Understanding the Research Process

When you perform research, you want the process to be effective and efficient. That is, you want to find information that answers the questions you need to answer. And you don’t want to spend any more time than necessary getting that information. To meet these goals, you have to think about how the research relates to the other aspects of the overall project. The Focus on Process box provides an overview of the research process. Although all these tasks are described as part of the planning stage, remember that you might also need to perform additional research during the drafting, revising, editing, and proofreading stages. Whenever you need additional information to help you make your argument clear and persuasive, do more research.

FOCUS ON PROCESS: Researching a Topic
PLANNING

  • Analyze your audience. Who are your most important readers? What are their personal characteristics, their attitudes toward your subject, their motivations for reading? If you are writing to an expert audience that might be skeptical about your message, you need to do a lot of research to gather the evidence for a convincing argument. See Ch. 4.

  • Analyze your purpose. Why are you writing? Understanding your purpose helps you understand the types of information readers will expect. Think in terms of what you want your readers to know or believe or do after they finish reading your document. See Ch. 4.

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    Analyze your subject. What do you already know about your subject? What do you still need to find out? Using techniques such as freewriting and brainstorming, you can determine those aspects of the subject you need to investigate.

  • Visualize the deliverable. What application will you need to deliver: a proposal, a report, a website? What kind of oral presentation will you need to deliver?

  • Work out a schedule and a budget for the project. When is the deliverable due? Do you have a budget for phone calls, database searches, or travel to libraries or other sites?

  • Determine what information will need to be part of the deliverable. Draft an outline of the contents, focusing on the kinds of information that readers will expect to see in each part.

  • Determine what information you still need to acquire. Make a list of the pieces of information you don’t yet have.

  • Create questions you need to answer in your deliverable. Writing the questions in a list forces you to think carefully about your topic. One question suggests another, and soon you have a lengthy list that you need to answer.

  • Conduct secondary research. Study journal articles and web-based sources such as online journals, discussion boards, blogs, and podcasts.

  • Conduct primary research. You can answer some of your questions by consulting company records, by interviewing experts in your organization, by distributing questionnaires, and by interviewing other people in your organization and industry. Other questions call for using social media to gather information from your customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders.

  • Evaluate your information. Once you have your information, you need to evaluate its quality: is it accurate, comprehensive, unbiased, and current?

  • Do more research. If the information you have acquired doesn’t sufficiently answer your questions, do more research. And if you have thought of additional questions that need to be answered, do more research. When do you stop doing research? You will stop only when you think you have enough high-quality information to create the deliverable.