Choosing Appropriate Research Methods

Different research questions require different research methods. Once you have determined the questions you need to answer, think about the various research techniques you could use to answer them.

For example, your research methods for finding out how a current situation is expected to change would differ from your research methods for finding out how well a product might work for your organization. That is, if you want to know how outsourcing will change the computer-support industry over the next 10 to 20 years, you might search for long-range predictions in journal and magazine articles and on reputable websites and blogs. By contrast, if you want to figure out whether a specific scanner will produce the quality of scan that you need and will function reliably, you might do the same kind of secondary research and then observe the operation of the scanner at a vendor’s site; schedule product demos at your site; follow up by interviewing others in your company; and perform an experiment in which you try two different scanners and analyze the results.

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The Choices and Strategies feature provides a good starting point for thinking about how to acquire the information you need. You are likely to find that your research plan changes as you conduct your research. You might find, for instance, that you need more than one method to get the information you need or that the one method you thought would work doesn’t. Still, having a plan can help you discover the most appropriate methods more quickly and efficiently.

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Researching a Topic

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Follow these three guidelines as you gather information to use in your document.

  • Be persistent. Don’t be discouraged if a research method doesn’t yield useful information. Even experienced researchers fail at least as often as they succeed. Be prepared to rethink how you might find the information. Don’t hesitate to ask reference librarians for help or to post questions on discussion boards.

  • Record your data carefully. Prepare the materials you will need. Write information down, on paper or electronically. Record interviews (with the respondents’ permission). Paste the URLs of the sites you visit into your notes. Bookmark sites so that you can return to them easily.

  • Triangulate your research methods. Triangulating your research methods means using more than one or two methods. If a manufacturer’s website says a printer produces 17 pages per minute, an independent review in a reputable journal also says 17, and you get 17 in a demo at your office with your documents, the printer probably will produce 17 pages per minute. When you need to answer important questions, don’t settle for only one or two sources.

If you are doing research for a document that will be read by people from other cultures, think about what kinds of evidence your readers will consider appropriate. In many non-Western cultures, tradition or the authority of the person making the claim can be extremely important, in some cases more important than the kind of scientific evidence that is favored in Western cultures.

And don’t forget that all people pay particular attention to information that comes from their own culture. If you are writing to European readers about telemedicine, for instance, try to find information from European authorities and about European telemedicine. This information will interest your readers and will likely reflect their cultural values and expectations.