Research

The Purpose of Research

The purpose of research is to find out about a topic that has significance for you. research allows you to discover and learn all you can about the topic in question. We basically employ two strategies in research: talking to people and searching through printed materials. For the research paper assignment, you will be using only published materials.

Collecting Published Data

In most instances, you will be expected to discover and utilize published data for your research papers for classes and for professional reports in the business world. Even in cases where surveys are your main instruments, you will be expected to include published data from similar surveys and similar research reports.

The biggest problem, for most folks, is that they find the library a daunting pile of data and have no idea where to begin. here are a few steps to ease this process:

• Develop a Search strategy (What types of materials will you need? What types can you exclude? What types are available to you?)
• Determine your Audience (Know who you are writing for and the type of research they will find credible).
• Brainstorm for questions ( make a list of questions that you think your audience would ask about your topic and use this to guide your efforts)
• Review field variant Encyclopedias and dictionaries as a starting point (Be wary of citing them as they demonstrate a lack of effort and thus a lack of credibility on your part).

Once you've set the stage, then set yourself some guidelines:

• How recent must the information be?
• What is the technical information level of my audience?
• What are the key terms? And what are their definitions?
• Look for the key documents; the ones that all the articles seem to mention. Find and read them.

Now...go look. But where?

1. The Computerized Card Catalog.
2. The Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature
3. Computerized Indexes to Journal Abstracts and ERIC
4. Field variant Journal Indexes
5. Government Documents
6. The Net

Then, be certain to record your findings. Copy data and bibliographic information on note cards. Even better, photo copy the articles. Don't rely on your memory.

A word about plagiarism...

It is vital that you give proper credit to the individual whose intellectual property you are borrowing. Toward that end, you must cite the bibliographic information of any work from which you borrowed:

• Quotations
• Ideas
• Concepts
• Phrasing
• Information
• Graphics
• Tables
• Any intellectual property that is not original to you must be correctly credited to its creator.

Even if you "paraphrase" you must cite that data. If you aren't sure, cite it.