The word research is used in everyday speech to cover a broad spectrum of meaning, which makes it a decidedly confusing term for students -- especially graduate students -- who must learn to use the word in its specialized denotation. Much that students have learned they must suddenly unlearn; many of the false concepts they had previously learned they must discard.
Unfortunately, many students have been taught misconceptions about the nature of research. From elementary school to college, they have heard the word research used loosely and given multiple, misleading meanings. On one hand, the word connotes the finding of an item of information or the making of notes and the writing of a documented paper. On the other hand, it is used for the act of informing oneself about what one does not know or of rummaging through available sources to retrieve a bit of information. Merchandisers use the word to suggest the discovery of a revolutionary product when, often, the truth is that only a minor alteration has been made to an existing product, with the purpose of enhancing the product's sales appeal. All these activities have been called research but should have been called by their appropriate names: information gathering, library skills, documentation, self-enlightenment, and an attention-getting sales pitch.
The word research has a certain mystique about it. It suggests to many people an activity that is exclusive and removed from everyday life. Researchers are sometimes regarded as esoteric individuals who seclude themselves in laboratories, in scholarly libraries, or within the precincts of an academic environment. The public generally is not aware of their daily activity or of the important contributions their work frequently makes to people's comfort and general welfare. Many people, therefore, regard research as a way of life dissociated from the common activities of the everyday world.
The purpose of this chapter is to dispel these myths and misconceptions and to present an accurate definition of research. I define research here as the systematic process of collecting and analyzing information (data) in order to increase our understanding of the phenomenon with which we are concerned or interested. Although this conception of research may seem somewhat remote and academic, many people rely on a truncated form of it each day to solve smaller problems than those resolved by the more elaborate methodology of formal research. It is with formal research, however, that we are concerned in this text.
To appreciate the difference between people's common understanding of research and the more accurate definition, we can perhaps better understand the latter by first looking at the nature of the former.
WHAT RESEARCH IS NOT
I have suggested that the word research has been so loosely employed in everyday speech that few people have any idea of its real meaning. Here are a few guidelines as to what research is not; accompanying each guideline is an illustration depicting the popular concept often held about research.
1. Research is not mere information gathering. A fourth-grade child came home from school with this announcement: "Mom, the teacher sent us to the library today to do research, and I learned a lot about Columbus." This child has been given the idea that research means going to the library to get information or to glean a few facts. This may be information discovery; it may be learning reference skills; but it certainly is not, as the teacher so termed it, research.
2. Research is not mere transportation of facts from one location to another. A student completes a "research paper" on the Dark Lady in the sonnets of William Shakespeare. Although the student did, indeed, go through certain activities associated with formal research -- collecting data, assembling a bibliography, referencing statements properly -- these activities still do not add up to a true "research" paper. The student missed the essence of research: the interpretation of data. Nowhere in the paper did the student say, in effect. "These facts that I have gathered seem to indicate this about the Dark Lady." Nowhere did the student draw conclusions or interpret the facts themselves. This student is next door to genuine research; but the mere compilation of facts, presented with reference citations and arranged in a series, no matter how appealingly neat the format, misses genuine research by a hair. A little farther, and this student would have traveled from one world to another: from the world of mere transportation of fact to the world of interpretation of fact. The difference between the two worlds is the distinction between transference of information and genuine research -- a distinction that is important to understand.
Unfortunately, many students think that looking up a few facts and transferring them to a written paper with benefit of references constitutes research. Such activity is, of course, more realistically called fact discovery, fact transportation, and / or fact transcription.
3. Research is not merely rummaging for information. The house across the street is for sale. I consider buying it, and so I call my realtor to find out how much my own home would sell for. "I'll have to do some research," the realtor says, "to find the fair market value of your property." What the realtor calls "doing some research" means, of course, going through files of recent sales of properties comparable to mine to see what they have sold for; this will give the realtor an estimate to report to me. This so-called research is little more than rummaging through files to find what the realtor did not know. Rummaging, whether in one's personal records or in the public or college library. is not research. It is accurately termed an exercise in self-enlightenment.
4. Research is not a catchword used to get attention. The morning mail arrives. I open an envelope and pull out its contents. A statement in boldface type commands attention:
Years of Research Have Produced a New Car Wash!
Give Your Car a Miracle Shine with Soapy Suds!
The phrase "years of research" catches my attention. The product must be good, I reason, because "years of research" have been spent on developing it. I order the product -- and what do I get? Dish-washing detergent! No research. merely the clever use of a catch-word that, indeed, fulfilled its purpose: to catch my attention. "Years of research" -- what an attention-getting phrase, yet how misleading!
Formal research is entirely different from any of the above activities. I outline its essential nature and characteristics in the following section.
Research Paper Writing