4.3 Why Do You Learn to Research?
Jemma Llewellyn; Erin Kelly; Sara Humphreys; Tina Bebbington; Nancy Ami; and Natalie Boldt
As a student, you’re likely to hear the term “research” in the context of an assignment for a class. That is, you might be told that the assignment you need to complete will require “research.” This word might seem intimidating and mysterious. You might have seen announcements around campus for research presentations, conferences, symposiums or roundtables. This is where faculty (many of whom are also researchers) talk about their current research, which may include working with books and journal articles in the library, but also (depending on their field of expertise) might involve observing the life-cycle of fruit flies, interviewing hospital patients, running computer models to solve problems, or examining the night sky. In all of these cases, research can seem separate from your everyday life.
But that assumption falls apart when you recognize that research is the term we all use to describe a systematic process for learning more about a topic or, more colloquially, looking stuff up. Let’s start by talking about the research you might have performed to buy a phone. Did you simply walk up to a kiosk in a mall and buy the first phone you put your hands on? Probably not. Maybe you asked friends about their experiences with their phones, using their recommendations to eliminate some choices. Possibly, you went online to read reviews of the latest phone from a company several of your friends recommended. These reviews might help you narrow your list to a top three. Maybe you also did a bit of searching—and perhaps visited or called some shops—to see if your preferred phones were in stock or, better yet, on sale. And only then did you make a purchase. That’s all a form of research.
Sometimes, as when you are buying something relatively expensive (like a phone), research is a way of guiding a choice. Research can help you make choices about which political party to support or whether a proposed law aligns with your values. It might lead you to change your behaviour; for example, learning more about the health impacts of smoking could lead you to quit, while finding out that partner dancing improves long-term health outcomes could motivate you to learn how to tango. And sometimes you might want to research a topic simply because you find it fascinating. Perhaps you are interested in Ava DuVernay’s work: how many movies has she directed? And how did she get her start in film making (see Fig. 4.1)? And what does a film director do anyway?
Search engines, such as Google, can help you to answer a question when you are looking for everyday information. As an aside, Google lists ads first in a search and also collects your data—this is how they make their money.[1] Be very careful about what you click on when you are using Google and many other search engines (except if you search using the Firefox address bar in the Firefox browser)