In the past, you might have completed assignments that asked you to find a book, journal article, or Web page related to a particular topic. While finding information is an essential part of research, it’s just one step, not the end of the road. Research is not just copying a paragraph from a book or putting together bits and pieces of information without adding any of your own comments. In fact, such behavior could easily be considered plagiarism, a form of cheating that could result in a failing grade or worse. (Plagiarism is discussed in the chapter on Writing and Speaking.) At the very least, repeating information or ideas without thinking about or interpreting them puts you at risk of careless use of old, incorrect, or biased resources.

Research is a process including steps used to collect and analyze information to increase understanding of a topic or issue. Those steps include asking questions, collecting and analyzing data related to those questions, and presenting one or more answers. Good research is information literacy in action. If your instructor asks you to select and report on a topic, you might search for information about it, find a dozen sources, evaluate them, interpret them, select a few and remove a few, organize the ones you wish to keep, select related portions, write a paper or presentation that cites your sources, write an introduction that explains what you have done, draw some conclusions of your own, and submit the results. That’s research. The conclusion that you make based on your research is new information!