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Research is a fundamental component of most work at a university, and the research skills you learn in Core 102 will provide a foundation for your efforts in future courses. In particular, Core 102 will help you develop the following abilities:
- creating a research question,
- creating a search strategy,
- using non-subject-specific databases appropriately matched to the target assignment, and
- applying critical reasoning in critiquing claims made by experts, media, or other sources of information.
Creating a Research Question.
Research starts from the impulse to find the answer to a question. It comes from the need to know something that you don’t already know. It might be the solution to a particular kind of problem, the knowledge that satisfies curiosity about something, or an explanation that clears up a point of confusion. Research may be set in motion by anything from the wish to determine whether a particular car would be both reliable and affordable, to the need to make a well-informed choice between treatment options, to the desire to cast a meaningful vote in a presidential election.
You likely will be assigned research in courses beyond CORE 102, so one purpose of this assignment is to help you develop skills that you can rely upon throughout your university career. However, as the examples in the previous paragraph suggest, research may called for whenever a person needs the answer to a question. This section is therefore intended to help you learn how to develop effective research questions not only within the classroom, but also for personal and professional reasons.
- What is research?
- Why should I do research?
- What is the research process?
- How do I pick a topic?
- What is background research?
- Are there topics I should avoid?
- What is a research question?
- How do I create a research question?
- What are some examples of effective and ineffective research questions?
1. What is research?
At the college level, research is much more than simply ‘looking up’ information. If you want to know the capital of Myanmar or what year George Washington died, you can simply Google that question and quickly find an answer. That’s not research. True research is more like a hunt for clues. You have an interest in a topic, and then, like the detective Sherlock Holmes, you will poke around and discover evidence that helps you learn more about your topic. A good research paper does not simply summarize what other people say about your topic, but brings together sources in a new way in order to answer new questions or solve new problems.
2. Why should I do research?
We do research because we have questions that we want to answer. Those questions may be personal, such as:
- What kind of car should I buy?
- What do I have to do in order to become an athletic trainer?
Or the questions could be more academic:
- How did the Civil War affect the economy of the United States in 19th Century?
- What is the best way to treat a patient suffering fro