However, the degree to which these criteria are expected to be fulfilled varies from discipline to discipline and so the meaning of “research” differs from one academic discipline to another. For example, the expectations of the research process are markedly different between the physical and the social sciences. In the physical sciences a research endeavor is expected to be strictly controlled at each step, whereas in the social sciences rigid control cannot be enforced as you are studying the human rather than the material world, and sometimes it is not even demanded.