Things we are aware of and understand.
It is possible that authors did not identify, want to identify, or acknowledge potential limitations or were unaware of what limitations existed. Cumulative complexity is the result of the presence of multiple limitations because of the accumulation and interaction of limitations and their components. Just mentioning a limitation category and not the specific parts that are the limitation(s) is not enough. Authors telling readers of their known research limitations is a caution to discount the findings and conclusions. At what point does the caution for each limitation, its ramifications, and consequences become a warning? When does the piling up of mistakes, bad and missing data, biases, small sample size, lack of generalizability, confounding factors, etc., reach a point when the findings become s uninterpretable and meaningless? “Caution” indicates a level of potential hazard; a warning is more dire and consequential. Authors use the word “caution” not “warning” to describe their conclusions. There is a point when the number of limitations and their cumulative effects surpasses the point where a caution statement is no longer applicable, and a warning statement is required. This is the reason for establishing a limitations risk score.
Limitations put medical research articles at risk. The accumulation of limitations (variables having additional limitation components) are gaps and flaws diluting the probability of validity. There is currently no assessment method for evaluating the effect(s) of limitations on research outcomes other than awareness that there is an effect. Authors make statements warning that their results may not be reliable or generalizable, and need more research and larger numbers. Just because the weight effect of any given limitation is not known, explained, or how it discounts findings does not negate a causation effect on data, its analysis, and conclusions. Limitation variables and the ramifications of their effects have consequences. The relationship is not zero effect and accumulates with each added limitation.
As a result of this research, a limitation index score (LIS) system and assessment tool were developed. This limitation risk assessment tool gives a scores assessment of the relative validity of conclusions in a medical article having limitations. The adoption of the LIS scoring assessment tool for authors, researchers, editors, reviewers, and readers is a step toward understanding the effects of limitations and their causal relationships to findings and conclusions. The objective is cleaner, tighter methodologies, and better data assessment, to achieve more reliable findings. Adjustments to research conclusions in the presence of limitations are necessary. The degree of modification depends on context. The cumulative effect of this burden must be acknowledged by a tangible reduction and questioning of the legitimacy of statements made under these circumstances. The description calculating the LIS score is detailed in Appendix 1 .
A limitation word or phrase is not one limitation; it is a group of limitations under the heading of that word or phrase having many additional possible components just as an individual named influence. For instance, when an admission of selection bias is noted, the authors do not explain if it was an exclusion criterion, self-selection, nonresponsiveness, lost to follow-up, recruitment error, how it affects external validity, lack of randomization, etc., or any of the least 263 types of known biases causing systematic distortions of the truth whether unintentional or wanton. 40 , 76 Which forms of selection bias are they identifying? 63 Limitations have branches that introduce additional limitations influencing the study’s ability to reach a useful conclusion. Authors rarely tell you the effect consequences and extent limitations have on their study, findings, and conclusions.
This is a sample of limitations and a few of their component variables under the rubric of a single word or phrase. See Table 3 .
A Limitation Word or Phrase is a Limitation Having Additional Components That Are Additional Limitations. When an Author Uses the Limitation Composite Word or Phrase, They Leave out Which One of Its Components is Contributory to the Research Limitations. Each Limitation Interacts with Other Limitations, Creating a Cluster of Cross Complexities of Data, Findings, and Conclusions That Are Tainted and Negatively Affect Findings and Conclusions
Small Sample Size | Retrospective Study | Selection Bias |
---|---|---|
Low statistical power | Missing information | Affects internal validity |
Estimates not reliable | Recall bias | Nonrandom selection |
Prone to biased samples | Observer bias | Leads to confounding |
Not generalizable | Misclassification bias | Not generalizable |
Prone to false negative error | Observer bias | Inaccurate relation to variables |
Prone to false positive error | Evidence less robust than prospective study | Observer bias |
Sampling error | Missing data | Sampling bias |
Confounding factors | Volunteer bias | |
Selection bias | Survivorship bias |
Limitations rarely occur alone. If you see one there are many you do not see or appreciate. Limitation s components interact with their own and other limitations, leading to complex connections interacting and discounting the reliability of findings. By how much is context dependent: but it is not zero. Limitations are variables influencing outcomes. As the number of limitations increases, the reliability of the conclusions decreases. How many variables (limitations) does it take to nullify the claims of the findings? The weight and influence of each limitation, its aggregate components, and interconnectedness have an unknown magnitude and effect. The result is a disorderly concoction of hearsay explanations. Table 4 is an example of just two single explanation limitations and some of their components illustrating the complex compounding of their effects on each other.
An Example of Interactions between Only Two Limitations and Some of Their Components Causes 16 Interactions
Retrospective Study | Small Sample Size |
---|---|
The novelty of this paper on limitations in medical science is not the identification of research article limitations or their number or frequency; it is the recognition of the multiplier effect(s) limitations and the influence they have on diminishing any conclusion(s) the paper makes. It is possible that limitations contribute to the inability of studies to replicate and why so many are one-time occurrences. Therefore, the generalizability statement that should be given to all readers is BEWARE THERE IS A REDUCTION EFFECT ON THE CONCLUSIONS IN THIS ARTICLE BECAUSE OF ITS LIMITATIONS.
Journals accept studies done with too many limitations, creating forking path situations resulting in an enormous number of possible associations of individual data points as multiple comparisons. 79 The result is confusion, a muddled mess caused by interactions of limitations undermining the ability to make valid inferences. Authors know and acknowledge but rarely explain them or their influence. They also use incomplete and biased databases, biased methods, small sample sizes, and not eliminating confounders, etc., but persist in doing research with these circumstances. Why is that? Is it because when limitations are acknowledged, authors feel justified in their conclusions? It wasn’t my poor research design; it was the limitation(s). How do peer reviewers score and analyze these papers without a method to discount the findings and conclusions in the presence of limitations? What are the calculus editors use to justify papers with multiple limitations, reaching compromised or spurious conclusions? How much caution or warning should a journal say must be taken in interpreting article results? How much? Which results? When? Under what circumstance(s)?
Since a critical component of research is its limitations, the quality and rigor of research are largely defined by, 75 these constraints making it imperative that limitations be exposed and explained. All studies have limitations admitted to or not, and these limitations influence outcomes and conclusions. Unfortunately, they are given insufficient attention, accompanied by feeble excuses, but they all matter. The degrees of freedom of each limitation influence every other limitation, magnifying their ramifications and confusion. Limitations of a scientific article must put the findings in context so the reader can judge the validity and strength of the conclusions. While authors acknowledge the limitations of their study, they influence its legitimacy.
Not only are limitations not properly acknowledged in the scientific literature, 8 but their implications, magnitude, and how they affect a conclusion are not explained or appreciated. Authors work at claiming their work and methods “overcome,” “avoid,” or “circumvent” limitations. Limitations are explained away as “Failure to prove a difference does not prove lack of a difference.” 60 Sample size, bias, confounders, bad data, etc. are not what they seem and do not sully the results. The implication is “trust me.” But that’s not science. Limitations create cognitive distortions and framing (misperception of reality) for the authors and readers. Data in studies with limitations is data having limitations. It was real but tainted.
Limitations are not a trivial aspect of research. It is a tangible something, positive or negative, put into a data set to be analyzed and used to reach a conclusion. How did these extra somethings, known unknowns, not knowns, and unknown knowns, affect the validity of the data set and conclusions? Research presented with the vagaries of explicit limitations is intensified by additional limitations and their component effects on top of the first limitation s , quickly diluting any conclusion making its dependability questionable.
This study’s analysis of limitations in medical articles averaged 3.9% per article for JSLS and 7.4% for Surg Endosc . Authors admit to some and are aware of limitations, but not all of them and discount or leave out others. Limitations were often presented with misleading and hedging language. Authors do not give weight or suggest the percent discount limitations have on the reliance of conclusion(s). Since limitations influence findings, reliability, generalizability, and validity without knowing the magnitude of each and their context, the best that can be said about the conclusions is that they are specific to the study described, context-driven, and suspect.
Limitations mean something is missing, added, incorrect, unseen, unaware of, fabricated, or unknown; circumstances that confuse, confound, and compromise findings and information to the extent that a notice is necessary. All medical articles should have this statement, “Any conclusion drawn from this medical study should be interpreted considering its limitations. Readers should exercise caution, use critical judgement, and consult other sources before accepting these findings. Findings may not be generalizable regardless of sample size, composition, representative data points, and subject groups. Methodologic, analytic, and data collection may have introduced biases or limitations that can affect the accuracy of the results. Controlling for confounding variables, known and unknown, may have influenced the data and/or observations. The accuracy and completeness of the data used to draw a conclusion may not be reliable. The study was specific to time, place, persons, and prevailing circumstances. The weight of each of these factors is unknown to us. Their effect may be limited or compounded and diminish the validity of the proposed conclusions.”
This study and findings are limited and constrained by the limitations of the articles reviewed. They have known and unknown limitations not accounted for, missing data, small sample size, incongruous populations, internal and external validity concerns, confounders, and more. See Tables 2 and and 3 . 3 . Some of these are correctible by the author’s awareness of the consequences of limitations, making plans to address them in the methodology phase of hypothesis assessment and performance of the research to diminish their effects.
Limitations in research articles are expected, but they can be reduced in their effect so that conclusions are closer to being valid. Limitations introduce elements of ignorance and suspicion. They need to be explained so their influence on the believability of the study and its conclusions is closer to meeting construct, content, face, and criterion validity. As the number of limitations increases, common sense, skepticism, study component acceptability, and understanding the ramifications of each limitation are necessary to accept, discount, or reject the author’s findings. As the number of hedging and weasel words used to explain conclusion(s) increases, believability decreases, and raises suspicion regarding claims. Establishing a systematic limitation scoring index limitations for authors, editors, reviewers, and readers and recognizing their cumulative effects will result in a clearer understanding of research content and legitimacy.
How to calculate the Limitation Index Score (LIS). See Tables 5 – 5 . Each limitation admitted to by authors in the article equals (=) one (1) point. Limitations may be generally stated by the author as a broad category, but can have multiple components, such as a retrospective study with these limitation components: 1. data or recall not accurate, 2. data missing, 3. selection bias not controlled, 4. confounders not controlled, 5. no randomization, 6. no blinding, 7. difficult to establish cause and effect, and 8. cannot draw a conclusion of causation. For each component, no matter how many are not explained and corrected, add an additional one (1) point to the score. See Table 2 .
The Limitation Scoring Index is a Numeric Limitation Risk Assessment Score to Rank Risk Categories and Discounting Probability of Validity and Conclusions. The More Limitations in a Study, the Greater the Risk of Unreliable Findings and Conclusions
Number of limitations | Word description of discounting | Proposed percent discounting of conclusions | Outcome probability | Increasing level of less reliable conclusions |
---|---|---|---|---|
0 | Unknown unknowns | 1–10% | May have valid conclusion(s) | Warning |
1–2 | Some | 15–25% | ↓ | ↓ |
3–4 | Probable | 35–45% | ↓ | Caution |
5–6 | Likely | 70–80% | ↓ | ↓ |
7–8 | Highly likely | 85–95% | ↓ | ↓ |
>8 | Certain | 97–100% | Very questionable conclusion(s) | Danger |
Limitations May Be Generally Stated by the Author but Have Multiple Components, Such as a Retrospective Study Having Disadvantage Components of 1. Data or Recall Not Accurate, 2. Data Missing, 3. Selection Bias Not Controlled, 4. Confounders Not Controlled, 5. No Randomization, 6. No Blinding, 7 Difficult to Establish Cause and Effect, 8. Results Are Hypothesis Generating, and 9. Cannot Draw a Conclusion of Causation. For Each Component, Not Explained and Corrected, Add an Additional One (1) Point Is Added to the Score. Extra Blanks Are for Additional Limitations
One point for each limitation | |
---|---|
One additional point for each component of each limitation | |
Retrospective study | |
Small sample size | |
Not generalizable | |
Selection bias | |
Not controlling for confounders | |
Not controlling for comorbidities | |
Incomplete or missing data | |
No long-term follow-up | |
Reporting errors | |
Measurement problems | |
Study design problems | |
Lack of standardized treatment | |
Subtotal for Table 2 |
An Automatic 2 Points is Added for Meta-Analysis Studies Since They Have All the Retrospective Detrimental Components. 44 Data from Insurance, State, National, Medicare, and Medicaid, Because of Incorrect Coding, Over Reporting, and Under-Reporting, Etc. Each Component of the Limitation Adds One Additional Point. For Surveys and Questionnaires Add One Additional Point for Each Bias. Extra Blanks Are for Additional Limitations
Two points for these limitations | |
---|---|
One additional point for each limitation and one additional point for each limitation component. | |
Meta-analysis | |
Data from Medicare, Medicaid, insurance companies, disease, state, and national databases | |
Surveys and questionnaires | |
Each limitation not admitted to | |
Subtotal for Table 3 |
Automatic Five (5) Points for Manufacturer and User Facility Device Experience (MAUDE) Database Articles. The FDA Access Data Site Says Submissions Can Be “Incomplete, Inaccurate, Untimely, Unverified, or Biased” and “the Incidence or Prevalence of an Event Cannot Be Determined from This Reporting System Alone Due to Under-Reporting of Events, Inaccuracies in Reports, Lack of Verification That the Device Caused the Reported Event, and Lack of Information” and “DR Data Alone Cannot Be Used to Establish Rates of Events, Evaluate a Change in Event Rates over Time or Compare Event Rates between Devices. The Number of Reports Cannot Be Interpreted or Used in Isolation to Reach Conclusions” 80
Five points for MAUDE based articles | |
---|---|
One additional point for each additional limitation and one point for each of its components. | |
Subtotal for Table 4 |
Total Limitation Index Score
Limitations | Calculation |
---|---|
Subtotal for Table 2 | |
Subtotal for Table 3 | |
Subtotal for Table 4 | |
Total Limitation Index Score |
Each limitation not admitted to = two (2) points. A meta-analysis study gets an automatic 2 points since they are retrospective and have detrimental components that should be added to the 2 points. Data from insurance, state, national, Medicare, and Medicaid, because of incorrect coding, over-reporting, and underreporting, etc., score 2 points, and each component adds one additional point. Surveys and questionnaires get 2 points, and add one additional point for each bias. See Table 3 .
Manufacturer and User Facility Device Experience (MAUDE) database articles receive an automatic five (5) points. The FDA access data site says, submissions can be “incomplete, inaccurate, untimely, unverified, or biased” and “the incidence or prevalence of an event cannot be determined from this reporting system alone due to underreporting of events, inaccuracies in reports, lack of verification that the device caused the reported event, and lack of information” and “MDR data alone cannot be used to establish rates of events, evaluate a change in event rates over time or compare event rates between devices. The number of reports cannot be interpreted or used in isolation to reach conclusions.” 80 See Table 4 . Add one additional point for each additional limitation noted in the article.
Add one additional point for each additional limitation and one point for each of its components. Extra blanks are for additional
limitations and their component scores.
Funding sources: none.
Disclosure: none.
Conflict of interests: none.
Acknowledgments: Author would like to thank Lynda Davis for her help with data collection.
All references have been archived at https://archive.org/web/
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The limitations of a study are the elements of methodology or study design that impact the interpretation of your research results. The limitations essentially detail any flaws or shortcomings in your study. Study limitations can exist due to constraints on research design, methodology, materials, etc., and these factors may impact the findings of your study. However, researchers are often reluctant to discuss the limitations of their study in their papers, feeling that bringing up limitations may undermine its research value in the eyes of readers and reviewers.
In spite of the impact it might have (and perhaps because of it) you should clearly acknowledge any limitations in your research paper in order to show readers—whether journal editors, other researchers, or the general public—that you are aware of these limitations and to explain how they affect the conclusions that can be drawn from the research.
In this article, we provide some guidelines for writing about research limitations, show examples of some frequently seen study limitations, and recommend techniques for presenting this information. And after you have finished drafting and have received manuscript editing for your work, you still might want to follow this up with academic editing before submitting your work to your target journal.
Although limitations address the potential weaknesses of a study, writing about them toward the end of your paper actually strengthens your study by identifying any problems before other researchers or reviewers find them.
Furthermore, pointing out study limitations shows that you’ve considered the impact of research weakness thoroughly and have an in-depth understanding of your research topic. Since all studies face limitations, being honest and detailing these limitations will impress researchers and reviewers more than ignoring them.
Some limitations might be evident to researchers before the start of the study, while others might become clear while you are conducting the research. Whether these limitations are anticipated or not, and whether they are due to research design or to methodology, they should be clearly identified and discussed in the discussion section —the final section of your paper. Most journals now require you to include a discussion of potential limitations of your work, and many journals now ask you to place this “limitations section” at the very end of your article.
Some journals ask you to also discuss the strengths of your work in this section, and some allow you to freely choose where to include that information in your discussion section—make sure to always check the author instructions of your target journal before you finalize a manuscript and submit it for peer review .
There are several reasons why limitations of research might exist. The two main categories of limitations are those that result from the methodology and those that result from issues with the researcher(s).
Limitations of research due to methodological problems can be addressed by clearly and directly identifying the potential problem and suggesting ways in which this could have been addressed—and SHOULD be addressed in future studies. The following are some major potential methodological issues that can impact the conclusions researchers can draw from the research.
Sampling errors occur when a probability sampling method is used to select a sample, but that sample does not reflect the general population or appropriate population concerned. This results in limitations of your study known as “sample bias” or “selection bias.”
For example, if you conducted a survey to obtain your research results, your samples (participants) were asked to respond to the survey questions. However, you might have had limited ability to gain access to the appropriate type or geographic scope of participants. In this case, the people who responded to your survey questions may not truly be a random sample.
When conducting a study, it is important to have a sufficient sample size in order to draw valid conclusions. The larger the sample, the more precise your results will be. If your sample size is too small, it will be difficult to identify significant relationships in the data.
Normally, statistical tests require a larger sample size to ensure that the sample is considered representative of a population and that the statistical result can be generalized to a larger population. It is a good idea to understand how to choose an appropriate sample size before you conduct your research by using scientific calculation tools—in fact, many journals now require such estimation to be included in every manuscript that is sent out for review.
Citing and referencing prior research studies constitutes the basis of the literature review for your thesis or study, and these prior studies provide the theoretical foundations for the research question you are investigating. However, depending on the scope of your research topic, prior research studies that are relevant to your thesis might be limited.
When there is very little or no prior research on a specific topic, you may need to develop an entirely new research typology. In this case, discovering a limitation can be considered an important opportunity to identify literature gaps and to present the need for further development in the area of study.
After you complete your analysis of the research findings (in the discussion section), you might realize that the manner in which you have collected the data or the ways in which you have measured variables has limited your ability to conduct a thorough analysis of the results.
For example, you might realize that you should have addressed your survey questions from another viable perspective, or that you were not able to include an important question in the survey. In these cases, you should acknowledge the deficiency or deficiencies by stating a need for future researchers to revise their specific methods for collecting data that includes these missing elements.
Study limitations that arise from situations relating to the researcher or researchers (whether the direct fault of the individuals or not) should also be addressed and dealt with, and remedies to decrease these limitations—both hypothetically in your study, and practically in future studies—should be proposed.
If your research involved surveying certain people or organizations, you might have faced the problem of having limited access to these respondents. Due to this limited access, you might need to redesign or restructure your research in a different way. In this case, explain the reasons for limited access and be sure that your finding is still reliable and valid despite this limitation.
Just as students have deadlines to turn in their class papers, academic researchers might also have to meet deadlines for submitting a manuscript to a journal or face other time constraints related to their research (e.g., participants are only available during a certain period; funding runs out; collaborators move to a new institution). The time available to study a research problem and to measure change over time might be constrained by such practical issues. If time constraints negatively impacted your study in any way, acknowledge this impact by mentioning a need for a future study (e.g., a longitudinal study) to answer this research problem.
Researchers might hold biased views due to their cultural backgrounds or perspectives of certain phenomena, and this can affect a study’s legitimacy. Also, it is possible that researchers will have biases toward data and results that only support their hypotheses or arguments. In order to avoid these problems, the author(s) of a study should examine whether the way the research problem was stated and the data-gathering process was carried out appropriately.
When you discuss the limitations of your study, don’t simply list and describe your limitations—explain how these limitations have influenced your research findings. There might be multiple limitations in your study, but you only need to point out and explain those that directly relate to and impact how you address your research questions.
We suggest that you divide your limitations section into three steps: (1) identify the study limitations; (2) explain how they impact your study in detail; and (3) propose a direction for future studies and present alternatives. By following this sequence when discussing your study’s limitations, you will be able to clearly demonstrate your study’s weakness without undermining the quality and integrity of your research.
The first step is to identify the particular limitation(s) that affected your study. There are many possible limitations of research that can affect your study, but you don’t need to write a long review of all possible study limitations. A 200-500 word critique is an appropriate length for a research limitations section. In the beginning of this section, identify what limitations your study has faced and how important these limitations are.
You only need to identify limitations that had the greatest potential impact on: (1) the quality of your findings, and (2) your ability to answer your research question.
After identifying your research limitations, it’s time to explain the nature of the limitations and how they potentially impacted your study. For example, when you conduct quantitative research, a lack of probability sampling is an important issue that you should mention. On the other hand, when you conduct qualitative research, the inability to generalize the research findings could be an issue that deserves mention.
Explain the role these limitations played on the results and implications of the research and justify the choice you made in using this “limiting” methodology or other action in your research. Also, make sure that these limitations didn’t undermine the quality of your dissertation .
After acknowledging the limitations of the research, you need to discuss some possible ways to overcome these limitations in future studies. One way to do this is to present alternative methodologies and ways to avoid issues with, or “fill in the gaps of” the limitations of this study you have presented. Discuss both the pros and cons of these alternatives and clearly explain why researchers should choose these approaches.
Make sure you are current on approaches used by prior studies and the impacts they have had on their findings. Cite review articles or scientific bodies that have recommended these approaches and why. This might be evidence in support of the approach you chose, or it might be the reason you consider your choices to be included as limitations. This process can act as a justification for your approach and a defense of your decision to take it while acknowledging the feasibility of other approaches.
The following phrases are frequently used to introduce the limitations of the study:
For more articles on research writing and the journal submissions and publication process, visit Wordvice’s Academic Resources page.
And be sure to receive professional English editing and proofreading services , including paper editing services , for your journal manuscript before submitting it to journal editors.
Proofreading & Editing Guide
Writing the Results Section for a Research Paper
How to Write a Literature Review
Research Writing Tips: How to Draft a Powerful Discussion Section
How to Captivate Journal Readers with a Strong Introduction
Tips That Will Make Your Abstract a Success!
APA In-Text Citation Guide for Research Writing
Pearson-Stuttard, J., Kypridemos, C., Collins, B., Mozaffarian, D., Huang, Y., Bandosz, P.,…Micha, R. (2018). Estimating the health and economic effects of the proposed US Food and Drug Administration voluntary sodium reformulation: Microsimulation cost-effectiveness analysis. PLOS. https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1002551
Xu, W.L, Pedersen, N.L., Keller, L., Kalpouzos, G., Wang, H.X., Graff, C,. Fratiglioni, L. (2015). HHEX_23 AA Genotype Exacerbates Effect of Diabetes on Dementia and Alzheimer Disease: A Population-Based Longitudinal Study. PLOS. Retrieved from https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1001853
It is for sure that your research will have some limitations and it is normal. However, it is critically important for you to be striving to minimize the range of scope of limitations throughout the research process. Also, you need to provide the acknowledgement of your research limitations in conclusions chapter honestly.
It is always better to identify and acknowledge shortcomings of your work, rather than to leave them pointed out to your by your dissertation assessor. While discussing your research limitations, don’t just provide the list and description of shortcomings of your work. It is also important for you to explain how these limitations have impacted your research findings.
Your research may have multiple limitations, but you need to discuss only those limitations that directly relate to your research problems. For example, if conducting a meta-analysis of the secondary data has not been stated as your research objective, no need to mention it as your research limitation.
Research limitations in a typical dissertation may relate to the following points:
1. Formulation of research aims and objectives . You might have formulated research aims and objectives too broadly. You can specify in which ways the formulation of research aims and objectives could be narrowed so that the level of focus of the study could be increased.
2. Implementation of data collection method . Because you do not have an extensive experience in primary data collection (otherwise you would not be reading this book), there is a great chance that the nature of implementation of data collection method is flawed.
3. Sample size. Sample size depends on the nature of the research problem. If sample size is too small, statistical tests would not be able to identify significant relationships within data set. You can state that basing your study in larger sample size could have generated more accurate results. The importance of sample size is greater in quantitative studies compared to qualitative studies.
4. Lack of previous studies in the research area . Literature review is an important part of any research, because it helps to identify the scope of works that have been done so far in research area. Literature review findings are used as the foundation for the researcher to be built upon to achieve her research objectives.
However, there may be little, if any, prior research on your topic if you have focused on the most contemporary and evolving research problem or too narrow research problem. For example, if you have chosen to explore the role of Bitcoins as the future currency, you may not be able to find tons of scholarly paper addressing the research problem, because Bitcoins are only a recent phenomenon.
5. Scope of discussions . You can include this point as a limitation of your research regardless of the choice of the research area. Because (most likely) you don’t have many years of experience of conducing researches and producing academic papers of such a large size individually, the scope and depth of discussions in your paper is compromised in many levels compared to the works of experienced scholars.
You can discuss certain points from your research limitations as the suggestion for further research at conclusions chapter of your dissertation.
My e-book, The Ultimate Guide to Writing a Dissertation in Business Studies: a step by step assistance offers practical assistance to complete a dissertation with minimum or no stress. The e-book covers all stages of writing a dissertation starting from the selection to the research area to submitting the completed version of the work within the deadline. John Dudovskiy
It is not unusual for researchers to come across the term limitations of research during their academic paper writing. More often this is interpreted as something terrible. However, when it comes to research study, limitations can help structure the research study better. Therefore, do not underestimate significance of limitations of research study.
Allow us to take you through the context of how to evaluate the limits of your research and conclude an impactful relevance to your results.
Table of Contents
Every research has its limit and these limitations arise due to restrictions in methodology or research design. This could impact your entire research or the research paper you wish to publish. Unfortunately, most researchers choose not to discuss their limitations of research fearing it will affect the value of their article in the eyes of readers.
However, it is very important to discuss your study limitations and show it to your target audience (other researchers, journal editors, peer reviewers etc.). It is very important that you provide an explanation of how your research limitations may affect the conclusions and opinions drawn from your research. Moreover, when as an author you state the limitations of research, it shows that you have investigated all the weaknesses of your study and have a deep understanding of the subject. Being honest could impress your readers and mark your study as a sincere effort in research.
The main goal of your research is to address your research objectives. Conduct experiments, get results and explain those results, and finally justify your research question . It is best to mention the limitations of research in the discussion paragraph of your research article.
At the very beginning of this paragraph, immediately after highlighting the strengths of the research methodology, you should write down your limitations. You can discuss specific points from your research limitations as suggestions for further research in the conclusion of your thesis.
Limitations that are related to the researcher must be mentioned. This will help you gain transparency with your readers. Furthermore, you could provide suggestions on decreasing these limitations in you and your future studies.
Your work may involve some institutions and individuals in research, and sometimes you may have problems accessing these institutions. Therefore, you need to redesign and rewrite your work. You must explain your readers the reason for limited access.
All researchers are bound by their deadlines when it comes to completing their studies. Sometimes, time constraints can affect your research negatively. However, the best practice is to acknowledge it and mention a requirement for future study to solve the research problem in a better way.
Biased views can affect the research. In fact, researchers end up choosing only those results and data that support their main argument, keeping aside the other loose ends of the research.
Before beginning your research study, know that there are certain limitations to what you are testing or possible research results. There are different types that researchers may encounter, and they all have unique characteristics, such as:
Certain restrictions on your research or available procedures may affect your final results or research outputs. You may have formulated research goals and objectives too broadly. However, this can help you understand how you can narrow down the formulation of research goals and objectives, thereby increasing the focus of your study.
Even if your research has excellent statistics and a strong design, it can suffer from the influence of the following factors:
In some cases, it is impossible to collect sufficient data for research or very difficult to get access to the data. This could lead to incomplete conclusion to your study. Moreover, this insufficiency in data could be the outcome of your study design. The unclear, shabby research outline could produce more problems in interpreting your findings.
There are strict guidelines for narrowing down research questions, wherein you could justify and explain potential weaknesses of your academic paper. You could go through these basic steps to get a well-structured clarity of research limitations:
In this section, your readers will see that you are aware of the potential weaknesses in your business, understand them and offer effective solutions, and it will positively strengthen your article as you clarify all limitations of research to your target audience.
Know that you cannot be perfect and there is no individual without flaws. You could use the limitations of research as a great opportunity to take on a new challenge and improve the future of research. In a typical academic paper, research limitations may relate to:
If you formulate goals and objectives too broadly, your work will have some shortcomings. In this case, specify effective methods or ways to narrow down the formula of goals and aim to increase your level of study focus.
If you do not have experience in primary data collection, there is a risk that there will be flaws in the implementation of your methods. It is necessary to accept this, and learn and educate yourself to understand data collection methods.
This depends on the nature of problem you choose. Sample size is of a greater importance in quantitative studies as opposed to qualitative ones. If your sample size is too small, statistical tests cannot identify significant relationships or connections within a given data set.
You could point out that other researchers should base the same study on a larger sample size to get more accurate results.
Writing a literature review is an important step in any scientific study because it helps researchers determine the scope of current work in the chosen field. It is a major foundation for any researcher who must use them to achieve a set of specific goals or objectives.
However, if you are focused on the most current and evolving research problem or a very narrow research problem, there may be very little prior research on your topic. For example, if you chose to explore the role of Bitcoin as the currency of the future, you may not find tons of scientific papers addressing the research problem as Bitcoins are only a new phenomenon.
It is important that you learn to identify research limitations examples at each step. Whatever field you choose, feel free to add the shortcoming of your work. This is mainly because you do not have many years of experience writing scientific papers or completing complex work. Therefore, the depth and scope of your discussions may be compromised at different levels compared to academics with a lot of expertise. Include specific points from limitations of research. Use them as suggestions for the future.
Have you ever faced a challenge of writing the limitations of research study in your paper? How did you overcome it? What ways did you follow? Were they beneficial? Let us know in the comments below!
Setting limitations in our study helps to clarify the outcomes drawn from our research and enhance understanding of the subject. Moreover, it shows that the author has investigated all the weaknesses in the study.
Scope is the range and limitations of a research project which are set to define the boundaries of a project. Limitations are the impacts on the overall study due to the constraints on the research design.
Limitation in research is an impact of a constraint on the research design in the overall study. They are the flaws or weaknesses in the study, which may influence the outcome of the research.
1. Limitations in research can be written as follows: Formulate your goals and objectives 2. Analyze the chosen data collection method and the sample sizes 3. Identify your limitations of research and explain their importance 4. Provide the necessary depth, explain their nature, and justify your study choices 5. Write how you are suggesting that it is possible to overcome them in the future
Excellent article ,,,it has helped me big
This is very helpful information. It has given me an insight on how to go about my study limitations.
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the topic is well covered
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If you are working on a thesis, dissertation, or other formal research project, chances are your advisor or committee will ask you to address the delimitations of your study. When faced with this request, many students respond with a puzzled look and then go on to address what are actually the study’s limitations.
In a previous article , we covered what goes into the limitations, delimitations, and assumptions sections of your thesis or dissertation. Here, we will dive a bit deeper into the differences between limitations and delimitations and provide some helpful tips for addressing them in your research project—whether you are working on a quantitative or qualitative study.
Acknowledging Weaknesses vs. Defining Boundaries
These concepts are easy to get confused because both limitations and delimitations restrict (or limit) the questions you’ll be able to answer with your study, most notably in terms of generalizability.
However, the biggest difference between limitations and delimitations is the degree of control you have over them—that is, how much they are based in conscious, intentional choices you made in designing your study.
Limitations occur in all types of research and are, for the most part, outside the researcher’s control (given practical constraints, such as time, funding, and access to populations of interest). They are threats to the study’s internal or external validity.
Limitations may include things such as participant drop-out, a sample that isn’t entirely representative of the desired population, violations to the assumptions of parametric analysis (e.g., normality, homogeneity of variance), the limits of self-report, or the absence of reliability and validity data for some of your survey measures.
Limitations can get in the way of your being able to answer certain questions or draw certain types of inferences from your findings. Therefore, it’s important to acknowledge them upfront and make note of how they restrict the conclusions you’ll be able to draw from your study. Frequently, limitations can get in the way of our ability to generalize our findings to the larger populations or to draw causal conclusions, so be sure to consider these issues when you’re thinking about the potential limitations of your study.
Delimitations are also factors that can restrict the questions you can answer or the inferences you can draw from your findings. However, they are based on intentional choices you make a priori (i.e., as you’re designing the study) about where you’re going to draw the boundaries of your project. In other words, they define the project’s scope.
Like limitations, delimitations are a part of every research project, and this is not a bad thing. In fact, it’s very important! You can’t study everything at once. If you try to do so, your project is bound to get huge and unwieldy, and it will become a lot more difficult to interpret your results or come to meaningful conclusions with so many moving parts. You have to draw the line somewhere, and the delimitations are where you choose to draw these lines.
One of the clearest examples of a delimitation that applies to almost every research project is participant exclusion criteria. In conducting either a quantitative or a qualitative study, you will have to define your population of interest. Defining this population of interest means that you will need to articulate the boundaries of that population (i.e., who is not included). Those boundaries are delimitations.
For example, if you’re interested in understanding the experiences of elementary school teachers who have been implementing a new curriculum into their classrooms, you probably won’t be interviewing or sending a survey to any of the following people: non-teachers, high-school teachers, college professors, principals, parents of elementary school children, or the children themselves. Furthermore, you probably won’t be talking to elementary school teachers who have not yet had the experience of implementing the curriculum in question. You would probably only choose to gather data from elementary school teachers who have had this experience because that is who you’re interested in for the purposes of your study. Perhaps you’ll narrow your focus even more to elementary school teachers in a particular school district who have been teaching for a particular length of time. The possibilities can go on. These are choices you will need to make, both for practical reasons (i.e., the population you have access to) and for the questions you are trying to answer.
Of course, for this particular example, this does not mean that it wouldn’t be interesting to also know what principals think about the new curriculum. Or parents. Or elementary school children. It just means that, for the purposes of your project and your research questions, you’re interested in the experience of the teachers, so you’re excluding anyone who does not meet those criteria. Having delimitations to your population of interest also means that you won’t be able to answer any questions about the experiences of those other populations; this is ok because those populations are outside of the scope of your project . As interesting as their experiences might be, you can save these questions for another study. That is the part of the beauty of research: there will always be more studies to do, more questions to ask. You don’t have to (and can’t) do it all in one project.
Continuing with the previous example, for instance, let’s suppose that the problem you are most interested in addressing is the fact that we know relatively little about elementary school teachers’ experiences of implementing a new curriculum. Perhaps you believe that knowing more about teachers’ experiences could inform their training or help administrators know more about how to support their teachers. If the identified problem is our lack of knowledge about teachers’ experiences, and your research questions focus on better understanding these experiences, that means that you are choosing not to focus on other problems or questions, even those that may seem closely related. For instance, you are not asking how effective the new curriculum is in improving student test scores or graduation rates. You might think that would be a very interesting question, but it will have to wait for another study. In narrowing the focus of your research questions, you limit your ability to answer other questions, and again, that’s ok. These other questions may be interesting and important, but, again, they are beyond the scope of your project .
Common Examples of Limitations
While each study will have its own unique set of limitations, some limitations are more common in quantitative research, and others are more common in qualitative research.
In quantitative research, common limitations include the following:
– Participant dropout
– Small sample size, low power
– Non-representative sample
– Violations of statistical assumptions
– Non-experimental design, lack of manipulation of variables, lack of controls
– Potential confounding variables
– Measures with low (or unknown) reliability or validity
– Limits of an instrument to measure the construct of interest
– Data collection methods (e.g., self-report)
– Anything else that might limit the study’s internal or external validity
In qualitative research, common limitations include the following:
– Lack of generalizability of findings (not the goal of qualitative research, but still worth mentioning as a limitation)
– Inability to draw causal conclusions (again, not the goal of qualitative research, but still worth mentioning)
– Researcher bias/subjectivity (especially if there is only one coder)
– Limitations in participants’ ability/willingness to share or describe their experiences
– Any factors that might limit the rigor of data collection or analysis procedures
Common Examples of Delimitations
As noted above, the two most common sources of delimitations in both quantitative and qualitative research include the following:
– Inclusion/exclusion criteria (or how you define your population of interest)
– Research questions or problems you’ve chosen to examine
Several other common sources of delimitations include the following:
– Theoretical framework or perspective adopted
– Methodological framework or paradigm chosen (e.g., quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-methods)
– In quantitative research, the variables you’ve chosen to measure or manipulate (as opposed to others)
Whether you’re conducting a quantitative or qualitative study, you will (hopefully!) have chosen your research design because it is well suited to the questions you’re hoping to answer. Because these questions define the boundaries or scope of your project and thus point to its delimitations, your research design itself will also be related to these delimitations.
Questions to Ask Yourself
As you are considering the limitations and delimitations of your project, it can be helpful to ask yourself a few different questions.
Questions to help point out your study’s limitations :
1. If I had an unlimited budget, unlimited amounts of time, access to all possible populations, and the ability to manipulate as many variables as I wanted, how would I design my study differently to be better able to answer the questions I want to answer? (The ways in which your study falls short of this will point to its limitations.)
2. Are there design issues that get in the way of my being able to draw causal conclusions?
3. Are there sampling issues that get in the way of my being able to generalize my findings?
4. Are there issues related to the measures I’m using or the methods I’m using to collect data? Do I have concerns about participants telling the truth or being able to provide accurate responses to my questions?
5. Are there any other factors that might limit my study’s internal or external validity?
Questions that help point out your study’s delimitations :
1. What are my exclusion criteria? Who did I not include in my study, and why did I make this choice?
2. What questions did I choose not to address in my study? (Of course, the possibilities are endless here, but consider related questions that you chose not to address.)
3. In what ways did I narrow the scope of my study in order to hone in on a particular issue or question?
4. What other methodologies did I not use that might have allowed me to answer slightly different questions about the same topic?
How to Write About Limitations and Delimitations
Remember, having limitations and delimitations is not a bad thing. They’re present in even the most rigorous research. The important thing is to be aware of them and to acknowledge how they may impact your findings or the conclusions you can draw.
In fact, writing about them and acknowledging them gives you an opportunity to demonstrate that you can think critically about these aspects of your study and how they impact your findings, even if they were out of your control.
Keep in mind that your study’s limitations will likely point to important directions for future research. Therefore, when you’re getting ready to write about your recommendations for future research in your discussion, remember to refer back to your limitations section!
As you write about your delimitations in particular, remember that they are not weaknesses, and you don’t have to apologize for them. Good, strong research projects have clear boundaries. Also, keep in mind that you are the researcher and you can choose whatever delimitations you want for your study. You’re in control of the delimitations. You just have to be prepared—both in your discussion section and in your dissertation defense itself—to justify the choices you make and acknowledge how these choices impact your findings.
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Whether you’re a veteran researcher with years of experience under your belt or a novice to the field that’s feeling overwhelmed with where to start, you must understand that every study has its limitations. These are restrictions that arise from the study’s design, or the methodology implemented during the testing phase. Unfortunately, research limitations will always exist due to the subjective nature of testing a hypothesis. We’ve compiled some helpful information below on how to identify and accept research limitations and use them to your advantage. Essentially, we’ll show you how to make lemonade (a brilliant piece of academic work ) from the lemons you receive (the constraints your study reveals).
So, let’s dive straight in, shall we? It’s always beneficial (and good practice) to disclose your research limitations . A common thought is that divulging these shortcomings will undermine the credibility and quality of your research. However, this is certainly not the case— stating the facts upfront not only reinforces your reputation as a researcher but also lets the assessor or reader know that you’re confident and transparent about the results and relevance of your study, despite these constraints.
Additionally, it creates a gap for more research opportunities, where you can analyze these limitations and determine how to incorporate or address them in a new batch of tests or create a new hypothesis altogether. Another bonus is that it helps readers to understand the optimum conditions for how to apply the results of your testing. This is a win-win, making for a far more persuasive research paper .
Now that you know why you should clarify your research limitations, let’s focus on which ones take precedence and should be disclosed. Any given research project can be vulnerable to various hindrances, so how do you identify them and single out the most significant ones to discuss? Well, that depends entirely on the nature of your study. You’ll need to comb through your research approach, methodology, testing processes, and expected results to identify the type of limitations your study may be exposed to. It’s worth noting that this understanding can only offer a broad idea of the possible restrictions you’ll face and may potentially change throughout the study.
We’ve compiled a list of the most common types of research limitations that you may encounter so you can adequately prepare for them and remain vigilant during each stage of your study.
It’s critical that you choose a sample size that accurately represents the population you wish to test your theory on. If a sample is too small, the results cannot reliably be generalized across a large population.
The method you choose before you commence testing might seem effective in theory, but too many stumbling blocks during the testing phase can influence the accuracy and reliability of the results.
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The methods you utilize to obtain your research—surveys, emails, in-person interviews, phone calls—will directly influence the type of results your study yields.
The nature of the information—and how far back it goes—affects the type of assumptions you can make. Extrapolating older data for a current hypothesis can significantly change the outcome of your testing.
Working within the deadline of when you need to submit your findings will determine the extent of your research and testing and, therefore, can heavily impact your results. Limited time frames for testing might mean not achieving the scope of results you were originally looking for.
Your study may require equipment and other resources that can become extremely costly. Budget constraints may mean you cannot acquire advanced software, programs, or travel to multiple destinations to interview participants. All of these factors can substantially influence your results.
So, now that you know how to determine your research limitations and the types you might experience, where should you document it? It’s commonly disclosed at the beginning of your discussion section , so the reader understands the shortcomings of your study before digging into the juicy bit—your findings. Alternatively, you can detail the constraints faced at the end of the discussion section to emphasize the requirements for the completion of further studies.
We hope this post will prepare you for some of the pitfalls you may encounter when conducting and documenting your research. Once you have a first draft ready, consider submitting a free sample to us for proofreading to ensure that your writing is concise and error-free and your results—despite their limitations— shine through.
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What they are and how they’re different (with examples)
By: Derek Jansen (MBA) | Expert Reviewed By: David Phair (PhD) | September 2022
If you’re new to the world of research, you’ve probably heard the terms “ research limitations ” and “ research delimitations ” being thrown around, often quite loosely. In this post, we’ll unpack what both of these mean, how they’re similar and how they’re different – so that you can write up these sections the right way.
Let’s start with the most important takeaway point of this post – research limitations and research delimitations are not the same – but they are related to each other (we’ll unpack that a little later). So, if you hear someone using these two words interchangeably, be sure to share this post with them!
Research limitations are, at the simplest level, the weaknesses of the study , based on factors that are often outside of your control as the researcher. These factors could include things like time , access to funding, equipment , data or participants . For example, if you weren’t able to access a random sample of participants for your study and had to adopt a convenience sampling strategy instead, that would impact the generalizability of your findings and therefore reflect a limitation of your study.
Research limitations can also emerge from the research design itself . For example, if you were undertaking a correlational study, you wouldn’t be able to infer causality (since correlation doesn’t mean certain causation). Similarly, if you utilised online surveys to collect data from your participants, you naturally wouldn’t be able to get the same degree of rich data that you would from in-person interviews .
Simply put, research limitations reflect the shortcomings of a study , based on practical (or theoretical) constraints that the researcher faced. These shortcomings limit what you can conclude from a study, but at the same time, present a foundation for future research . Importantly, all research has limitations , so there’s no need to hide anything here – as long as you discuss how the limitations might affect your findings, it’s all good.
Alright, now that we’ve unpacked the limitations, let’s move on to the delimitations .
Research delimitations are similar to limitations in that they also “ limit ” the study, but their focus is entirely different. Specifically, the delimitations of a study refer to the scope of the research aims and research questions . In other words, delimitations reflect the choices you, as the researcher, intentionally make in terms of what you will and won’t try to achieve with your study. In other words, what your research aims and research questions will and won’t include.
As we’ve spoken about many times before, it’s important to have a tight, narrow focus for your research, so that you can dive deeply into your topic, apply your energy to one specific area and develop meaningful insights. If you have an overly broad scope or unfocused topic, your research will often pull in multiple, even opposing directions, and you’ll just land up with a muddy mess of findings .
So, the delimitations section is where you’ll clearly state what your research aims and research questions will focus on – and just as importantly, what they will exclude . For example, you might investigate a widespread phenomenon, but choose to focus your study on a specific age group, ethnicity or gender. Similarly, your study may focus exclusively on one country, city or even organization. As long as the scope is well justified (in other words, it represents a novel, valuable research topic), this is perfectly acceptable – in fact, it’s essential. Remember, focus is your friend.
Ok, so let’s recap.
Research limitations and research delimitations are related in that they both refer to “limits” within a study. But, they are distinctly different. Limitations reflect the shortcomings of your study, based on practical or theoretical constraints that you faced.
Contrasted to that, delimitations reflect the choices that you made in terms of the focus and scope of your research aims and research questions. If you want to learn more about research aims and questions, you can check out this video post , where we unpack those concepts in detail.
This post was based on one of our popular Research Bootcamps . If you're working on a research project, you'll definitely want to check this out ...
Good clarification of ideas on how a researcher ought to do during Process of choice
Thank you so much for this very simple but explicit explanation on limitation and delimitation. It has so helped me to develop my masters proposal. hope to recieve more from your site as time progresses
Thank you for this explanation – very clear.
Thanks for the explanation, really got it well.
This website is really helpful for my masters proposal
Thank you very much for helping to explain these two terms
I spent almost the whole day trying to figure out the differences
when I came across your notes everything became very clear
thanks for the clearly outlined explanation on the two terms, limitation and delimitation.
Very helpful Many thanks 🙏
Excellent it resolved my conflict .
I would like you to assist me please. If in my Research, I interviewed some participants and I submitted Questionnaires to other participants to answered to the questions, in the same organization, Is this a Qualitative methodology , a Quantitative Methodology or is it a Mixture Methodology I have used in my research? Please help me
How do I cite this article in APA format
Really so great ,finally have understood it’s difference now
Getting more clear regarding Limitations and Delimitation and concepts
I really appreciate your apt and precise explanation of the two concepts namely ; Limitations and Delimitations.
This is a good sources of research information for learners.
thank you for this, very helpful to researchers
Very good explained
Great and clear explanation, after a long confusion period on the two words, i can now explain to someone with ease.
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Academic Writing & Research
An online resource for students and researchers
Every dissertation should include a limitations section in which you recognise the limits and weaknesses of your research, so here are a few tips on what to cover.
Research, by its nature, is a dynamic and iterative process that aims to explore, analyze, and contribute to knowledge in various fields. However, every research endeavour comes with its set of limitations that researchers must acknowledge, address, and navigate. In this blog post, we’ll delve into the common limitations of research and discuss strategies for mitigating their impact on the validity, reliability, and generalizability of findings.
1. sampling limitations:.
While every research endeavour has its limitations, acknowledging and addressing these limitations is crucial for maintaining the integrity, rigour, and credibility of research findings. Also, every dissertation should include a limitations section. By adopting transparent reporting practices, implementing mitigation strategies, conducting sensitivity analyses, leveraging triangulation methods, and considering longitudinal approaches, researchers can navigate common limitations effectively and enhance the robustness and applicability of their research contributions.
Posted by, Glenn Stevens
Glenn is an academic writing and research specialist with 15 years experience as a writing coach and PhD supervisor. Also a qualified English teacher, he previously had an extensive career in publishing. He is currently the editor of this website. Glenn lives in the UK. Contact Glenn
Educational resources and simple solutions for your research journey
The limitations of the study convey to the reader how and under which conditions your study results will be evaluated. Scientific research involves investigating research topics, both known and unknown, which inherently includes an element of risk. The risk could arise due to human errors, barriers to data gathering, limited availability of resources, and researcher bias. Researchers are encouraged to discuss the limitations of their research to enhance the process of research, as well as to allow readers to gain an understanding of the study’s framework and value.
Limitations of the research are the constraints placed on the ability to generalize from the results and to further describe applications to practice. It is related to the utility value of the findings based on how you initially chose to design the study, the method used to establish internal and external validity, or the result of unanticipated challenges that emerged during the study. Knowing about these limitations and their impact can explain how the limitations of your study can affect the conclusions and thoughts drawn from your research. 1
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Researchers are probably cautious to acknowledge what the limitations of the research can be for fear of undermining the validity of the research findings. No research can be faultless or cover all possible conditions. These limitations of your research appear probably due to constraints on methodology or research design and influence the interpretation of your research’s ultimate findings. 2 These are limitations on the generalization and usability of findings that emerge from the design of the research and/or the method employed to ensure validity internally and externally. But such limitations of the study can impact the whole study or research paper. However, most researchers prefer not to discuss the different types of limitations in research for fear of decreasing the value of their paper amongst the reviewers or readers.
Writing the limitations of the research papers is often assumed to require lots of effort. However, identifying the limitations of the study can help structure the research better. Therefore, do not underestimate the importance of research study limitations. 3
All studies have limitations to some extent. Including limitations of the study in your paper demonstrates the researchers’ comprehensive and holistic understanding of the research process and topic. The major advantages are the following:
The limitations of your research can be stated at the beginning of the discussion section, which allows the reader to comprehend the limitations of the study prior to reading the rest of your findings or at the end of the discussion section as an acknowledgment of the need for further research.
There are different types of limitations in research that researchers may encounter. These are listed below:
All possible limitations of the study cannot be included in the discussion section of the research paper or dissertation. It will vary greatly depending on the type and nature of the study. These include types of research limitations that are related to methodology and the research process and that of the researcher as well that you need to describe and discuss how they possibly impacted your results.
Limitations of research due to methodological problems are addressed by identifying the potential problem and suggesting ways in which this should have been addressed. Some potential methodological limitations of the study are as follows. 1
Limitations related to the researcher can also influence the study outcomes. These should be addressed, and related remedies should be proposed.
Limitations are an inherent part of any research study. Issues may vary, ranging from sampling and literature review to methodology and bias. However, there is a structure for identifying these elements, discussing them, and offering insight or alternatives on how the limitations of the study can be mitigated. This enhances the process of the research and helps readers gain a comprehensive understanding of a study’s conditions.
Restrict limitations to what is pertinent to the research question under investigation. The specific limitations you include will depend on the nature of the study, the research question investigated, and the data collected.
Stating the limitations of the research is considered favorable by editors and peer reviewers. Connecting your study’s limitations with future possible research can help increase the focus of unanswered questions in this area. In addition, admitting limitations openly and validating that they do not affect the main findings of the study increases the credibility of your study. However, if you determine that your study is seriously flawed, explain ways to successfully overcome such flaws in a future study. For example, if your study fails to acquire critical data, consider reframing the research question as an exploratory study to lay the groundwork for more complete research in the future.
Strategies to minimize limitations of the research should focus on convincing reviewers and readers that the limitations do not affect the conclusions of the study by showing that the methods are appropriate and that the logic is sound. Here are some steps to follow to achieve this:
Admit limitations openly and, at the same time, show how they do not affect the main conclusions of the study.
Limitations in your research can arise owing to restrictions in methodology or research design. Although this could impact your chances of publishing your research paper, it is critical to explain your study’s limitations to your intended audience. For example, it can explain how your study constraints may impact the results and views generated from your investigation. It also shows that you have researched the flaws of your study and have a thorough understanding of the subject.
The limitations of a study give you an opportunity to offer suggestions for further research. Your study’s limitations, including problems experienced during the study and the additional study perspectives developed, are a great opportunity to take on a new challenge and help advance knowledge in a particular field.
References:
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When completing a study or any other important work, there are different details that you should include to present its comprehensive and clear description. Sometimes you might even need to hire a thesis writer to help you with the whole writing process. Don’t underrate the section with limitations in research. It plays a big role in the entire process. Some students find it difficult to write this part, while others are reluctant to include it in their academic papers. Don’t underestimate the significance of limitations in research to provide readers with an accurate context of your work and enough data to evaluate the impact and relevance of your results. What is the best way to go about them? Keep reading to find out more.
Every research has its limitations. These limitations can appear due to constraints on methodology or research design. Needless to say, this may impact your whole study or research paper. Most researchers prefer to not discuss their study limitations because they think it may decrease the value of their paper in the eyes of the audience.
Remember that it’s quite important to show your study limitations to your audience (other researchers, editors of journals, and public readers). You need to notice that you know about these limitations and about the impact they may have. It’s important to give an explanation of how your research limitations can affect the conclusions and thoughts drawn from your research.
In this guide, you can read useful tips on how to write limitations on your future research. Read great techniques on making a proper limitations section and see examples to make sure you have got an idea of writing your qualitative research limitations. You need to understand that even if limitations show the weaknesses of your future research, including them in your study can make your paper strengthen because you show all the problems before your readers will discover them by themselves.
Apart from this, when the author points out the study limitations, it means that you have researched all the weak sides of your study and you understand the topic deeply. Needless to say, all the studies have their limitations even if you know how to make research design properly. When you’re honest with your readers, it can impress people much better than ignoring limitations at all.
Every research has certain limitations, and it’s completely normal, but you need to minimize their range of scope in the process. Provide your acknowledgment of them in the conclusion. Identify and understand potential shortcomings in your work.
When discussing limitations in research, explain how they impact your findings because creating their short list or description isn’t enough. Your research may have many limitations. Your basic goal is to discuss the ones that relate to the research questions that you choose for a specific academic assignment.
Limitations of your qualitative research can become clear to your readers even before they start to read your study. Sometimes, people can see the limitations only when they have viewed the whole document. You have to present your study limitations clearly in the discussion section of a researh paper . This is the final part of your work where it’s logical to place the limitations section. You should write the limitations at the very beginning of this paragraph, just after you have highlighted the strong sides of the research methodology. When you discuss the limitations before the findings are analyzed, it will help to see how to qualify and apply these findings in future research.
Limitations related to the researcher must also be written and shown to readers. You have to provide suggestions on decreasing these limitations in both your and future studies.
Your study may involve some organizations and people in the research, and sometimes you may get problems with access to these organizations. Due to this, you need to redesign and rewrite your study. You need to explain the cause of limited access to your readers.
Needless to say, all the researchers have their deadlines when they need to complete their studies. Sometimes, time constraints can affect your research negatively. If this happened, you need to acknowledge it and mention a need for future research to solve the main problem.
Some researchers can have biased views because of their cultural background or personal views. Needless to say, it can affect the research. Apart from this, researchers with biased views can choose only those results and data that support their main arguments. If you want to avoid this problem, pay your attention to the problem statement and proper data gathering.
Before you start your study or work, keep in mind that there are specific limitations to what you test or possible research results. What are their types? There are different types that students may encounter and they all have unique features, including:
Specific constraints on your population research or available procedures may affect the final outcomes or results that you obtain.
Even if your research has excellent stats and a strong design, it may suffer from the impact of such factors as:
In some cases, it’s impossible to collect enough data or enrollment is very difficult, and all that under-powers your research results. They may stem from your study design. They produce more issues in interpreting your findings.
There are strict rules to structure this section of your academic paper where you need to justify and explain its potential weaknesses. Take these basic steps to end up with a well-structured section:
They walk your readers through this section. You need them to make it clear to your target audience that you recognize potential weaknesses in your work, understand them, and can point effective solutions.
No one is perfect. It means that your work isn’t beyond possible flaws, but you need to use them as a great opportunity to overcome new challenges and improve your knowledge. In a typical academic paper, research limitations can relate to these points:
Learn to determine them in each one.
Your work has certain shortcomings if you formulate objectives and aims in a very broad manner. What to do in this case? Specify effective methods or ways to narrow your formulation of objectives and aims to increase the level of your study focus.
If you don’t have a lot of experience in collecting primary data, there’s a certain risk that the implementation of your methods has flaws. It’s necessary to acknowledge that.
They depend on the nature of your chosen problem and their significance is bigger in quantitative studies, unlike the qualitative ones. If your sample size is very small, statistical tests will fail to identify important relationships or connections within a particular data set. How to solve this problem? State that other researchers need to base the same study on a larger sample size to end up with more accurate results.
A literature review is a key step in any scientific work because it helps students determine the scope of existing studies in the chosen area. Why should you use the literature review findings? They are a basic foundation for any researcher who must use them to achieve a set of specific objectives or aims. What if there are no previous works? You may face this challenge if you choose an evolving or current problem for your study or if it’s very narrow.
Feel free to include this point as a shortcoming of your work, no matter what your chosen area is. Why? The main reason is that you don’t have long years of experience in writing scientific papers or completing complex studies. That’s why the depth and scope of your discussions can be compromised in different levels compared to scholars with a lot of expertise. Include certain points from limitations in research. Use them as suggestions for the future.
Any research suffers from specific limitations that range from common flaws to serious problems in design or methodology. The ability to set these shortcomings plays a huge role in writing a successful academic paper and earning good grades. What if you lack it? Turn to our professional thesis writers and get their expert consultation on thesis or research paper.
Marketing91
June 12, 2023 | By Hitesh Bhasin | Filed Under: Marketing
Limitations are constraints or restrictions. Therefore, research limitations are constraints or restrictions in research which have been put on the method of your study and the exploration process. Unfortunately, most of the researchers avoid restraints and ignore them.
They do it because they feel that if they follow all the limitations in the research, then the work that they perform will not be valued as much. Every study has its limits, and if you want to improve the accuracy of your work, then the research limitation part should be dedicated to your study.
Every study has its shortcomings and pitfalls and mentioning that your study does not make it worse.
Table of Contents
1. Acknowledge the limitations
It is essential and an excellent habit of acknowledging the limitations of your study rather than getting them pointed by your research guide and reduce your grades. It should not appear that you ignored them.
2. Further research
Acknowledging the limitations of a study means that there is further scope for carrying out research. If your study does not connect your limitations, then you have to ensure at least to explain different ways in which these unanswered questions can become better focused owing to your study.
3. Opportunity
When you acknowledge the limitations of your research, you are provided with an opportunity to show that you have thoroughly given a thought for your research and understood the relevancy of literature that is published about the topic.
It also indicates that you have correctly assessed different methods which are chosen to study the problem. Apart from discovering new knowledge, one of the primary objectives of the process is to confront the assumptions and explore the things that we don’t know.
4. Impact of limitations
Listing all the limitations is one part. Only listing all the limitations does not go well with the readers and leaves your reader wondering if your limitations have impacted the results or not.
Limitations should be evaluated critically, and their overall interpretation and appraisal should be understood. You have to understand and explain in research if those limitations affect your result and if they do, then in what way and to what extent.
Those will help you and your reader to understand the limitations and their effect on the report, properly.
1. Aim and objective
If the aim and objectives are classified and mentioned broadly, then you may face this limitation. You have to be specific when you formulate the research aim and purpose so that it can be narrowed down, and the focus of the study could be increased.
An objective is expected to be clear and concise. The reader should immediately understand the topic without any ambiguity. That is yet another problem – having ambiguous research objectives .
The objectives should be straightforward because many research questions are designed around the purpose of the study.
2. Data collection method
Every researcher may not have extensive experience in the primary data collection. There is a very high chance that the technique could be flawed are the collection of data may have its limitations.
Primary data collection has its limitations in many cases. It is mixed intricately with sample size. If the sample size is not taken accurately, then the researcher could end up taking a considerable time for data collection. If the sample size population is very far from each other, then the collection of data could be cumbersome. I
t also depends on the topic of your research. For example, if your topic of research is about rural population, then you may have to go to a remote place in rural localities to collect data.
At other places, you may use the internet to generate web forms and survey documents and get responses from participants, but in rural areas, the scenario is different. This is why data collection can be a limitation of your research.
3. Sample size:
The sample size is entirely dependent on the research problem. Having a sample size is very small will not help to identify proper relationships between the data.
Having a sample size extensively large is not feasible for a researcher to complete his research that within time. Therefore, with moderate sample size, it is sure they bound to have its limitations. You will not get inaccurate results, but you will not get entirely accurate results as well.
Sample size has a lot of importance in quantitative studies than in qualitative studies.
4. Absence of previous studies:
Every research has a section for literature review. It is, in fact, the most essential part of every research since it enables the researcher to identify the scope of works which have previously been conducted in the same area so far.
A literature review is a foundation for the researcher to write his study and achieve his research objectives. Sometimes there is very less previous research on your topic, and it happens if you have focused either on a too futuristic problem or too narrow problem.
For example, if you choose roles of marketing in artificial intelligence, then you may find that very less, or almost no data is available on it. This is because artificial intelligence is still in its nascent stage, and relating marketing to artificial intelligence would be the too futuristic topic.
5. Discussion scope
The scope of discussion or discussion score is usually a limitation of every research irrespective of the research area or the research topic. This happens because you may not have many years of experience of writing academic papers or of researching such a large size.
This can cause the scope of your discussion to compromise on multiple levels as compared to the work of experienced researchers.
6. Time limit
Many times, every research has a deadline. These deadlines are because why the research may not be complete. The time limit also restricts the collection of primary data.
This is true, especially in time-bound research. For example, if you want to study the long-term side effects of a medicine, then theoretically there could be no time limit check for side-effects.
The side effects could come up at any age of the patient, but because of the time limit that you have, you decide to select only a timeframe of two years to study the long-term side effects. This is a limitation.
7. Financial resources
Many new kinds of research require additional equipment, sophisticated softwares and multiple tools. These tools and equipment make the research more scientific and give a binary outcome for the research. But due to limitations of finances, you may not go through all the equipment which are required.
Apart from the material, some research processes itself need the researcher to go somewhere far off, maybe in different geography to understand better about his research. This is especially true in the case of studies where geography is involved and plays a significant role.
For example, if a researcher in New York wants to study Kiwi birds, then he will have to travel to New Zealand and stay there, which may drastically increase the cost of the research.
In space research costs often rise because of lack of necessary equipment because not everyone can have the latest equipment like NASA or ISRO. This discourages individual researcher from taking up the research, or they have to compromise on the research and make-do with whatever is available.
Following are a few tips on organizing research limitation:
Note down all the limitations of your study. Also, note down your conclusion and answer, how did the limitation affect your outcome. You have to answer all these questions to come up with their importance to your study.
This part of the research should give shortly but in more detail about the things that you have encountered in your research. You have to talk about the importance of limitations of your work and how are they going to affect it.
You don’t have to be embarrassed or scared about it, and neither does it devalue your research. It is perfectly normal for every research to have limitation.
Firstly, you have to write all the restraints that you have. You have to make a proper plan for this and think about how long you would like it. Then you can write a couple of drafts and see the section that will fit in the context.
What kind of mistakes would you try to avoid, ]and how would you do it? You have to give a thought about all the perspectives of your additional studies. Note down the problem which you had and try solving them when you start working on your next research.
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Hitesh Bhasin is the CEO of Marketing91 and has over a decade of experience in the marketing field. He is an accomplished author of thousands of insightful articles, including in-depth analyses of brands and companies. Holding an MBA in Marketing, Hitesh manages several offline ventures, where he applies all the concepts of Marketing that he writes about.
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Understanding the limitations of AI is extremely important both scientifically and ethically. "Bias in an algorithm is defined as a systematic error in its outputs or processes." ( Vicente & Matute, 2023 ) The critical appraisal of the bias and correctness of the results of using AI is essential. In terms of results you receive, consider of your results. Below you will find an example framework for evaluating the limitations and biases of AI tools.
The following framework is meant to guide users in critically assessing the use and output of AI tools.
Does the responsible creator have a stake in the information that is produced? Do they have the proper credentials/transparency to reliably provide results? | |
Why was the AI created and why are they sharing information about it? | |
Are there biases in the machine language model being used or the data it is training on? Have any ethical issues been raised about this product? | |
Who owns this? Private company, government or academic institution? | |
Which machine language model is being used and how is it being trained? Does it rely on human intervention? |
Source: Hervieux, S. & Wheatley, A. (2020). The ROBOT test [Evaluation tool]. The LibrAIry.
Undergraduate students in need of assistance, please contact: .
Research-oriented business schools face a major challenge: How can they measure faculty research performance in ways that are fair, transparent, mission-aligned, and representative of the impact of each faculty member’s contributions?
Many institutions, especially those where research is an important part of their missions, address this challenge by rewarding only a narrow set of intellectual contributions, leaving faculty to pursue scholarship outside these parameters at their own professional risk. This reality affects deans, tenured professors, tenure-track faculty, doctoral students, and any other students or staff who conduct research as part of their jobs or degree programs.
In many ways, business schools are stuck in a trap that they have made for themselves. In exchange for a straightforward way to measure faculty intellectual contributions, they willingly choose to evaluate faculty based on a journal’s average citations across all articles, not on an individual article’s quality and impact. As a result, our collective discourse about the value of research has shifted to focus more on journal list rankings than on the quality, value, and impact of research.
But this system is not sustainable. For business schools to secure their long-term future and demonstrate their value outside a narrow academic world, it is essential that they break out of this self-perpetuating trap. But doing so will require courage, nonconformity, and systematic effort.
Over the past few decades, business education and other disciplines have shifted to relying on journal lists, sometimes exclusively, to evaluate the scholarly performance of their faculty members and departments. The practice has become so deeply embedded in higher education that it has become costly for schools and faculty members to end, or even reduce, their reliance on journal lists.
The lists most commonly used for this purpose are wide-ranging. Some categorize journals into quartiles, grades, or similar measures, such as the Academic Journal Guide compiled by the Chartered Association of Business Schools (CABS) in the U.K. or the lists that are part of the Social Sciences Citation Index from Clarivate Analytics.
Other resources offer a single list of acceptable journals, such as the Financial Times Top 50 Journals list. There also is ShanghaiRanking’s Global Ranking of Academic Subjects , which selects 50 journals each in the disciplines of business administration, management, and finance, as well as 25 each in public administration and hospitality and tourism management.
In exchange for a straightforward way to measure faculty intellectual contributions, business schools willingly choose to evaluate faculty based on a journal’s average citations across all articles. But this system is not sustainable.
Most lists measure journal quality by the average number of citations their articles receive—a metric originally intended to help libraries prioritize their journal purchasing decisions. However, many educational institutions have converted journal lists into a way to measure the value of individual intellectual contributions. Variation in citations among articles is very high, making journal lists an extremely unreliable way to judge the quality of a single individual or a scholarly paper.
In other words, using journal-level analytics to judge individual-level performance breaks the rules of good methodology.
AACSB accreditation standards recognize a wide range of intellectual contributions that qualify faculty members as Scholarly Academics. Even so, business schools with research-oriented missions use journal lists to govern their faculty appointments, faculty classification, promotion and tenure decisions, and contract renewals. Hence, adherence to journal lists has become a matter of personal survival for many tenure-track faculty.
I saw this in my own institution, Nottingham University Business School China at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC). This focus has been driven partly by university-level policies that have increasingly emphasized publication in highly rated journals on a few lists, such as the CABS list, as well as more science- and technology-oriented lists.
These policies have permeated not only promotion decisions, but also contract renewals (most academics at UNNC are employed on five-year renewable contracts). In practice, the career progression of faculty is based more on the rigid application of the “hard” criteria of journal list metrics and less on “soft” criteria such as teaching quality or the impact and originality of research. As a result, when I served as the dean at the business school, I was forced to let go of some excellent teachers whose publications did not meet these narrow scholarly criteria.
Of course, the use of journal lists as a performance metric makes some sense, because they can serve as a leading indicator of research quality. After all, a poorly researched article is unlikely to be accepted by a quality journal.
However, many highly ranked journals evaluate articles based not only on the objective quality of research, but also on several self-perpetuating metrics. For instance, the publication criteria of these journals tend to prioritize sophisticated research methods and conventional conceptual approaches.
This encourages scholars to focus on incremental development of existing theories through quantitative research using rigorous statistics. Unfortunately, these statistics can be based on variables that are questionable proxies for what they are supposedly measuring.
Moreover, highly ranked journals can have lengthy publication cycles. This means that research on current developments in a fast-changing business world will likely be out of date by the time it is published.
Perhaps the most troubling consequence of using journal metrics to evaluate individual performance is that the discourse of research has become based more on a journal’s ranking than on the published research itself. Even the authors of so-called systematic literature reviews tend to use journal rankings rather than paper originality to select which research results to include, which can bring into question the comprehensive nature of these reviews .
The research culture of a business school has become more like that of a sales department looking to hit its targets than of an academic community looking to advance knowledge.
This mindset is being socialized into current and future generations of faculty members, affecting them at all levels of their careers. It starts in doctoral programs, where PhD students are told to focus on journal rankings when selecting what to read. As they look to publish their dissertation results, doctoral candidates are encouraged to submit their work to journals on the lists used by the universities where they want to apply for jobs, whether or not those outlets are appropriate for their research topics.
So, research-oriented academics must play an optimization game in which they balance quantity and quality. They must publish enough articles to get jobs, have their contracts renewed, gain tenure, and avoid performance pressure. Not surprisingly, if they work at institutions that give equal credit for joint authorship of articles, the number of authors per paper inevitably rises.
Overall, the research culture of a business school has become more like that of a sales department looking to hit its targets than of an academic community looking to advance knowledge.
The implications extend into the real world, where few managers read business research because it is hidden behind paywalls and written in language that is inaccessible to nonacademics. As a result, very few studies in business and management have practical significance, either to businesses or to business classrooms.
Within business education, many schools differentiate between faculty who focus on research and those who focus on teaching. In principle, this approach should recognize the different strengths required to produce high-quality research and to deliver excellent education to students at all levels.
In reality, research-oriented faculty often view teaching-oriented faculty as second-class. Similarly, it can be difficult for excellent teachers to be promoted, let alone to have their contributions recognized.
Even research-focused faculty can be negatively affected if their work does not fit with the dominant pattern of academic journal publication. They might not receive the same recognition and workload allowances as their more conventional colleagues. So, while it’s common for business schools to say they value teaching-oriented staff, it’s disappointingly rare for schools to have sound, consistent strategies to reward these individuals.
I strongly believe that reliance on journal lists to measure the quality of faculty research is inappropriate. Moreover, given that AACSB and other associations now require schools to demonstrate the impact of their research, the use of journal lists is of little value in this regard—and is even counterproductive.
Unfortunately, there is no simple solution to this systemic problem. But the first step is to recognize the limited validity and pervasive negative impact of current research metrics. As the 2012 Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) states, academic institutions should “not use journal-based metrics, such as Journal Impact Factors, as a surrogate measure of the quality of individual research articles, to assess an individual scientist’s contributions, or in hiring, promotion, or funding decisions.”
The second step is to apply this recommendation, not just sign the declaration. It’s a step that a growing number of academic institutions are starting to take.
As part of this process, business schools can take the following measures:
Bodies like AACSB are already taking the lead in emphasizing research impact, responsible research, and diverse intellectual contributions. But, ultimately, business schools must choose to take courageous action to develop better systems of research measurement. Otherwise, they will find themselves in a funding crisis as their target audiences turn to institutions whose research has greater relevance beyond academic circles.
This article represents my personal views and not those of any academic institution.
Rachel Treisman
Researchers found 16 different kinds of metals in the tampons they examined, including heavy metals like lead and arsenic. Getty Images hide caption
Researchers have found toxic metals — including arsenic and lead — in over a dozen popular brands of tampons, raising questions about a menstrual hygiene product used by millions of Americans.
Their study, published last week in the scientific journal Environment International , adds to a growing body of research about chemicals found in tampons but is believed to be the first to specifically measure metals.
The negative health effects of heavy metals are well-documented and wide-ranging, including damaging the cardiovascular, nervous and endocrine systems; damaging the liver, kidneys and brain; increasing the risk of dementia and cancer and harming maternal health and fetal development.
“Despite this large potential for public health concern, very little research has been done to measure chemicals in tampons,” lead author Jenni Shearston, a postdoctoral scholar at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, said in a statement .
Shearston led a team of scientists from Columbia University and Michigan State University in examining 30 tampons from across 14 brands and 18 product lines, which they did not name in the study.
The sampling includes products of various absorbencies, listed as “top sellers” by a major online retailer and purchased both online and at stores in New York City, London and Athens between September 2022 and March 2023.
Researchers detected “measurable concentrations” of all 16 metals they were looking for in the tampons, as well as “elevated mean concentrations” of toxic metals including lead, arsenic and cadmium.
The study says there are several ways metals could get into tampons. Raw materials like cotton and rayon could be contaminated by water, air or soil during production, while metals may in some cases be added intentionally in the manufacturing process either for odor control, pigment or as an antibacterial agent.
The exact amount of metals varied among the tampons, based on which region they were purchased from, whether they were made of organic or non-organic material and on store- versus name-brands, according to the study.
“Lead concentrations were higher in non-organic tampons while arsenic was higher in organic tampons,” it added. “No category had consistently lower concentrations of all or most metals.”
Researchers say the study marks an important first step in confirming the presence of toxic metals in tampons, which are used by an estimated 52% to 86% of menstruating people in the U.S.
But it doesn’t give them enough information to definitively link the metals to negative health effects.
They say more studies are needed to determine to what extent such metals might “leach out of tampons” and into peoples’ bodies. They’re calling not only for more research, but also for stronger regulations.
The fda misses its own deadline to propose a ban on formaldehyde from hair products.
“I really hope that manufacturers are required to test their products for metals, especially for toxic metals,” Shearston said. “It would be exciting to see the public call for this, or to ask for better labeling on tampons and other menstrual products.”
In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) classifies tampons as medical devices and regulates their safety. However, there is no requirement to test tampons for chemical contaminants, and the FDA only recommends that tampons not contain pesticide residue or dioxin.
FDA spokesperson Amanda Hils told NPR that “all studies have limitations,” pointing to the outstanding questions about whether metals are released from tampons and into the bloodstream. Nevertheless, she said the agency is reviewing the research.
“We plan to evaluate the study closely, and take any action warranted to safeguard the health of consumers who use these products,” Hils added.
NPR has reached out to the industry Center for Baby and Adult Hygiene Products (BAHP) and its U.K. counterpart, the Absorbent Hygiene Product Manufacturers Association, for comment.
The BAHP defended the safety of its member companies’ menstrual products in a 2022 statement , acknowledging news coverage on the presence of chemicals and saying “if present, these are not intentionally added by the manufacturers.”
“Some of these impurities are present in the environment or naturally present at much higher levels in common fruits and vegetables or even made by the human body,” it said, adding that its members use “rigorous criteria for quality and hygiene.”
Several experts told NPR that they were not surprised by the researchers’ findings, since other studies over the years have detected potentially harmful chemicals in tampons and other menstrual products, including period underwear .
Catherine Roberts, a health and science journalist at Consumer Reports who has written about tampons, says it’s more surprising that the question wasn’t investigated sooner.
“It’s in the most sensitive part of people's bodies. It's so close to us,” she says. “We use so many [tampons] over a lifetime. It's just wild to me that this is so both so little researched and so little regulated.”
People who menstruate may use more than 7,400 tampons over the course of their reproductive years, the study authors calculated, with each tampon staying in the vagina for several hours at a time.
Dr. Nathaniel DeNicola, an OB-GYN who served as the environmental health expert for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, says the more pressing question is not whether there are chemicals in tampons, but “when does it convert to a dangerous amount?”
Some of the metals found in the tampons — including copper, calcium, iron and zinc — are not only considered safe, but recommended for patients by many doctors, he notes. They would not be damaging in low amounts, but a cumulative amount could have a lasting effect on a person’s endocrine functions.
Trace amounts of arsenic, for example, are sometimes found in food and not considered to be toxic, but high amounts could be fatal. In contrast, as the study notes, “there is no safe exposure level” to lead.
It’s not clear from the study whether people are getting harmful amounts of each metal from tampons, DeNicola says.
“When you start to look at the kind of chemicals that are found in our human system, the reality is that in modern life, we're kind of swimming in them,” he adds. “And it's not to say that it's nothing we should worry about. I mean, I don't think most people hear that and think, ‘Oh, good, I've got more plastic in me.’ But we do have to recognize that small amounts of these chemicals are ubiquitous.”
To Roberts, one of the main takeaways from the study is that the “organic label was clearly not a guarantee that these products would not have heavy metals.” So what are concerned shoppers supposed to do?
Ideally, she says, regulators would mandate heavy-metal testing for tampons to take some of the pressure off consumers.
Until then, she says, there are some measures that tampon users can take to try to reduce their exposure to chemicals in general.
Those include choosing products that don’t contain plastic (including polyester and polypropylene) and avoiding those with fragrances and colorants.
“Something that people who look at this tend to say is that you want to look for period product labels that have fewer and simpler ingredients,” Roberts adds.
DeNicola recommends relying on a combination of “third-party testing and some personal due diligence.” He says there are apps shoppers can use to scan product barcodes and see what chemicals they contain, which could be useful for personal care and feminine hygiene products.
In some cases, people might want to consider alternatives to tampons, such as pads or menstrual cups. The reusable cups have become increasingly popular in recent years, especially given their lower environmental impact compared to tampons.
Other countries have better sunscreens. here's why we can't get them in the u.s..
Some of the downsides of tampons were evident well before this study.
DeNicola notes that plastic from tampons is one of the biggest sources of waste worldwide (and that some brands are more eco-friendly than others). Roberts points out that even if they didn’t contain chemicals, tampons would still pose a risk of toxic shock syndrome, a rare but potentially life-threatening illness (wearers can reduce their risk by changing their tampons frequently).
But DeNicola stresses that this study doesn’t have him running to tell his patients not to use tampons at all.
“I don’t think we’ve established that risk yet,” he says. “I think it’s more of a reality check for the consumers and the public at large, that most products that you’re using do not go through rigorous testing for safety, and most products do have chemicals in there somewhere.”
COMMENTS
Learn what limitations in research are and how to identify, write, and discuss them in your study. Find out the types, examples, purposes, and tips for limitations in research.
Learn the importance and types of limitations in research and how to write them effectively. This article provides guidelines, examples, and tips for acknowledging and addressing the practical or theoretical shortcomings of a study.
6. Limited Scope. "Limited scope" is perhaps one of the most common limitations listed by researchers - and while this is often a catch-all way of saying, "well, I'm not studying that in this study", it's also a valid point. No study can explore everything related to a topic.
The limitations of the study are those characteristics of design or methodology that impacted or influenced the interpretation of the findings from your research. Study limitations are the constraints placed on the ability to generalize from the results, to further describe applications to practice, and/or related to the utility of findings ...
Research limitations are one of those things that students tend to avoid digging into, and understandably so. No one likes to critique their own study and point out weaknesses. Nevertheless, being able to understand the limitations of your study - and, just as importantly, the implications thereof - a is a critically important skill. In this post, we'll unpack some of the most common ...
Common researcher limitations. Here are some of the common researcher limitations you may encounter: Time: some research areas require multi-year longitudinal approaches, but you might not be able to dedicate that much time. Imagine you want to measure how much memory a person loses as they age.
The ideal way is to divide your limitations section into three steps: 1. Identify the research constraints; 2. Describe in great detail how they affect your research; 3. Mention the opportunity for future investigations and give possibilities. By following this method while addressing the constraints of your research, you will be able to ...
1. Defining Research Limitations: Definition: Research limitations are the constraints or shortcomings that affect the scope, applicability, and generalizability of a study. Inherent in Research: Every research project, regardless of its scale or significance, possesses limitations. 2.
iStock, Jacob Wackerhausen. Scientists work with many different limitations. First and foremost, they navigate informational limitations, work around knowledge gaps when designing studies, formulating hypotheses, and analyzing data. They also handle technical limitations, making the most of what their hands, equipment, and instruments can achieve.
Limitations in research articles are expected, but they can be reduced in their effect so that conclusions are closer to being valid. ... and criterion validity. As the number of limitations increases, common sense, skepticism, study component acceptability, and understanding the ramifications of each limitation are necessary to accept ...
Step 1. Identify the limitation (s) of the study. This part should comprise around 10%-20% of your discussion of study limitations. The first step is to identify the particular limitation (s) that affected your study. There are many possible limitations of research that can affect your study, but you don't need to write a long review of all ...
sentence tha. signals what you're about to discu. s. For example:"Our study had some limitations."Then, provide a concise sentence or two identifying each limitation and explaining how the limitation may have affected the quality. of the study. s findings and/or their applicability. For example:"First, owing to the rarity of the ...
Limitations. Limitations of a dissertation are potential weaknesses in your study that are mostly out of your control, given limited funding, choice of research design, statistical model constraints, or other factors. In addition, a limitation is a restriction on your study that cannot be reasonably dismissed and can affect your design and results.
Research Limitations. It is for sure that your research will have some limitations and it is normal. However, it is critically important for you to be striving to minimize the range of scope of limitations throughout the research process. Also, you need to provide the acknowledgement of your research limitations in conclusions chapter honestly.
Limitations in research can be written as follows: Formulate your goals and objectives 2. Analyze the chosen data collection method and the sample sizes 3. Identify your limitations of research and explain their importance 4. Provide the necessary depth, explain their nature, and justify your study choices 5.
While each study will have its own unique set of limitations, some limitations are more common in quantitative research, and others are more common in qualitative research. In quantitative research, common limitations include the following: - Participant dropout. - Small sample size, low power. - Non-representative sample.
Learn why and how to disclose the constraints of your study, such as sample size, methodology, data collection, time and budget. Find out the most common types of research limitations and where to document them in your paper.
Limitations generally fall into some common categories, and in a sense we can make a checklist for authors here. Price and Murnan ( 2004) gave an excellent and detailed summary of possible research limitations in their editorial for the American Journal of Health Education. They discussed limitations affecting internal and external validity ...
Learn the difference between research limitations and delimitations, and how to write them for your study. Research limitations are the weaknesses of the study, while research delimitations are the choices of the study scope.
However, every research endeavour comes with its set of limitations that researchers must acknowledge, address, and navigate. In this blog post, we'll delve into the common limitations of research and discuss strategies for mitigating their impact on the validity, reliability, and generalizability of findings. Five main types of limitations 1.
Writing the limitations of the research papers is often assumed to require lots of effort. However, identifying the limitations of the study can help structure the research better. Therefore, do not underestimate the importance of research study limitations. 3. Opportunity to make suggestions for further research.
You should write the limitations at the very beginning of this paragraph, just after you have highlighted the strong sides of the research methodology. When you discuss the limitations before the findings are analyzed, it will help to see how to qualify and apply these findings in future research. Common Limitations of the Researchers
Following are a few tips on organizing research limitation: 1. Identification of restraints. Note down all the limitations of your study. Also, note down your conclusion and answer, how did the limitation affect your outcome. You have to answer all these questions to come up with their importance to your study. 2.
Instead, authors often note a limitation and then proceed to either: (a) justify the limitation, for example, on the basis of limited resources, or by stating that the limitation is common in the field; or, (b) dismiss the importance of the limitation (particularly by discussing how the limitation is actually a strength; a similar sentiment is ...
Generative Artificial Intelligence for Teaching, Research and Learning; Limitations and Bias; Limitations and Bias. ... "The Ethics of Using Artificial Intelligence in Scientific Research: New Guidance Needed for a New Tool." AI and Ethics (2024): 1-23. Upshall, M. (2022). An AI Toolkit for Libraries. Insights: The UKSG Journal, 35(0), 18.
To reduce common method bias (CMB), we employed procedural remedies in the main survey. Following the guidance provided by measurement experts ... Limitations and avenues for future research. Our study has some limitations that provide avenues for future research. First, the study relied on cross-sectional data, which makes it difficult to ...
Obesity and diabetes are common in people with HFpEF. To study the disease, the researchers created a unique "two-hit" mouse model combining two factors. For the first factor, the researchers used mice genetically lacking a leptin receptor. ... Limitations of the research.
The Limitations of Journal-Based Metrics Article Monday, July 15, 2024 ... Even research-focused faculty can be negatively affected if their work does not fit with the dominant pattern of academic journal publication. ... while it's common for business schools to say they value teaching-oriented staff, it's disappointingly rare for schools ...
A first-of-its-kind study found lead, arsenic and other heavy metals in various tampon brands, but didn't link them to harmful health effects. Experts explain why it matters — and what to watch for.