How to Conduct Research

Forming a Research Question

Learn about the different kinds of research you can conduct. Research happens any time you actively seek out information about a specific topic. You can research to explore a topic you're unfamiliar with, as well as to provide evidence for claims you're making in a presentation or research essay. Research can be collected by gathering your own data, reading online, or using previous research projects to guide your efforts. Exploratory research is done when you read online, getting the quickest summary of the topic at hand. Say you were researching the general topic of "obesity" in the United States. To explore the topic, you might start with a Google search, read the wikipedia page, and find other web entries to get yourself familiar with the topic. What's the issue with obesity in the US? What arguments are being made about it? What other subjects are related to this topic? Health and fitness? Fast-food? What are you interested in researching further? In this kind of research, you're looking for facts.Conduct Research Step 1Bullet1.jpg Supportive research occurs when you find those arguments in academic sources. What are academic sources? Anything that has been published, be it magazines, books, or the online database version of academic research journals. In this kind of research, you're looking for more than facts. You're looking for opinions and arguments of different sorts, related to your topic, that you can use to form an opinion and argument of your own.Conduct Research Step 1Bullet2.jpg

Write down what you don't know. Once you've explored a topic somewhat, there's still a lot you might not know, and this is what you can use to guide your research by forming a research question. Start asking lots of questions and writing them down: When people refer to the "obesity epidemic," what are they referring to exactly? When did it start? Where? What are some possible reasons that it may exist?

Find the controversy and the conversation. Within every topic there is an "issue," at stake. There's something debatable, something controversial about the topic, and that's what you want to spend time researching. The smaller, narrower, and more specific the topic, the better. The topic of obesity in the US might be too large. Look at your own community, state, or region. What are the statistics? How does it compare to other regions? What might account for this? Why? If you're asking and answering these questions, you're well on your way to a solid research topic. Issues of fact don't make good research topics, because there's nothing to research, there's just a fact to look up. A good research question, for instance, wouldn't be "How many people have died from obesity?" but "How does obesity kill?"

Ask a probing question you hope to explore with research. After you've been exploring your topic online and possibly in print, you need to come up with a solid research question to help guide your supportive research. "What policies and attitudes resulted in the sudden rise in obesity in Indiana during the mid-90s?" would be an excellent research topic. It's specific in terms of location, controversy, and topic. It's something you can prove.

Let the research guide your argument, not the other way around. We all have strong opinions about topics, especially controversial ones. It can be tempting to only seek out sources that will validate your opinion, or that will oversimplify the topic, rather than complicate it. As you do your research, seek out a variety of opinions, arguments, and positions, and allow yourself to assemble the strongest possible research, not just the arguments you want to hear.

Exploring Online

Use the Internet for exploratory research. Depending on your topic, the Internet may be a wealth of information or a swampy region of opinions and comment streams. It's got the most current information available instantly, but it can also be difficult to distinguish between good sources and bad sources. Government websites (ones that end in .gov) are good sources of data and definitions. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention site, for instance, has lots of good data about obesity in the US, how the disease affects specific populations, and a breakdown of obesity by region. Non-profits (websites that end in .org) can also be good sources of opinions. Generally, organizations will have an "agenda" and will present a variety of information that backs up their position. This can be good in aiding your research, but can also feature a fair amount of spin on the issues. Blogs and message boards can be good for getting a sense of people's opinions and are good for coming up with ideas for questions you can ask yourself, but they're not good sources of support. They're not good for quotes, in other words.

Use the Internet to define terms quickly. Is obesity a disease? What do we mean by calling it an "epidemic"? These are terms you can and should look up quickly online. By defining your terms and becoming more familiar with the topic--becoming an amateur expert on it, in fact--you'll be more informed when you get to the much more technical kinds of sources you'll need to use for your supportive research.

Use Wikipedia as a resource, but not as a source. One of the great things about a wiki (like wikiHow!) is that the sources referenced throughout the article are available at the bottom of the page for you to explore yourself. These are often better sources of information than the wiki itself, and the organization of the page allows for you to use it as a summary of the information in those sources, rather than a source unto itself.

Find substantial articles and opinions. When you're reading online, look for a mixture of statistics and data, as well as opinions. It's not necessarily helpful to have a ranting blog full of someone's conspiracies about growth hormones in school lunches being a conspiracy to keep kids obese, but there might be something there to inspire you. What is the deal with school lunches? What research has been done? Do more exploring and find a more substantial page with similar information.

Using the Library

Talk to a librarian. The most helpful source of information at libraries isn't books. Often, librarians sit idly by while students struggle on computers not twenty feet away, digging through a difficult swamp of bad information and poor sources. Talk to them! They're here to help. Bring your research question and any research you've done to this point, as well as any particular assignments or project descriptions that you've got with you. If you're doing research for a paper, bring the assignment sheet. Ask at the front desk for research librarians who are on-call for student consultations, or make an appointment yourself with a topic librarian in a specific field. These meetings tend to be very beneficial. You won't waste time trying to negotiate the difficult library databases, and you'll be sure the kind of information you find will be helpful for your project.

Research books, magazines, and databases of information. At the library, you've got more information that you'll know what to do with. Try to find only the most directly-related information. If you're struggling to find good sources, try refining your search terms and looking again. Books obviously make for good overviews of topics. If you're researching obesity, you'll be able to find long-range research studies, expert analysis, and opinions on books in the subject. Magazines and research journals will provide more specialized and technical topics, usually at a somewhat shorter length. They're be lighter on opinion and heavier on dry statistics. Most university libraries use JSTOR or some variant of an academic database that houses research articles by topic. It can be a somewhat difficult database to negotiate, so talk to a librarian for help if you're unsure.

Try a mixture of search terms. It can be frustrating when you first get started at the library in trying to find information directly related to your searches. Learning to search effectively and be diligent with your efforts will pay off in the end. Vary your searches, using quotations around specific searches you want the engine to look for. If you were looking for information about obesity, specifically related to the school lunch program, you might search for: "obesity" "obesity" "school lunch" "school lunch" "junk food in schools" "Indiana obesity" "Indiana school lunches" "weight epidemic" "obesity epidemic"

Don't read every word. Learning to read quickly and skim effectively for important and on-topic information is often the difference between a smooth research project and a frustrating one. If you're getting deep into a really complicated technical topic, a lot of the research can be dry and downright boring. Learning to negotiate the sources quickly will make your job much easier. Read the abstract, if the source has one, or read the introduction to the source to make sure the topic is applicable. If it seems peripheral, put it back and forget about it. You're not doing research to pad your bibliography, you're doing it to support your argument and explore the topic. If you find a good source, skip forward to the end and read the summary. Much of the "meat" of technical research-based sources will be spent presenting their own research, whereas you're mostly concerned with the findings and the argument itself. Often, you can get away with only reading a few paragraphs of a 15 or 20 page research report or book if you read smart. If the source provides excellent support, read the article more closely to get a sense of the argument and the evidence. Use the author's own research to look for more sources.

Take good notes so you'll be able to find information later. There's nothing worse than getting to the writing phase of a research project at not being able to find a particular quote or statistic in the pile of research you've collected. Stay organized while you're researching and take careful notes to refer to later. Take note cards to the library and write down specific quotes on one side of the card and the bibliographical information (Title, author, publication info, and URL if applicable) on the other side of the card.

Don't overwhelm yourself with sources. A good day at the library doesn't necessarily involve stacking up a mountain of 500-page books you'll never read. Research smart, taking notes on the most important parts of the information, and use a manageable number of sources to make your argument and serve your argument. Some students think more sources makes a research paper better. It doesn't. Ideally, you want a balance of "their" voice--meaning the research--and your voice, your argument. A good research project uses the research to form and support an argument, not to act like a ventriloquist dummy, repeating information you read at length.

Conducting Primary Research

Perform primary research for local or subjective subjects, if the project calls for it. Some topics and projects will call for primary research, which means that you'll collect the data yourself. If you've got a really localized topic--like the obesity problem at your University, for instance--you might want to consider creating a short questionnaire or other way of analyzing data of concern to your project.

Find a sample size that works for you. No surveys or questionnaires get to everyone. How many would be enough to get a good sense of the issue. Will it mean anything to gather opinions about obesity form 20 guys in the locker room? Everyone on your dorm floor? 300 people at the football game? Be conscious of bias. Aim for a somewhat distributed mix of men and women, of different ages, socioeconomic backgrounds, and places of birth.

Decide how you'll collect your data. If you're after opinions, a questionnaire is the best and most efficient way of collecting data, but it might not be particularly applicable to your topic. If you're interested in food habits and the availability of junk food in cafeterias, consider posting up beside the lunch line a few days a week and counting the number of students who forego the full lunches in favor of deserts, sodas, or candy. Keep a running tally. Interviews might be good if you have access to experts or other parties involved directly in the topic you're researching. If you want to learn about school lunches, talk to the lunch workers, the principal of your school, or other people who may be involved. Let them know what you're researching and explain the project before talking to them.

Gather your research. Once you've picked a method of collection, distribute your surveys, observe your behaviors, or conduct your interviews and collect your research. Analyze the research and summarize your findings in a way that you'll be able to use it for your research. If your hypothesis about the research ends up being wrong, don't fret. This in and of itself can be a good source of information to present in a project, displaying your commitment to finding out "the truth" of the topic at hand.

Organizing Your Research

Evaluate your sources. When you've collected your research, identify the most persuasive arguments and sources and use them as a jumping off point for your own argument. If you found that districts with schools that feature vending machines experience a 30 percent higher obesity rate, how can you transition that into an argument to support with that research? What does the research say?

Form a thesis statement from your research. A thesis statement is the central thing you hope to prove by presenting your research. It should be debatable and specific, giving you a road map for where the research essay or project might go. A good thesis statement helps the writer as much as the reader, because it gives you a tangible thing to prove with the writing. A bad thesis statement might be "Schools need to do more to avoid obesity." This is vague and difficult to prove. What schools? What do they need to do? "Adams High School could significantly drop the obesity rate in the student body and even the region by removing the vending machines and offering a diversity of healthy choices" does a lot more to present an argument and give you something to prove.

Learn to paraphrase and quote effectively. How do you present your research in a readable way? Paraphrase to translate a source into your own words. These should always be attributed, but not quoted, and are most effective when you need to briefly summarize a position or argument. You've still given credit to the author, so we know the observation isn't your own. In other words, you might write: According to Adams, schools that feature vending machines in the lunch rooms experience an increase in obesity rates. Quote any language directly sourced from the article. This is effectively used when there's something in the wording of the source that you want to emphasize or highlight as part of your research: According to Adams, "The inclusion of vending machines markedly increases the junk food desires of students in those schools, resulting in a chain reaction that rewards their bad choices." Learn to recognize and avoid plagiarism. It can happen accidentally, so you need to learn to recognize the ways in which it occurs and avoid it.

Cite your sources. If you're writing a research essay, you need to learn to effectively provide citation information for each source you reference, be it paraphrase or quotation, throughout the source. Use a parenthetical or footnote citation in the text of your paper, and include a list of references or a Works Cited page at the end of the paper including the publishing information for each source. Your teacher may want you to use a particular style of citation, but the most popular include: MLA APA Chicago Style Turabian