On Tuesday and Wednesday, 22^nd & 23^rd July, 2025, Dr. Fouzia Hadi Ali, Associate Professor /Director of the Career Counselling and Placement Centre University of the Punjab, delivered a talk on “Introduction to Research Methodology” to the participants of the 38^th SMC.

In these lectures her focus remained on providing the understanding to identify a problem, develop appropriate problem statements, and generate a research question. The participants were given an in-depth understanding of writing problem statements by following the Situation-Complication-Question-Answer (SCQA) Model. Moreover, the participants were also informed about the difference between general and specific research questions, thus emphasizing the need for caution while developing relevant problem statements.

Furthermore, the participants were assigned hands-on exercises at a group level, whereby they were required to write a problem statement and research question for a topic assigned to each group. Each group presented the problem statement and research question, during which each was evaluated keeping in view the SCQA Model.

After introduction to the need for a literature review, hands-on exercises were introduced by the worthy speaker which included training on identifying the right sources of literature and methods for filtering the literature based on the problem under investigation. Moreover, the participants were also briefed about the expected analytics required to report findings of any policy research problem. Furthermore, the participants were informed about the referencing style to be used for citing references. In this regard, speaker introduced the American Psychological Association (APA) 7th Edition, providing a detailed discussion to help the participants understand the procedure for adding in-text and end-text citations. Various examples were displayed to help participants understand how to cite references from different sources, such as research articles, newspaper articles, and government documents. Lastly, the participants were briefed about what plagiarism, self-plagiarism, and Al detection parameters are. A sample Turnitin report was reviewed to sensitize participants as to how to read a similarity report and what cautions should be taken regarding overall similarity and single-source similarity.