- Research is not a specialized, esoteric activity, but rather something that happens every day. By definition, we do research when we “investigate systematically.”
- Research is often performed in community, and often within a discourse community.
- A discourse community is a group of people that is united by the way the members communicate and the things they communicate about.
- You belong to many discourse communities, even if you didn’t realize it.
- The academic discourse community is like any other discourse community in some ways, but has certain distinct characteristics:
- Academics build on what others have said about a topic.
- Academics consider the value of their work, but don’t overstate the importance of their individual contribution.
- Academics assume disagreement .
- Academics assume a voice of conviction and authority.
- Academics use specialized vocabulary.
- Academics foreground evidence.
- Academic discourse can feel frustrating and stifling. These feelings are quite common.
- Research starts from questions
- You should try to research topics that interest you. One way to find these topics is to perform an interest inventory.
- Research projects are often built around a research question. A research question:
- Can be answered in some way, yet
- Is arguable.
- Can be answered using information that exists, yet
- Hasn’t been answered yet.
- Is specific and
- Can be stated clearly and directly.
- An academic discipline or academic field is a subdivision of knowledge within the academic discourse community. Disciplines are like lenses that allow us to see the world in different ways.
- Interdisciplinary scholarship weaves together multiple disciplines.
- A methodology is a system of methods that an academic discipline uses to carry out its research and pursue the answers to its questions.
- Quantitative research quantifies a problem by transforming it into numbers.
- Qualitative research focuses on discovering reasons, motivations, attitudes, insights, and other non-quantitative data.
- Experimental research generate new findings by way of experiment.
- Analytical research starts out with knowledge that already exists and analyzes this information.
