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Understanding the Differences Between Academic and Workplace Research

Although academic research and workplace research can overlap, in most cases they differ in their goals and their methods.

In academic research, your goal is to find information that will help answer a scholarly question: “What would be the effect on the trade balance between the United States and China if China lowered the value of its currency by 10 percent?” or “At what age do babies learn to focus on people’s eyes?” Academic research questions are often more abstract than applied. That is, they get at the underlying principles of a phenomenon. Academic research usually requires extensive secondary research: reading scholarly literature in academic journals and books. If you do primary research, as scientists do in labs, you do so only after extensive secondary research.

In workplace research, your goal is to find information to help you answer a practical question: “Should we replace our sales staff’s notebook computers with tablets?” or “What would be the advantages and disadvantages to our company of adopting a European-style privacy policy for customer information?” Workplace research questions frequently focus on improving a situation at a particular organization. These questions call for considerable primary research because they require that you learn about your own organization’s processes and how the people in your organization would respond to your ideas. Sometimes, workplace research questions address the needs of customers or other stakeholders. You will need a thorough understanding of your organization’s external community in order to effectively align your products or services with their needs.

Regardless of whether you are conducting academic or workplace research, the basic research methods—primary and secondary research—are fundamentally the same, as is the goal: to help you answer questions.