Overview

In this chapter, you will learn how to plan for conducting different types of research, depending on your research goals. The chapter starts by giving information on creating a hypothesis and research questions to guide your research. After, you will learn about conducting both primary and secondary research and when to choose one or the other. Different kinds of primary and secondary research are discussed, to help you decide which is best for your specific project and needs. Information for creating your own survey and interview questions is included, as well as tips for evaluating secondary sources.

Introduction

With the abundance of research available today, often the hardest part of research is deciding on the best type of research for a specific project and evaluating its validity and effectiveness. What does it mean to be information literate? Simply stated, information literacy is the ability to locate, evaluate, and implement information efficiently.

In college, you typically find, evaluate, and use information to satisfy the requirements of an assignment. Assignments often specify what kind of information you need and what tools you should use or avoid in your research. For example, your professor may specify that you need three peer-reviewed academic articles and that you should not cite Wikipedia in your final paper. However, in life beyond college—especially the work world—you may not have that kind of specific guidance. You may also be asked to create your own data using techniques such as interviews, surveys, and analysis, instead of using published sources. Using research in the portions of your document that require evidence can strengthen your argument and help answer your research questions. At other times, even if research is not actually necessary, it can be persuasive and sharpen the points you want to make.

Research is much more than doing a simple search engine query and reviewing the first ten results it returns—you need to be information literate to plan and perform your own research efficiently, effectively, and with the needs of your audience in mind. You must also be able to incorporate unbiased, reliable data for your projects.

Research is the systematic process of finding out more about something than you already know, ideally so that you can prove a hypothesis, produce new knowledge and understanding, and make evidence-based decisions. What this process looks like depends on the questions you want to answer and what techniques or strategies you use to find that information. These techniques of collecting, sorting, and analyzing data (or bits of information) are called research methods. The better the tools and more comprehensive the techniques you employ, the more effective your research will be. By extension, the more effective your research is, the more credible and persuasive your argument will be.