Note: This article is taken from the blog post "Brooke Harrington," in which she tells us about her experience in planning research projects.
The aim of this guide that we will present to you is to make this process systematic and easy to understand at the same time. Although there is a great deal of freedom and open space for discovery, from the topics you choose to the data and methods you apply.
There are also some standards and restrictions that must be adhered to, regardless of your academic level or field of study. From high school students to doctoral students, and from art history majors to archaeology, research planning involves largely similar steps. Including: formulating a question, developing an argument, or making predictions based on previous research, and then selecting the information needed to answer your question.
Some of the above may seem obvious, but as you will find, research requires a different way of dealing with and using information than most of us are accustomed to in our daily lives. This is why I am trying to help you navigate the creation and creation of knowledge as an initial step in the process.
This stage is crucial, however, and is underappreciated in education, just as it is when moving from paid work in a company to entrepreneurship. Suddenly, you are alone; This requires a new way of thinking about how you do business.
Arguably, the following is a summary of what I have learned about this process - in which research is planned and done - over my 27 years as a professional sociologist. It reflects the skills I learned from my professors in the Ph.D. program in sociology at Harvard University, as well as what I later learned as a research supervisor for Ph.D. and MA students, and then as an author of award-winning science books and articles.
The following steps are not specific to a specific field or type of research. It can be applied to the requirements of both short projects (such as term papers) and longer projects, such as a dissertation.
What should we do?
Research planning, in its simplest form, involves the four steps described below:
- Orient yourself toward knowledge production.
- Define your research question.
- Review and review previous research related to your question.
- Choose relevant data to formulate your own answers.
Since the focus of our guide is on research project planning, rather than conducting a research project, we will not go into the details of data collection or analysis. These steps occur after planning the project.
In addition, the subject is broad and cannot be dealt with in detail here. There are year-long Ph.D. courses devoted to data and analysis. So, instead, in the fourth and final part of this guide, we will cover some basic strategies that you can use in planning the data selection and analysis process appropriate to your research question.
1. Orient yourself
Planning and conducting research requires a fundamental shift from thinking as a consumer of information to thinking as a producer of information. It may seem easy at first, but in reality, it is a complex task.
In practical terms, this means setting aside the student mentality that treats knowledge as something other people have invented. We students are often passive recipients of knowledge. We are asked to do a specific set of readings, and then we are evaluated by measuring how well we applied what we read.
And here the difference appears; Researchers have an active role to play as producers of knowledge. Doing research requires more than just reading and absorbing what other people have written.
How is that done? This process involves a critique of prior knowledge and perhaps an attempt to show that ideas we have taken for granted are true. It is a false or incomplete fact. For example, instead of just taking the claims of the author you're reading something from, you'll need to extract the implications of those claims; If what the author says is true, what else might these claims suggest? And what predictions can you make based on it?
In other words, instead of treating the reading of information as a source of truth, even if it is a reliable source, such as the Greek philosopher Plato or the scientist Marie Curie, this step requires you to treat the claims you read as temporary and subject to suspicion.
Perhaps this is one of the greatest pearls of wisdom that science and philosophy can teach us. It is that the greatest cognitive achievements and advances in human understanding have not been achieved by proving yourself right about superficial or trivial things; It is by making mistakes while working on interesting things.
Take the example of theoretical physicist Albert Einstein, who although he was wrong about quantum mechanics, his arguments on the subject with fellow physicist Niels Bohr led to one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs even a century later.
2. Define your research question
Students often give this step little attention, but experienced researchers know that formulating a good research question is sometimes the hardest part of the research planning process. This is because the precise language of the question forms a framework for the rest of the project. So it is important to formulate and pose the question carefully, in such a way that you are prepared to come up with answers and to produce interesting results at the same time.
Of course, you should choose a question that interests you, but this is only the beginning of what is likely to be an iterative process. Most researchers return to this step frequently, adjusting their questions based on their reading of previous research, limitations of available resources and capabilities, and many other considerations.
There are some factors that make the ceiling for researchers low, specifically the time and money factors. Researchers, like everyone else, should ask research questions that they can reasonably answer, given the constraints they face. For example, if you only have one week to answer the following research question: “What are the roots of the Arab-Israeli conflict?”, it would be inadvisable to undertake this research project, especially if you have no prior knowledge about the subject.
The above is not intended to limit your imagination, you can ask any question you want. But it usually takes some creativity to craft a research question that you can answer well. That is, by investigating rigorously and providing new insights within the boundaries you face.
In addition to being interesting to you, and commensurate with the limitations of the capabilities and resources available to you, the third and most important characteristic of a 'good' research topic is whether it allows you to create new knowledge. It may become clear to you during the formulation of the research question that your question has already been asked and answered. If so, you'll find out what to do in the next step of the process.
On the other hand, you may come up with a research question that has not been addressed before. But bear in mind the possibility that there are a lot of potentially researchable research questions that have not been studied for good reasons. For example, the answers found may turn out to be trivial or of very limited usefulness. This can include questions such as "Why is the area of a circle equal to r²?" or “Did winter conditions affect Napoleon’s plans to invade Russia?”
You can, of course, prove that there is a very important question to a seemingly superficial question, but you need to be prepared to back it up with convincing evidence.
Finally, scientific research questions must somehow lead to new and distinctive insights. For example, many people have studied gender roles in team sports, but what question can you ask that no one has asked before?
In this respect, the first red line you should not cross would be to re-discuss what is already there. Herein lies the importance of the next step: reviewing previous research on the topic of your research. Depending on what you find in this step, you may need to revise your research question. Having repetition and similarity between your question and existing research is a natural process.
But don't worry, this won't last. Indeed, as you develop a solid understanding of the current state of knowledge on your topic; Over time, the duplicate ideas will lessen and settle on your research question.
3. Review previous research
In academic papers, from articles to books, it is common to find a section called "literature review." This section aims to describe the latest research on the research question being posed by the project. This section also explains Also, the researchers have comprehensively and systematically reviewed all the results of previous relevant studies on their topic, and they have something new to add.
Your research project should include something like this, even if it is a high school research paper. During the research planning process, you should list at least six points that illustrate the main findings of other researchers on your research topic.
After identifying and arriving at these results, you should be able to indicate exactly where you can provide new and necessary insights for your project. There are two basic positions one can take in framing the argument required for academic research:
The first position is to build on a set of ideas that currently exist or to expand and delve into them, Which means, for example: “Person A has argued that idea (X) about gender is true, which results in idea (P), which has not yet been tested or talked about, so in my research project I will touch on the idea (Z), that will change the way we understand gender if I find evidence to support my ideas.
The other position is to say there is a gap in current knowledge. Either because previous research has reached conclusions that conflict with the ideas we want to put forward or because it fails to take something important into account.
For example, gender research can be described as limited if it was conducted on middle school students and in co-educational settings only, and the results would have been very different if the research had been conducted on a larger scale than in schools, where the students are either male or female.
When looking at relevant sources of prior research, there are two things worth noting that you should pay attention to. First, don't limit your reading to studies on your topic. For example, if you wish to study how gender identity is formed in schools, you should not restrict yourself to studies of schools. The place on which the experiment is to be built (the schools) is secondary to the larger social process in which you are concerned. It is (how people construct their gender identity).
Get a broad idea of the studies that exist on this topic since this is happening in so many different places. Second, be sure to use reliable sources such as articles that have undergone some kind of vetting process, whether that involves peer review as is the case with academic journal articles or editorial reviews, such as those found in media publications and well-known journals, such as the Journal of The Economist or The Washington Post.
What you should avoid is using unaudited and scientifically proven sources such as Personal Blogs or Wikipedia. You may now be wondering: "Why?" The answer is easily the ability available to anyone to write and modify the content in those forums and sites, and there is no way to know whether the allegations that you find are true; Unless you're really an expert. But in any case, what you may find there - in most cases - is not accurate.
4. Choose the appropriate data and method
Whatever your research question, ultimately you need to think about the right source of data and analytical strategy that might give you the answers you're looking for. First, you need to think about what type of data might best serve the answer to your question and choose, for example, qualitative data (such as interviews, observations, or historical records), or quantitative data (such as surveys or statistical records), or perhaps a combination of both.
Once you select the type of data sources you want, you will automatically find options for analytical methods and approaches. You may need to collect your own data, or you may find everything you need readily available in an existing dataset created by someone else.
The best place to start is with research librarians, who can always be found in university libraries, particularly in public or state universities, Where librarians can work and collaborate with everyone, including people who are not affiliated with the university.
If a university like this isn't readily available in your area, a regular public library is still a good place to start. Librarians are often well-versed in ways to access data sources that may be relevant to your studies, such as statistics or historical archives.
Because your task at this stage is to plan, not conduct, the research, the point of this step is not to commit you to a specific course of action irrevocably. On the contrary, your main goal here is to think in a practical way and approach to reach an answer to your research question.
For example, you will need to know if the data you want is available and if not, do you think the idea of collecting data yourself is feasible for you? Or would it be better to modify your research question?
In terms of strategies for analysis, does your strategy require the application of statistical methods? If your answer is "yes", do you possess these skills?
If you don't have it, do you have the time to learn it or the money to hire a research assistant to do this step for you? You should pay close attention when looking at or considering qualitative studies, in particular, as it is not an accidental project as it may seem.
Many people make the mistake of thinking that only quantitative data and approaches have a scientific and methodological quality, and of saying that qualitative methods are just a fancy way of saying, "I've talked to some people, I've read some old papers, and I've come to my own conclusions."
Just as with quantitative data and studies, rules govern what constitutes reliable evidence and a valid analytical method for qualitative data.
As you plan your project by following these four steps, it is perfectly normal to go back and review the previous stages every once in a while; As it rarely applies to research planning in a straight linear manner. It is also common for new and unexpected avenues to emerge as you plan your research.
The sociologist Thorstein Veblen wrote in 1908: “The result of any serious investigation must raise two questions, one of which has only been asked before.” The same applies to planning research as it does to a completed research project. So enjoy the horizons that open up during this whole process instead of stressing out.
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