5.1 Research Terminology
Nicholas Walliman, in his handbook Research Methods: The Basics, defines research methods as “the tools and techniques for doing research.”[1] These techniques include collecting, sorting, and analyzing the information and data you find. The better the tools and more comprehensive the techniques you employ, the more effective your research will be. By extension, the more effective your research is, the more credible and persuasive your argument will be.
Here are some basic terms and definitions you should be familiar with:
Research: the systematic process of finding out more about something than you already know, ideally so that you can prove a hypothesis, produce new knowledge and understanding, and make evidence-based decisions
Research Methods: techniques of collecting, sorting, and analyzing information/data
Data: bits of information.
Research Sources
The typical kinds of research sources you will use can be grouped into three broad categories:
- Primary Sources: research you might conduct yourself in lab experiments and product testing, through surveys, observations, measurements, interviews, site visits, prototype testing, beta testing, etc. These can also include published statistical data, historical records, legal documents, firsthand historical accounts, and original creative works.
- Secondary Sources: written sources that discuss, analyze, and interpret primary data, such as published research and studies, reviews of these studies, meta-analyses, and formal critiques.
- Tertiary Sources: reference sources such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, and handbooks that provide a consolidation of primary and secondary information. They are useful to gain a general understanding of your topic and major concepts, lines of inquiry, or schools of thought in the field.
Categories of Data
Data can be categorized in several ways:
Primary data
Primary data are data that have been directly observed, experienced and recorded close to the event. This is data that you might create yourself by
- Measurement: collecting numbers indicating amounts (temperature, size, etc.)
- Observation: with your own senses or with instruments (camera, microscope)
- Interrogation: conducting interviews, focus groups, surveys, polls, or questionnaires
- Participation: experience of doing or seeing something (visit the site, tour the facility, manipulate models or simulations, Beta test, etc.)
Note: primary research done in an academic setting that includes gathering information from human subjects requires strict protocols and will likely require ethics approval. Ask your instructor for guidance and see chapter 5.4 Human Research Ethics.
Secondary data
Secondary data comes from sources that record, analyze, and interpret primary data. It is critical to evaluate the credibility of these sources. You might find such data in
- Academic research: refereed academic studies published in academic journals
- Print sources: books, trade magazines, newspapers,