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RESEARCH
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The 'dreaded' research paper—need it be so dreaded?
No doubt you've already had to do one in high school. Now that you are in college you'll be asked to do many more. However, even if you've never done an actual research paper in high school, you've done some kind of research in your life-like buying a car, for example.
Let's say that you want to buy a car to get you to Mason. You'll have to pay for the car, its maintenance, gas, and insurance. You obviously want to get the best deal for your money so you have to decide whether it's better to buy a new car or a used one.
Being a systematic person, you decide that you have to figure out:
1) What information you'll need to choose a car, new or used
2) What sources will give you the best answers for your research questions
3) How many sources you'll need to answer your questions
4) How and where you'll find those sources
5) How you'll keep track of your information and where you got it
6) What you'll do if answers from different sources don't agree
7) How you'll synthesize (put together) your info to help you make the best decision
You start out with these questions:
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How dependable is the car?
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What kind of gas mileage does it get?
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How much will it cost to insure?
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How much does it cost?
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What kind of financing can I get?
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How old is the car?
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How many miles has it been driven?
- Did the previous owner keep up a good maintenance schedule?
And since you also want to have fun driving, you also ask these questions:
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Does it have a CD player?
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What colors is it?
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How up-to-date is the design?
Next you need to find the answers to your questions from the most authoritative sources. You might:
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ask friends and family
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talk to a mechanic
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visit car dealers to look at sticker prices and different options
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look at consumer or car magazines for performance information,
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contact insurance companies to find out the cost of insuring the car
As you research, you find that you have to be flexible. You discover that the research process is not always linear—that is, you aren't always able to do your research in an easy step-by-step way.
For example, not all your sources have the answers you thought they would and so you have to find different sources. Or the answer your dependable mechanic gives you disagrees with the one the salesman at the lot gave you so you have to look at a third source to help you answer the question.
But finally, you find the answers to your questions. You compare these answers and chose the car for you.
The research process for buying the car, informal as it is, is similar to the process for a research paper in college. Of course, you didn't have to write a formal paper complete with appropriate citations for your sources and a bibliography page at the end. Instead of a paper, you ended up with a car!
Notice that your research had two phases:
In the Analytical Phase, you figure out what you need to do to make your decision about the car and then separate these needs into more manageable steps:
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Asking questions
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Finding the sources that can give you the most accurate answers
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Getting answers to your questions
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Keeping track off these answers and their source (or sources) so that you can go back to them if you have other questions
| Note: Since this process is not always linear, you may have had to repeat earlier steps if you had new questions or needed clarification. |
In the Synthesis Phase, you pull all the answers to your questions together to see if you have found enough reliable information to make your decision. If you find answers from more than one source, you consider how these answers relate—that is, whether the sources agree or disagree. If they disagree, you have to further research to determine which source was more accurate.
Research takes time—both calendar time and clock time.
-Calendar time refers to the number of days or weeks you have between receiving the assignment, figuring out your topic, doing your research, writing it up, and turning it in. Thinking about calendar time helps you schedule your research.
-Clock time refers to the number of hours you spend on your research. Realistically you won't be able to sit down and complete the entire process from beginning to end in one sitting. After all, you do have a life outside of research and you need to work in shorter bursts of time.
And let's face it—research can be messy, stressful, exciting, boring, frustrating, invigorating, and even satisfying—often within the same session. However, research is imminently do-able—and here's the module to help you make the research process do-able for you!
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