Research Tips From My Own Experience

I’m back for some more research blogging! I’m actually getting this next batch of posts done a little early, because I’ll be on my honeymoon soon and won’t be blogging then!

For today’s post, I wanted to touch on something that is critical for this part of my research—some of my own tips to help you find what you need in your research. Now, these aren’t tips from an expert, but just some guidelines I can provide thanks to my own experience so far in research design.

Research doesn't have to stress you out! Here are some tips to make your research experience a little easier.
Image Source: telegraph.co.uk

Using Keywords

They may seem minor, but keywords are critical! Changing one keyword slightly might bring a variety of different results. One way to find different keywords is to find a relevant article for your research, then look at the keywords and themes for that articles. You might see a new related keyword that can really benefit your research.

In my own research, "information design," "document design," and "information architecture" bring up different, but related, results. They all have similar meanings, but different researchers will use different keywords, varying the search results slightly.

Look to your classmates, supervisors, colleagues, and whoever else might have some beneficial input on your study. Just this morning, Dr. Bohannon mentioned that forensic ethnographies are very similar in design to industrial ethnographies. Now, I can use that information to find studies that may be designed similar to my own, helping to make my study structure that much stronger.

Keywords help with creating your literature map. A literature map is “a visual summary of the research that has been conducted by others” (Creswell, 2014, p. 36). Simple enough, right? How your map unfolds is based on your research problem, the current literature in the field, and what works best for you logically. The keywords that you developed throughout your research may become themes within your literature map, helping you to visualize how your study will unfold.

Just some of the limiters on KSU's
online library portal. Use them to
your advantage!

Know How to Use Your University’s Online Tools

When you first access your university’s online library tools, it can be overwhelming. For me, doing a basic search for “information design” yields 15,926,161 results. But, just two clicks later, by selecting Full Text and Peer Reviewed articles only, I can narrow it to 8,112,942. Still a lot, but we can slowly parse that down to a more manageable number.

Limiters are your friend, so learn to use them! You can narrow down results based on date, language, subject, publication, and more. If I take those 8,112,942 results and limit it to English articles published after 2013, I’m down to 1,601,772. Now we’re getting somewhere! Limiters can really help you narrow your results based on what you’re looking for. Try different limiters with different keywords and see what you can find.

Not enrolled in a university? There are still ways to access academic materials! Sites like PLOS (Public Library of Science), ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), and GoogleScholar are free to use for any researcher, and are just a few of many sites out there. Check with a local library for more options on finding the information you need.

Use Your Personal Resources

You can access a lot of information without even looking online. If you’re enrolled in school, professors in your department of study can be fantastic resources. They’re experts in their field—otherwise they wouldn’t be teaching it! They can likely provide you with some relevant research for your study.

Or, perhaps someone in your workplace can be a wealth of knowledge for you. For instance, my ethnography involves analyzing curriculum documents to see how they work for our students. Our Dean of Faculty plays a big role in curriculum development for the school, and he is currently working on his Master’s in Educational Leadership. I don’t know much about lesson planning and curriculum design, but he might have access to a lot of resources that I wouldn’t otherwise have access to.

Change Your Perspective

Changing your perspective might make the
maze of research a little easier to navigate.
Image Source: http://blogs.hrhero.com/

It may seem simple, but changing your perspective a little bit in your study might open your eyes to new ideas to research.

Think about some of your potential biases that might affect your research. Creswell (2014) talks about biases in the research process: “Experiences may cause researchers to lean toward certain themes, to actively look for evidence to support their positions, and to create favorable or unfavorable conclusions about the sites or participants” (p. 188). Considering your biases might bring about new keywords for your research. Could the age of participants become a bias in your work? Do some research on your topic with “age” as a keyword, and see if that brings up something you hadn’t seen before.

Or, put yourself in the shoes of your participants. Read through survey you created as if you were responding to it. Could something you included be a stressor for a participant? Dive into more research on that topic to understand how you can approach it in a sensitive manner to make it less of a stressor. Taking an empathetic approach might cause you to see something in your research design that you hadn’t considered before.

This list of tips is by no means comprehensive. But it may be able to get you started on your own research, and make sure that you’re using your research time effectively. Need more help? Librarians are there to help you with your research, and can be a great additional resource for finding what you need. In addition, I've included a short video below, created by an associate librarian no less, that provides some additional tips not included here.  

Happy researching!



References:

Creswell, J. W. (2014). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Los Angeles: Sage.