger your sample size, the more likely it is that you will find a significant difference between the sample and the control group. – Question: Your results will vary depending on what you ask. – Research design: The validity of your study may be limited by the design of your research. – Data analysis: The way you analyze your data is just as important as the data themselves.
What are research delimitations?
Unlike limitations, research delimitations refer to factors that are not essentially outside of the researcher’s control because delimitations are in essence the limitations consciously set by the authors themselves. They are concerned with the definitions that the researchers decide to set as the boundaries or limits of their work so that the study’s aims and objectives do not become impossible to achieve. Unlike limitations, however, a research delimitation does not mean that the study does not provide some useful information or has been unable to explore something. It simply means that it may not answer all of the study’s research questions. For example, a study may look at the effectiveness of a new treatment, but due to size limitations, it could not determine if the treatment helped patients with all types of cancer or only those with a certain type of cancer. In this case, the study is a delimitation, meaning the researchers did not answer all of the questions about the effectiveness of the treatment.
Importance of Research Limitations and Research Delimitations
The limitations of a study are important because they can help you understand why certain results happened. For example, if you used only one sample size to test your hypothesis, you would expect to find a significant difference between the sample and the control group. If you did not find this difference, there may be something wrong with your sample size. Limitations also help you learn from your mistakes. If you make a mistake, you can use limitations to correct for that mistake and improve the quality of your research.
In a study that addresses all of the research questions, the results can be very definitive. But in a study that only answers part of the questions, the results may be more like a hypothesis. In a study that only addresses some of its research aims and questions, the results can be even more like a hypothesis. Regardless of the level of the study, the researcher is building an idea of what may be. As researchers build these ideas, they may encounter delimitations, limitations, and other factors that can limit the information they receive. With all of these factors in mind, researchers can still make valuable conclusions from their research.
Wrapping Up
Researchers should also note that limitations and delimitations are different from another similar restraint on the infallibility of any research – the ‘assumptions’ part. Nonetheless, researchers have an obligation to the academic community to present complete and honest limitations of a presented study and even if they have influenced the outcomes and conclusions you have derived from your research, by describing them in detail and critically evaluating your own study design – you have made a case for your research credibility.
References
Theofanidis, Dimitrios, & Fountouki, Antigoni. (2019). Limitations And Delimitations In The Research Process. Perioperative nursing (GORNA), E-ISSN:2241-3634, 7(3), 155–162. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2552022
