Objective
This lesson is designed to teach students the differences between conducting
research for academic and nonacademic audiences and purposes.
Introduction
So your teacher tells you that you have to write a research paper. Where do
you start? You've never done any research before? You might not think so, but
the chances are good that you have indeed done research at some time. Most of
us do research-we just don't think of it in those terms. Let's begin our investigation
into research with a look at the term itself. Just what is this thing called
research?
What is research?
In a nutshell, it's a search for answers. You do research all the time. You
have a date for Saturday night and you really want to make a good impression.
You've decided you want to go to a nice restaurant in a medium price range.
You want good food, good service, and a decent atmosphere. You ask three different
friends what restaurant they would recommend, given your target description.
You look through the ads in the yellow pages to see if something looks interesting.
You browse through the "Dining Out" supplement of your local paper.
You call four different restaurants to ask about their menu and price range.
You evaluate all of the information you received and you make a decision and
call for a reservation. You've just completed a research project! Here's what
you did:
- First, you found an interesting problem that you needed to answer. All research
begins with a question that needs an answer. Your question was "Where
do I take my date?"
- Next you sought information about that problem. You gathered data. Whether
you are designing a study to test a new drug or deciding which brand of washing
machine to buy, you must have data. Your data came from four different sources:
friends, ads, the newspaper, and the restaurants themselves.
- Your next step was to work with your data to analyze or evaluate it. Information
alone won't answer your question. You must do something with it before you
can reach any conclusions.
- That's your next step-drawing conclusions and doing something with those
conclusions. In your case, you made reservations at the restaurant you thought
most likely to make the impression you wanted to make on your date.
If you don't have all of those elements, you haven't done research. Just reading
through the "Dining Out" section of the paper with no particular purpose
behind your reading isn't doing research. Remember: it's asking the question,
gathering the data, analyzing and evaluating the data, and reaching a conclusion
that makes something research.
Two kinds of research: academic and nonacademic research
As with any kind of writing, research writing must include an analysis of the
audience and purpose. Who is asking for this research? Where are you conducting
the research? What is the purpose for the research? Different situations and
environments require different approaches to the problem. For students there
are generally only two primary areas of research: academic and nonacademic.
Nonacademic research
Most of the research we do throughout our lives is nonacademic research.
Typically this kind of research is more informal and less rigidly structured
than academic research. The audience in nonacademic research can be anyone
(For more information about audience, visit Chapter 2: Audience).
You might do personal research, for example, when you buy a new car. You
might do research for your boss when you put together a needs analysis for
a training program for new hires. You might do research for your children
when you help them to figure out their share of your increased insurance
premium once they've bought a car. Each of these circumstances has a different
audience, and the type of research, the extent of the research, and the
final presentation of the research will change with each audience.
When you're doing nonacademic research, the basic process is the same as
the process for doing academic research. You still have to define the problem,
gather your data, analyze that data and reach a conclusion. However, you
might take some shortcuts that you wouldn't be able to take if your research
occurred in a more formal environment like a classroom. When writing for
nonacademic purposes for example, you might not take careful notes in order
to accurately credit all of your sources and you might not be asked to write
a formal report of your research. You've still done research, but your approach
to the project and the end product can be more informal in this setting.
Academic research
Academic research has the same components that you find in all research, but
it differs from nonacademic research in the degree of formality required and
in the conventions that must be observed. The following steps outline the process
you will go through when you conduct research in an academic setting. Notice
that the steps have not changed (except for the formal report of research).
What changes is the way you approach document what you're doing in each step.
1. Define the problem. In academic research you will frequently do
this by constructing research questions. What do you want to know? Those questions
will guide your research and eventually lead you to your thesis. When deciding
just what your research topic will be, remember that you are doing research,
not just writing a report. That means you need to think in terms of opinions
and answers, not just information. What's the difference? If you read three
books and two articles about a particular civil war battle and then simply
write up a paper that summarizes what you've read, you've written a report.
You haven't done any research. However, suppose you read those same sources,
looking to see if writers with a southern heritage and writers with a northern
heritage view the battle in the same way. Now you're going to have to form
an opinion on an aspect of that battle, and your paper will not be just a
summary of what you've read. It will be an analysis and an evaluation of what
you've read as it applies to your research question. Research asks you to
investigate different sources to try to find an answer to a particular question
or to shed some light on a particular issue. It's not just a summary of what
a lot of other people have already written. Here's a research question that
you could use for an academic paper: Do writers with a southern heritage view
the battle of Gettysburg in the same way that writers with a northern heritage
do? In an academic environment, you need to formalize your research questions
by actually writing down specific questions. You'll use these questions to
guide your research and analysis.
2. Gather data. You can get information (data) from either primary
sources or secondary sources. While it's generally considered best to use
primary sources whenever possible, for many novice researchers secondary sources
are the most readily available. The books and articles you get from the library
are examples of data you might gather, but don't forget to look for other
sources of data as well. Perhaps you could interview someone who has information
about your topic-that can be a great source of data for you. Or you might
construct a survey, another great source of data. The data you gather is the
data that will give you the best answer to whatever question you've asked
when you started your research. What kind of data will you gather for the
research question posed in step 1? (See Chapter 3, Lesson 9:
Evaluating Sources.) First, you have to do some preliminary research to
see what civil war authors have a known southern heritage and what civil war
authors have a known northern heritage. Then you can look for an account of
the Battle of Gettysburg written by authors from those two different heritages.
While you're looking, you'll also want to see if anyone has written anything
in particular about civil war history writers and the influence their geographical
heritage has on their writing. Then you'll have both primary sources (the
actual accounts by the authors) and secondary sources (what others have said
about the topic). If you happen to know someone who is an authority in civil
war history, you might interview him or her and get another point of view
too (another secondary source if you interview a scholar, and a primary source
if you interview an author). Since this research is academic, you'll also
make sure that you take very careful notes because you will be required to
give credit to those sources when you prepare your final research report.
3. Analyze and evaluate your data. Once you've gathered your information,
your job isn't over yet. In fact, it's really just beginning. Now the role
of the researcher is to look at the information and analyze and evaluate it.
Let's look again at your research question: Do writers with a southern heritage
have the same viewpoint of the battle of Gettysburg as do writers with a northern
heritage? You've read the authors themselves as well as commentators. Your
opinion will be based on all of the information you've accumulated from all
of your sources. Many novice researchers think they must agree with what the
experts say about a topic, but that's not the case. Part of your job as a
researcher is to decide if you agree with those experts-just remember that
you need to be able to support your opinions!
4. Draw conclusions. After you analyzed and evaluated the information
you gathered, it's time to draw conclusions. You might decide that yes, there
is a difference in how the battle is viewed based on the geographical heritage
of the author. Or, you might decide that there isn't a difference. You could
even decide that you don't know enough yet to reach a decision! What you must
not do is ignore your responsibility to come to some sort of conclusion about
all of the information that you have gathered and analyzed.
5. Report your findings. In academic research, you don't stop with
drawing your conclusions. You must also tell people what you discovered in
your research, and that is usually done through a formal paper. The specific
requirements of the paper will differ depending on what you've done; however,
all of the reports have a few things in common.
They all follow a particular format or style. You might be asked to follow
the MLA (Modern Language Association) style guide if you are writing in the
humanities or for an English class. If you're writing a paper for your psychology
class, you're probably following the APA (American Psychological Association)
style guide. Other disciplines have different guides that they follow as well.
The important thing to remember is that you will need to follow all of the
conventions for research writing as set forth in the style guide you are using.
(For more information, see Chapter 3, Lesson 14: MLA and APA Documentation.)
Whichever guide you use, you must be very careful about documenting sources
by following the conventions of that style guide. (That's why you took such
careful notes in step 2.) As a writer, it is your responsibility to tell the
readers whenever you have used information from any source. You do that through
correct documentation. It's not enough to let the reader know what books you
read by attaching a list of your sources at the end of that paper. That's
important, but it's not all that you must do. You must also be sure that the
reader knows what information in your paper is your own idea and what you've
picked up from your readings. (Chapter 3, Lesson 14: MLA and APA
Documentation)
Useful terms:
- Primary source: Information about your topic that hasn't been evaluated
by someone else comes from a primary source. If you interview the candidates
running for your local school board, you're working with primary sources.
- Secondary source: When you read what someone else has said about
something, then you're using a secondary source. If you read the newspaper's
synopsis of the school board candidates' views about issues, then you're
gathering your information from a secondary source. (Someone else has evaluated
the information from the candidates.)
- Style guide: You use a style guide to tell you how to handle the
formal presentation of your information. How do you know what style guide
to follow? You ask the person to whom you are submitting your work. In an
academic setting, that person is your instructor. In a nonacademic setting,
your choices are more varied. Just ask the person who wants your paper or
report to tell you what format guidelines to follow. If you're in an English
class, you will probably follow the directions laid out by the Modern Language
Association in the current edition of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research
Papers. If you're in a sociology or education class, you'll probably follow
the directions in the current edition of the Publication Manual of the American
Psychological Association. Use the style guide to decide all questions of
format and documentation.
Summary
After reading this lesson, you should have a clear picture of the differences
between conducting research for academic and nonacademic audiences. As you approach
future academic research projects, keep these differences in mind-so that you
can be sure your research techniques are appropriate for your specific purpose
and audience.
  
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