Let’s consider some principles:

Research Has a Purpose

You need to buy a new car, and you certainly want something better than the lemon you currently own. Knowing your own transportation needs and your budget, you decide to do some research on automobiles. For weeks, you scour every book and magazine you can find. You even take notes on what you are learning and write a summary of your findings. Then you put everything in a drawer and buy the same model of car that you had before, except that it is four years newer.

Foolish? Of course it is. Your past car was a lemon, a disaster. After all the research you did, you must have seen data about better automobiles. But finding a better car depends on your intent in research. If you were simply gathering information about cars in order to summarize it and put it in a drawer, you were not meeting the goal of finding the best car for you. You were not, in fact, doing research at all, just gathering data.

Let’s consider the reason why we do research. We do research because we need a guide to future action or belief. Research has a purpose, a goal, an intent. It is not just the gathering of data.

There’s a Difference Between Data and Information

Data constitutes the facts about a topic. Information is what you do with those facts. Let’s look at it this way: When you did your research on automobiles, your intent was to find out which car you should buy, given your budget and transportation needs. In other words, you began with a question you needed to answer, a question that was focused and purposeful: Which car should I buy? You may gather as much data about cars as you want, but if your data doesn’t lead ultimately to an answer to your question, it’s of limited value.  Only as you sift through the data and evaluate it does it become information that can bring you to a solution.

All too often, people assume that we do research in order to discover facts. Actually, we do research to gather  facts that will help us answer our question. Facts must never be an end in themselves. Rather, they are a means to determining what we should do or believe.

Let’s consider a few examples:

• You want to discover why so many young children love the Sponge Bob television programs while so many adults loathe even the thought of Bob. If your research simply gathers a bunch of facts about this goofy fellow, it has not done its job. Ultimately, the facts should lead you to ponder the way in which people react to unadulterated goodness and sentiment either by embracing it as children or being repelled by it as adults. The facts should answer your question.
  
  
• You’ve been told to write a research paper on Sigmund Freud. Your research and subsequent paper could be entitled "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Freud in Ten Pages Plus Table of Contents and bibliography," but if you have simply gathered facts in order to regurgitate them, you have not really done research. It is when you ask a question like: "Does Freud’s interpretation of the Superego contradict society’s understanding of conscience?" that the data becomes information.

The relationship between data and information works this way:

Data = the facts about a topic.

Information = evaluated data used to answer a question.

In its most basic form then, research is the gathering of data to answer a question, leading to a conclusion that will influence belief or action. Anything less than this is not research. It will never tell you what car to buy or what you’re supposed to do with Sponge Bob or with Freud’s Superego.

Read the material related to this assignment from Research Strategies. Be sure that your research question is focused, researchable, and that it is only one question rather than several. You want to avoid gathering existing information just so that you can report on it (information as goal).  You want to use information to solve a problem or deal with an issue whose answer is not obvious (information as tool).

Create a Sermon-Free Zone

Seminary students love to preach.  They are often so eager to preach that they do only minimal investigation before launching into a huge exhortation intended to make all things right in this fallen world.

But you must remember this dictum: A research project is not a sermon, nor is it a how-to manual. 

What's the difference?

                        Research Project                                                    Sermon/How-To

Don't preach sermons when what you need to do is investigate an issue in order to find an answer.

Assignment #1                          (to top of page)

1. Read Research Strategies, 4th edition, Preface, Chapter One, Chapter Two, and Appendix, A.1-A.5 (the appendix is especially helpful.)

2. The first chapter of Research Strategies talks about "gatekeeeping" in the process of publishing.
        1. Explain the term "gatekeeping" in reference to publishing.
        2. State the significance of gatekeeping for the production of information.
    

Choose one topic from a research project you are doing for another course, or from the list in Introduction to Assignments or from your own interests. 

Some tips:

1. Make sure this topic will not simply repeat what you read in your sources (information as goal.
2. Choose a topic for which there is a clear issue or problem that needs a solutions (information as tool). 
3. The appendix of the textbook is designed to help you avoid bad questions. I will, as well, advise you if I think your topic area is going to make doing the assignments more difficult than should be the case.

1. Consult Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page) and one more established reference source on your topic, such as what you find in the reference collection of a library.    
    
2. Indicate what reference sources you used and indicate the titles of the entries you looked up in them - I'm just as interested in what you searched for as what you found.
   
   Some Tips:
   
   1. For the second source, be sure that you are not just using a general encyclopedia such as Britannica but are using a specific subject dictionary, handbook or encyclopedia relevant to the subject discipline you are working with.
   2. Do not use journal articles or whole books devoted just to your topic.  Use a reference source (i.e. dictionary, encyclopedia on the discipline you are dealing with).
   3. For information about using reference sources, see the tutorial at:

http://www.twu.ca/library/Flash_Tutorials/pre-research_strategies_demo/pre-research_strategies_demo.htm

      4. If you do not have access to a physical library, use material from the following as a second reference source: Internet Public Library: http://www.ipl.org/ (Click on "Resources by Subject")

In 200-300 words, present a working knowledge summary of your topic (the basic facts required to make someone familiar with the topic to a limited extent), based on what you have discovered about the topic from your reference sources. 

Some Tips:

     1. Make sure you include the relevant facts and issues that you think are going to be important to know.
      2. Don't use this working knowledge to argue the case of your paper but just to provide a working knowledge of the topic itself.
 

 

Briefly formulate 3-4 possible research questions, even though you will only be choosing one of these possible questions as the one you will use in your project.

Some Tips:

     1. The APPENDIX to the textbook is helpful in giving you a number of examples of good and bad research questions. 
     2. Formulating a good question is not as easy as you may think. Above all, avoid asking a question that just calls on you to gather information and report on it.  You need a question that deals with a real issue or problem.
 

 

Choose what you believe to be the best one of the possible research questions for your topic.  This will then become your research question for the topic (though you may find you need to revise it in the next few assignments). 

Some Tips:

   1. Make sure that you have one question that is narrowly focused and deals with a problem or issue for which analysis is required. 
     2. Recognize that your question may need revision/refinement as you complete the next few assignments.
 

Prepare a 3-4 point potential outline for your topic based on your research question and drawing its main points out of your research question

Some Tips:

    1. Your outline should include what you need to cover in order to answer your research question and should be firmly based on that question. 
    2. Your outline is preliminary and will need revision/expansion as you complete the following assignments (especially assignment #5)                   

Don't forget to use the answer template above as a framework in order to do your assignment correctly.

Rubric for Assignment One.  Highest grade meets these criteria:

• Reference sources highly relevant to the topic
• Good working knowledge that includes reference to possible issues that could be addressed
• All potential research questions are excellent, demanding analysis
• Chosen research question is very well formulated and should make a real contributionto subject.
• Outline shows signs of being an excellent guide for research on chosen research question

TO ASSIGNMENT #2

 (Last updated: October 26, 2011)