to do research

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How to Do Research in 7 Simple Steps

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It’s 2 am, and you’re on your fifth cup of coffee (or was it your sixth?). You’re crouched at a table in some dark corner of the library surrounded by fifteen open books. Equally as many tabs are open on your laptop, and you still haven’t written a word of the paper that’s due in 7 hours.

Many things can explain how you got to this point, including procrastination , poor organization , and a messy schedule .

Very often, however, the problem is a lack of research skills .

And it’s not your fault. High school does a poor job of teaching you how to do research, and most college classes do little better. It feels like you’re expected to figure it out through trial and error.

I think we can do better than that, however. In this guide, I’m going to show you the 7-step process for researching everything from a 10-page term paper to a final presentation. Not only will you learn how to do better research; you’ll also learn how to research more efficiently.

What Is Research?

Before we go any further, what  is  research?

At its core, research is an attempt to answer a question. This could be anything from “How can we reduce infant mortality rates?” to “Why does salt make food taste good?”

To answer your question, you consult books, academic papers, newspaper articles, historical records, or anything else that could be helpful. The broad term for these things is “sources.”

And, usually, once you’ve done the research, you present or summarize it in some way. In many cases, this means writing an essay or another type of scholarly paper, but it could also mean giving a presentation or even creating a YouTube video.

Even if you have no interest in academia, research is an extremely useful skill to learn. When you know how to do research, it’s much easier to improve your life and work more effectively . Instead of having to ask someone every time you have a question, research will help you solve problems yourself (and help others in turn).

Note:  Research can also mean conducting surveys, performing experiments, or going on archaeological digs. While these activities are crucial for advancing human knowledge, I won’t be discussing them here. This article focuses on the research you can do with only a library and an internet connection.

The 7 Steps of the Research Process

Research can feel overwhelming, but it’s more manageable when you break it down into steps. In my experience, the research process has seven main steps:

• Find a topic
• Refine your topic
• Find key sources
• Take notes on your sources
• Create your paper or presentation
• Do additional research as necessary
• Cite your sources

Let’s look at each of these steps in more detail.

1. Find a Topic

If you don’t have a topic, your research will be undirected and inefficient. You’ll spend hours reading dozens of sources, all because you didn’t take a few minutes to develop a topic.

How do you come up with a topic? My number one suggestion is to create a mind map.

A mind map is a visual way to generate ideas. Here’s how it works:

• Get a piece of paper and a pen. Make sure the paper isn’t too small — you want lots of room for your ideas.
• Draw an oval in the center of the paper.
• Inside that oval, write a super vague topic. Start with whatever your professor has assigned you.
• Draw lines from the oval towards the edges of the paper.
• Draw smaller ovals connected to each of these lines.
• Inside the smaller ovals, write more specific ideas/topics related to the central one.
• Repeat until you’ve found 3-5 topic ideas.

When I write it out step by step, it sounds kind of strange. But trust me, it works . Anytime I’m stuck on a writing assignment, this method is my go-to. It’s basically magic.

To see what mind mapping looks like in practice, check out this clip:

Want to create a digital mind map like the one Thomas uses in the video? Check out Coggle .

2. Refine Your Topic

Okay, so now you have a list of 3-5 topics. They’re all still pretty general, and you need to narrow them down to one topic that you can research in depth.

To do this, spend 15 minutes doing some general research on each topic. Specifically, take each topic and plug it into your library’s catalog and database search tools.

The details of this process will vary from library to library. This is where consulting a librarian can be super helpful. They can show you how to use the tools I mentioned, as well as point you to some you probably don’t know about.

Furthermore, I suggest you ask your professor for recommendations. In some cases, they may even have created a resource page specifically for your assignment.

Once you’ve found out where to search, type in your topic. I like to use a mixture of the library catalog, a general academic database like EBSCO Host , and a search on Google Scholar .

What exactly are you trying to find? Basically, you’re trying to find a topic with a sufficient quantity and variety of sources.

Ideally, you want something with both journal articles and books, as this demonstrates that lots of scholars are seriously engaging with the topic.

Of course, in some cases (if the topic is very cutting edge, for example), you may be only able to find journal articles. That’s fine, so long as there are enough perspectives available.

Using this technique, you’ll be able to quickly eliminate some topics. Be ruthless. If you’re not finding anything after 15 minutes, move on. And don’t get attached to a topic.

Tip: If you find two topics with equal numbers of sources available, ask your professor to help you break the tie. They can give you insight into which topic is super common (and thus difficult to write about originally), as well as which they find more interesting.

Now that you have your topic, it’s time to narrow down your sources.

3. Find Key Sources

If you’ve picked a good topic, then you probably have lots of sources to work with. This is both a blessing and a curse. A variety of sources shows that there’s something worth saying about your topic, and it also gives you plenty of material to cite.

But this abundance can quickly turn into a nightmare in which you spend hours reading dense, mind-numbing material without getting any closer to actually producing a paper.

How do you keep this from happening? Choose 3–5  key sources and focus on them intently. Sure, you may end up needing more sources, especially if this is a long paper or if the professor requires it. But if you start out trying to read 15 sources, you’re likely to get overwhelmed and frustrated.

Focusing on a few key sources is powerful because it:

• Lets you engage deeply with each source.
• Gives you a variety of perspectives.
• Points you to further resources.
• Keeps you focused.

4. Read and Take Notes

But what do you do with these sources, exactly? You need to read them the right way . Follow these steps to effectively read academic books and articles:

Go through the article and look at the section headings. If any words or terms jump out at you, make note of them. Also, glance at the beginning sentences of each section and paragraph to get an overall idea of the author’s argument.

The goal here isn’t to comprehend deeply, but to prime your mind for effective reading .

Write down any questions you have after skimming the article, as well as any general questions you hope the article can answer. Always keep your topic in mind.

Read Actively

Now, start reading. But don’t just passively go through the information like you’re scrolling through Tumblr. Read with a pen or pencil in hand , underlining any unfamiliar terms or interesting ideas.

Make notes in the margins about other sources or concepts that come to mind. If you’re reading a library book, you can make notes on a separate piece of paper.

Once you’ve finished reading, take a short break. Have a cup of tea or coffee. Go for a walk around the library. Stretch. Just get your mind away from the research for a moment without resorting to distracting, low-density fun .

Now come back to the article and look at the things you underlined or noted. Gather these notes and transfer them to a program like Evernote .

If you need to look up a term, do that, and then add that definition to your notes. Also, make note of any sources the author cites that look helpful.

But what if I’m reading a book?   Won’t this take forever?  No, because you’re not going to read the entire book.

For most research you’ll do in college, reading a whole academic book is overkill . Just skim the table of contents and the book itself to find chapters or sections that look relevant.

Then, read each of those in the same way you would read an article. Also, be sure to glance at the book’s bibliography, which is a goldmine for finding additional sources.

Note: The above method is a variation on the classic SQ3R method , adapted slightly since we’re not interested in taking notes from textbooks .

5. Create Your Paper or Presentation

“You can’t turn in raw research.”

Research is crucial to crafting a great paper or presentation, but it’s also a great way to procrastinate. I had classmates in college who would spend 8 hours researching a 5-page paper. That’s way too much!

At some point, you need to stop researching and start writing (or whatever method you’re using to present your research).

How do you decide when to stop researching? There’s no strict rule, but in general I wouldn’t spend more than 30 minutes per page of the final paper.

So if the final paper is supposed to be 10 pages, don’t spend more than 5 hours researching it.

6. Do Additional Research (As Necessary)

Once you’ve started writing the draft of your paper, you’ll probably find a few gaps. Maybe you realize that one scholar’s argument isn’t relevant to your paper, or that you need more information for a particular section. In this case, you are free to return to researching as necessary.

But again, beware the trap of procrastination masquerading as productivity! Only do as much additional research as you need to answer your question. Don’t get pulled into rabbit holes or dragged off on tangents. Get in there, do your research, and get back to writing .

To keep yourself focused, I suggest keeping a separate document or piece of paper nearby to note points that need additional research.

Every time you encounter such a point, make note of it in the document and then keep writing. Only stop when you can’t get any further without additional research.

It’s much better to get a full draft done first. Otherwise, you risk suffering a cognitive switching penalty , making it harder to regain your focus.

7. Cite Your Sources

Whether you’re creating an oral presentation, essay, or video, you’ll need to cite your sources. Plagiarism is a serious offense, so don’t take any chances.

How to cite your sources depends on the subject and the professor’s expectations. Chicago, MLA, and APA are the most common citation formats to use in college, but there are thousands more.

Luckily, you don’t need to painstakingly type each of your citations by hand or slog through a style manual. Instead, you can use a tool like Zotero to track and generate your citations. To make things even easier, install the Zotero Connector browser extension. It can automatically pull citation information from entries in an online library catalog.

Once you’ve collected all of your sources, Zotero can generate a properly formatted works cited page or bibliography at just the click of a button.

For help setting up and using Zotero, read this guide . If you need further assistance, ask a librarian.

Go Research With Confidence

I hope you now understand how to do research with more confidence. If you follow the procedures I’ve covered in this article, you’ll waste less time, perform more effective research, and ultimately have the material for a winning essay.

Curious about how to use your research to write a great research paper? Check out this guide .

Image Credits: picking book from shelf

15 Steps to Good Research

• Define and articulate a research question (formulate a research hypothesis). How to Write a Thesis Statement (Indiana University)
• Identify possible sources of information in many types and formats. Georgetown University Library's Research & Course Guides
• Judge the scope of the project.
• Reevaluate the research question based on the nature and extent of information available and the parameters of the research project.
• Select the most appropriate investigative methods (surveys, interviews, experiments) and research tools (periodical indexes, databases, websites).
• Plan the research project. Writing Anxiety (UNC-Chapel Hill) Strategies for Academic Writing (SUNY Empire State College)
• Retrieve information using a variety of methods (draw on a repertoire of skills).
• Refine the search strategy as necessary.
• Write and organize useful notes and keep track of sources. Taking Notes from Research Reading (University of Toronto) Use a citation manager: Zotero or Refworks
• Evaluate sources using appropriate criteria. Evaluating Internet Sources
• Synthesize, analyze and integrate information sources and prior knowledge. Georgetown University Writing Center
• Revise hypothesis as necessary.
• Use information effectively for a specific purpose.
• Understand such issues as plagiarism, ownership of information (implications of copyright to some extent), and costs of information. Georgetown University Honor Council Copyright Basics (Purdue University) How to Recognize Plagiarism: Tutorials and Tests from Indiana University
• Cite properly and give credit for sources of ideas. MLA Bibliographic Form (7th edition, 2009) MLA Bibliographic Form (8th edition, 2016) Turabian Bibliographic Form: Footnote/Endnote Turabian Bibliographic Form: Parenthetical Reference Use a citation manager: Zotero or Refworks

Adapted from the Association of Colleges and Research Libraries "Objectives for Information Literacy Instruction" , which are more complete and include outcomes. See also the broader "Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education."

Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

Research: Where to Begin

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We live in an age overflowing with sources of information. With so many information sources at our fingertips, knowing where to start, sorting through it all and finding what we want can be overwhelming! This handout provides answers to the following research-related questions: Where do I begin? Where should I look for information? What types of sources are available?

Research isn't something that only scientists and professors do. Any time you use sources to investigate claims or reach new conclusions, you are performing research. Research happens in virtually all fields, so it’s vitally important to know how to conduct research and navigate through source material regardless of your professional or academic role.

Choosing and Narrowing Your Research Topic

Before beginning the process of looking for sources, it’s important to choose a research topic that is specific enough to explore in-depth. If your focus is too broad, it will be difficult to find sources that back up what you’re trying to say.

If your instructor gives you the flexibility to choose your own research topic, you might begin by brainstorming  a list of topics that interest you ( click here to visit an OWL page that can help you get started brainstorming or prewriting ). Once you find something that grabs your attention, the next step is to narrow your topic to a manageable scope. Some ways to narrow your focus are by sub-topic, demographic, or time period.

For example, suppose that you want to research cancer treatments. Cancer treatment is a fairly broad topic, so you would be wise to at least consider narrowing your scope. For example, you could focus on a sub-topic of cancer treatment, such as chemotherapy or radiation therapy. However, these are still broad topics, so you might also narrow your topic to a narrower sub-topic or even examine how these topics relate to a specific demographic or time period. In the end, you might decide to research how radiation therapy for women over fifty has changed in the past twenty years. In sum, having a specific idea of what you want to research helps you find a topic that feels more manageable.

Writing Your Research Question

Writing your research topic as a question helps you focus your topic in a clear and concise way. It ensure that your topic is arguable. While not all research papers have to offer an explicit argument, many do.

For the above example, you might phrase your research question like this: "How has radiation therapy changed in the past twenty years for women over fifty?" Of course, phrasing this topic as a question assumes that the research has, in fact, changed. Reading your sources (or, to begin with, at least summaries and abstracts of those sources) will help you formulate a research question that makes sense.

Knowing What Types of Sources You Need

Depending on the type of research you’re doing, you may need to use different types of sources. Research is usually divided into scholarly and popular, and primary and secondary. For more information on specific details about these types of sources, visit our "Where to Begin" page in our "Evaluating Sources" subsection.  This subsection contains additional pages that explore various kinds of sources (like, e.g., internet sources) in more detail.

Asking Productive Questions

Before you begin your research, you should ask yourself questions that help narrow your search parameters.

What kind of information are you looking for?

Different types of research will require different sources. It’s important to know what kinds of sources your research demands. Ask whether you need facts or opinions, news reports, research studies, statistics and data, personal reflections, archival research, etc. Restricting yourself to only the most relevant kinds of sources will make the research process seem less daunting.

Where do you need to look for your research?

Your research topic will also dictate where you find your sources. This extends beyond simply whether you use the internet or a print source. For example, if you are searching for information on a current event, a well-regarded newspaper like the  New York Times  or  Wall Street Journal  could  be a useful source. If you are searching for statistics on some aspect of the U.S. population, then you might want to start with government documents, such as census reports. While much high-level academic research relies mainly on the sorts of academic journal articles and scholarly books that can be found in university libraries, depending the nature of your research project, you may need to look elsewhere.

How much information do you need?

Different research projects require different numbers of sources. For example, if you need to address both sides of a controversial issue, you may need to find more sources than if you were pursuing a non-controversial topic. Be sure to speak with your instructor if you are unclear on how many sources you will be expected to use.

How timely does your research need to be?

Depending on your research topic, the timeliness of your source may or may not matter. For example, if you are looking into recent changes in a specific scientific field, you would want the most up-to-date research. However, if you were researching the War of 1812, you might benefit from finding primary sources written during that time period.

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How to Do Research: and How to Be a Researcher

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There are many textbooks on research methods, but these tend to be targeted at particular disciplines. Equally, there are plenty of books on popular science and other academic fields, but few that provide an overview of career opportunities or a framework for getting started. The principles underlying humanity’s past and continuing acquisition of knowledge are straightforward and are illustrated here across academic fields, from history to quantum physics—stories of clever and inventive people with good ideas, but also of personalities, politics, and power. This book draws together these strands to provide an informal and concise account of knowledge acquisition in all its guises. Having set out what research hopes to achieve, and why we are all researchers at heart, early chapters describe the basic principles underlying this—ways of thinking which may date back to the philosophers of the Athenian marketplace but are still powerful influences on the way research is carried out today. Drawing on a broad range of disciplines, the book takes the reader well beyond the pure ‘scientific method’, which might work well enough in physics or chemistry but falls apart in life sciences, let alone humanities. Later chapters consider the realities of carrying out research and the ways in which these continue to shape its progress—researchers and their personalities, their employers, funding, publication, political forces, and power structures.

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How to Research Effectively

Last Updated: June 26, 2023 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Jennifer Mueller, JD . Jennifer Mueller is an in-house legal expert at wikiHow. Jennifer reviews, fact-checks, and evaluates wikiHow's legal content to ensure thoroughness and accuracy. She received her JD from Indiana University Maurer School of Law in 2006. There are 15 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 76,241 times.

Whether you're working on a research paper for school, a fact page for a website, or an article for a magazine, your final product will rise or fall based on the quality of your research. To research effectively, you must plan your project in advance so you can make the most efficient use of your time and resources. Effective research is as much about planning as it is about the research itself. Analyze your sources carefully and cite them properly in your final report. [1] X Research source

Organizing Your Project

• If you're working on a research paper for school, you can use the page requirements (or limits) as a guide to narrow your topic.
• Use the same approach if you're writing an article for a website or print publication, and have been given a word limit.
• For example, "butterflies" probably is too broad for a 20-page research paper. If you know you want to write about butterflies, narrow your topic to a particular species of butterflies, or butterflies found in a particular geographic area.
• You may have to do some basic preliminary research to appropriately narrow your topic. This gives you a sense of how much information is available. If it's more than you could possibly dig through, consider narrowing your topic again.

• Typically, you'll want to create a basic thesis statement for your final report. This is what you ultimately want your research to prove.
• Creating a thesis statement before you've even begun your research might seem backwards, but to research effectively, you need to know what you're looking for.
• For example, maybe you have narrowed your butterfly topic to focus on why butterflies are attracted to a particular park in your hometown. Your thesis statement at this stage might be "Butterflies are attracted to Panorama Park because of the flowers planted there."
• Keep in mind that you can adjust your thesis statement later if your research shows that it's inaccurate or inappropriate.
• To return to the butterfly example, your thesis statement means you are focusing your research on the park you named and the flowers that are planted in that park. If you find out through your research that the butterflies are not particularly fond of those flowers, you may have to adjust your thesis.

• Essentially, the scope of your project is how far you're going to go. For example, if you're writing a research paper on the role of the Germans in the American Revolutionary War, the role of the French in the same war would be outside the scope of your project.
• The scope of your project may be dictated to you, for example through an assignment sheet from your teacher or professor.
• Keep your scope in mind as you're planning your research strategy. You don't want to get bogged down in your research or spend too much time chasing after information that turns out to be irrelevant.
• If you find something that doesn't fall within the scope of your project, you can quickly discard it and move on to something else.

• For example, if you're doing research on the butterflies in a local park, surveys of local residents on how they feel about the butterflies probably isn't going to be helpful for you. However, research conducted by students at a nearby university might be beneficial.
• Focus on the type of source you need. If you're working on a political science or sociology research paper, polls and statistics may be relevant.
• However, if you're writing a paper in the hard sciences, you want to focus on scientific experiments and journal articles.
• If your teacher or professor has given you a reading list or identified good sources, start there. Consider it a jumping-off point rather than something to hit as a last resort.

• You may want to do basic internet searches just so you can get an idea of how effective your key words will be.
• For example, if you're writing a research paper on butterflies in a local park, the key word "butterfly" will bring up entirely too much information to be useful for you.
• Try to make your key words as specific as possible. Once you have your basic key words, look for synonyms of those words, or other related words or phrases.
• Write all the words you brainstorm on a sheet of paper so you don't forget them or lose track of them.
• Leave plenty of space around each word so you can take notes or make comments on the effectiveness of each word search as you research.

• One of the easiest methods to organize your research notes is to buy a stack of index cards. At the top of each card, you'll write the name of the source you're taking notes about.
• If you're required to use a particular citation format, you might want to create a formatted citation for the source at the top of the card. It will save you time later on when you're working on your final paper.
• Beyond index cards, you'll also want to gather highlighters, tabs or flags, and adhesive notes. These will help you keep track of information you find in print sources and organize your thoughts as you research.

Finding Good Sources

• Whether a source is considered primary depends on its relation to the topic. Some sources can be primary for one topic but not for another.
• For example, if you're doing research on D-Day, newspaper articles from June 6, 1944 or a few days afterward would be considered primary sources. However, newspaper articles from 2014 would not.
• Primary sources are the heart of research, and what differentiates an actual research project from a book report. If you're reading what someone else wrote about your topic and then summarizing what you read, that's a book report – not research.
• Focusing on primary sources means you may have to get off the internet and go to a library. Some primary sources, such as historic documents and newspapers, have been digitized and are available online. However, many have not.
• Additionally, databases and digital archives of primary sources often are only accessible by subscription. Public and university libraries often maintain subscriptions to these digital resources, but you'll have to use a library computer to get to them.

• If you're using the index-card method, jot down a few words to indicate the idea or fact you found in that source. Include a page number if available so you can cite to it directly or quickly find it again.
• If you see something in a source you want to quote, put it on your notecard. However, do something to make it stand out from the rest of your notes so you don't inadvertently include it in your report as your own words.
• For example, you may want to highlight a quote so it stands out at a glance as a quote, and not your own notes. You also could write it in a different color.
• Likewise, as you read a source you may have thoughts of your own, or additional questions you want to explore. Highlight those or write them in a different color so you can instantly recognize them as your own thoughts, not something that should be attributed to your source.

• The authors of secondary sources are not involved directly in the subject they're discussing – otherwise they would be primary sources.
• Rather, they are using their own knowledge and expertise to interpret, comment, analyze, investigate, or contextualize something.
• Secondary sources can be extremely valuable to you in making sense of the primary sources you've found, but it's important to avoid over-using them.
• With secondary sources, the most important thing to keep in mind when taking notes are ideas. If an author you read has an idea or theory about the topic you're researching that resonates with you, take out a note card and write that idea down. Then if you bring it up in your report you can credit them with having the idea.
• Taking a theory or idea you read somewhere else and acting like you came up with it is plagiarism. The most effective research builds on ideas and theories introduced by others, rather than stealing them.

• When something was published can be a strong indicator of whether you should rely on it. Ideally, you should check the date of publication before you even read the material.
• Whether dates matter depends on the subject you're researching. If you're researching a historical event, you'll likely be making use of material dated any time from the date of the event to the present.
• However, in other areas of research older sources are likely to be outdated and unusable. For example, if you were researching how schoolchildren use the internet, you wouldn't want to use an article written in the early 2000s as a source. Use of the internet has changed significantly since then.
• If an author is biased, it can undermine their authority, even if they have tremendous expertise on the subject you're researching.
• For example, suppose you're researching the butterflies in a local park. You find a lengthy, detailed, and informative article in a reputable science journal that discusses the very butterflies you're researching.
• However, the article is written by a scientist who is infamous for their denial of climate change. This position means they aren't well-respected by most of the scientific community.
• If their bias has little to nothing to do with the subject at hand, or if they wrote the butterfly article before they spoke out against climate change, you might still be able to use that source.
• If you do plan to use a source with a potentially biased or compromised author, use caution. If you're working on a project for school, ask your teacher or professor about it.

• These sources can be helpful for you in finding new articles and sources to use, but you typically don't want to cite them directly in your research.
• Newspaper and magazine articles also can be tertiary sources. Pay attention to what you're reading. If the writer is talking about, for example, a series of studies conducted at different universities that came to opposing conclusions, seek out the studies themselves rather than citing to that article.
• At the same time, tertiary sources can be a quick way to find new sources, and to understand more about a potentially dense article or book before you dive into it yourself.

Citing Your Research

• To understand plagiarism, put yourself in the author's shoes. They put a lot of work into their own project to come up with those words. Properly citing them acknowledges that work and shows that you appreciate it.
• Moreover, you are showing your teachers, editors, or colleagues that you are an upstanding and respectful member of the academic or journalistic community – and that you're making a productive contribution to the field of research.
• Be aware that many high schools, universities, and other publications use plagiarism checkers that will find words you have copied.
• Even if you think you won't get caught because you're using a relatively obscure source, the proliferation of plagiarism checkers makes it more likely that you will.

• Always provide a citation for facts – things that can be proven true or false. This is so your reader can confirm the fact that you've presented in your report. The best source for a fact is always a primary source.
• You also should cite opinions, analysis, speculation, or interpretation that is not your own. For example, suppose you have a source for your butterfly research that believes the butterflies are attracted to the park because people walk their dogs there and butterflies love dogs.
• If you want to use this opinion in your report, credit it to the specific person that said it. Using phrases like "studies show" or "some scientists believe" won't tell your reader anything.
• Instead, you might write "Meredith Monarch, butterfly expert at the University of Lepidoptera, speculated that butterflies frequent the park because they enjoy frolicking with the dogs there."

• Citation styles or formats may seem arbitrary to you, but for those in the field, the punctuation and formatting serve as short-hand. Someone familiar with a particular style can look at a citation and instantly know what each thing means.
• Different fields use different citation methods, which can be confusing if you've done research in several areas of study.
• For example, if you're writing a science paper, you typically will use APA (American Psychological Association) style.
• However, for a research paper in history or political science, you'll more likely use the Turabian style.

• Generally, you only want to have a direct quote from a source when the words themselves are of particular importance, or if the language is so original and succinct it would be nearly impossible to phrase it better.
• For example, if you're writing a research paper on the Gettysburg Address, you likely will include direct quotes from the speech itself, since those words would hold particular importance.
• A source's original words can provide color or enhance the meaning of your own thoughts, or can be quoted as an example of a particular line of thought.
• When you paraphrase, you're putting the information from a source into your own words, rather than quoting the source directly.
• Keep in mind that paraphrasing doesn't mean simply changing a few words to synonymous words, or altering the word order.
• For example, "Quick brown foxes jump over lazy dogs" would not be an acceptable paraphrase of "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog."

Expert Q&A

You might also like.

• ↑ https://library.georgetown.edu/tutorials/research-guides/15-steps
• ↑ https://libguides.usc.edu/writingguide/narrowtopic
• ↑ https://libguides.usc.edu/writingguide/introduction
• ↑ https://libguides.usc.edu/writingguide/citingsources
• ↑ https://umassglobal.libguides.com/keywords
• ↑ https://umb.libguides.com/PrimarySources/secondary
• ↑ https://advice.writing.utoronto.ca/researching/notes-from-research/
• ↑ https://open.lib.umn.edu/writingforsuccess/chapter/11-4-strategies-for-gathering-reliable-information/
• ↑ https://libguides.mit.edu/citing
• ↑ https://ohiostate.pressbooks.pub/choosingsources/chapter/degree-of-bias/
• ↑ https://ohiostate.pressbooks.pub/choosingsources/chapter/primary-secondary-tertiary-sources/
• ↑ https://edu.gcfglobal.org/en/useinformationcorrectly/avoiding-plagiarism/1/
• ↑ https://openoregon.pressbooks.pub/wrd/chapter/crediting-your-sources/
• ↑ https://pitt.libguides.com/citationhelp
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/using_research/quoting_paraphrasing_and_summarizing/index.html

About This Article

To research effectively, look through library databases and digital archives to find helpful, reliable sources related to your topic. For example, if you’re researching something in the science field, you can visit your university library to look at articles in their scientific journals. While going through your sources, take notes by jotting down useful ideas on a notecard along with the page numbers you found them on. You may also want to highlight information in order to easily refer to what's important later on. For more tips from our co-author, including how to quote and cite a source responsibly, keep reading! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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How to Do Academic Research

Use the links below to jump directly to any section of this guide:

Academic Research Fundamentals

How to begin finding academic resources, how to use scholarly sources once you have located them, databases of scholarly resources, resources for teaching students how to do academic research.

Few high school students or college underclassmen are prepared to conduct the type of academic research their instructors expect. While many institutions offer library orientation sessions, the information is rarely at hand when students are dealing with midterm or finals panic. Furthermore, those sessions generally focus on finding resources, and often fail to teach students how to use those resources effectively. This guide contains links to resources, exercises, and assignments that will help instructors fill these gaps. It also includes tips and responsible shortcuts for students who don't have access to good library resources, or are panicking because they have a lot of material to sort through and don't know how to begin.

Students often want to know the quickest way to get the minimum number of sources required, and many of them cannot see the connection between a slapped-together bibliography and an unfocused mess of a paper. The resources in this section encourage students to think about what they're doing when they write a paper. These resources can also help students understand why a good bibliography is the foundation of a good paper.

What is Academic Research?

"Overview of Research Process" (Univ. of Nebraska)

This resource discusses how the overarching process of research should guide the writing of a research paper. It also includes separate attachments that provide specific guidance for thinking about research questions and proposals.

"Qualitative Research vs. Quantitative Research" (YouTube)

This video introduces students to two basic approaches to conducting research. Understanding basic methodological approaches will help students evaluate whether a scholarly source is appropriate for their research project.

"The 'Realistic' Research Paper" ( Chronicle of Higher Education )

This article from the  CHE  asks whether the formal academic research paper can be made more relevant while still preserving academic rigor. This could be a very good discussion starter for a class of advanced high schoolers or college underclassmen.

Types of Academic Research Sources

"Types of Sources" (Purdue OWL)

The reliable folks at the Purdue Online Writing Lab provide a basic introduction to the types of academic research sources, with section devoted to both traditional print and online-only resources. 

"Articles, Books, and...? Understanding the Many Types of Information Found in Libraries" (UCLA)

This guide breaks down categories of scholarly sources (they are all listed in the sidebar on the left). It defines terms like "scholarly source" and "secondary source," and its explanation of when  to use certain types of sources is succinct and clear. 

Many students have no idea where to begin looking for books and journal articles. Students, here's a tip I always gave my students when I was a professor: begin by looking at the works cited in your assigned readings. You'll probably notice that certain authors, books, or articles are cited frequently. It's safe for you to assume those are the type of respectable sources that are the foundation of any good bibliography. The links below will help you navigate the process, one step at a time.

First Steps

These resources will aid you in time management, and will introduce you to the best places on the web to start the research process.

"Research Paper Planner: Timeline" (Baylor Univ.)

This tool generates a responsible timeline for the research and writing process based on the current date and assignment due date. It is useful to budget extra time for obtaining books and articles through Interlibrary loan (for more on ILL, see "How to Deal with Hard-to-find Sources"). 

Google Scholar  

Anyone who does not know where to begin should start here. Google Scholar searches across the internet for various kinds of scholarly resources. Use the "cited by" option to narrow down articles. NOTE: Users may not be able to access resources' full text if they are not connected to a library, or college or university network.

"Basic Guide to Google Scholar" (YouTube)

This tutorial demonstrates how to perform basic searches, save search results, and generate MLA, APA, and Chicago-style citations.

"Intermediate Guide to Google Scholar" (YouTube)

This tutorial, led by a STEM Ph.D., goes into more detail about the workings of Google Scholar. 

Google Books

Google Books permits searches of  millions  of books. Even when the full text is not available, users can still find the pages where a particular keyword is mentioned. This can be a valuable shortcut if a user needs to identify the most relevant chapters of a large book quickly.

How to Judge the Quality of a Source

In the age of Fake News and Stupid Algorithm Tricks, being able to evaluate a source's credibility is more important than ever. This section's first two resources help students learn to evaluate the credibility of a variety of sources. Since studies suggest that many students struggle with evaluating non-academic internet sources, the last two resources focus on those sources specifically.

"What is a 'Good' Source? Determining the Validity of Evidence" (Univ. of Maryland)

This webpage gives students tips on evaluating the author and the content of a potential source. NOTE: Be sure to click through all the modules.

"Research 101: Credibility is Contextual" (Univ. of Washington via YouTube)

This brief video (2:56) helps students learn to evaluate web and social media sources. NOTE: All the Research 101 videos are helpful for students who are new to academic research.

"The C.R.A.P. Test in Action" (Portland State Univ. via YouTube)

This video (5:00) shows how to evaluate websites using the Currency, Reliability, Authority, and Purpose or Point of View test. The video gives specific examples of high-quality and low-quality websites.

"Evaluating Internet Content" (Georgetown Univ.)

This resource gives students some very specific questions they can use to evaluate the quality of a source.

How to Deal with Hard-to-find Sources

Sometimes, you cannot access a particular source because it isn't in your library or your library doesn't have the right database subscription. In that case, you can see about an Interlibrary Loan (ILL). Every library system does ILL somewhat differently, so ask for a librarian's assistance when using the system for the first time. 

WorldCat is an immense catalog of books, articles, reports,  and more. To locate a source, copy and paste a title into the search bar. By entering a ZIP code under "Find a copy in a library," users can see if any libraries in the area have access to the scholarly source. 

"Interlibrary Loan" (Wikipedia)

This Wikipedia article provides a general overview of the interlibrary loan process. Many students are not well-informed about how ILLs work. Knowing how the system works is especially important for students at rural colleges or colleges without large budgets.

Even if an instructor can get students to build a substantial and relevant bibliography responsibly, there is still another major hurdle. Students must learn how to read, annotate, and incorporate sources efficiently. Many students operate under the assumption that they must read every prospective source cover-to-cover. This is overwhelming and frustrating, and it's no surprise that students start doing shoddy work under these conditions. The resources in this section expose students to effective shortcuts and organizational tricks to help them make sense of their scholarly sources.

How to Do Effective Reading, Annotation, and Note-taking

"How to (Seriously) Read a Scientific Paper" ( Science Magazine )

Science  asked leading scholars to describe the shortcuts they take when reading journal articles. The lesson here is that using shortcuts is absolutely OK. In fact, researchers who use the  right  shortcuts often build the most effective bibliographies.

"Tips for Reading Scholarly and Journal Articles" (Brandeis Univ.)

The general tips on the first page are helpful, but the most valuable part is the chart on the second page. It explains how to read an article depending on whether it was assigned in class or whether you want to test its suitability for your research paper.

"Student Worksheet: Analyzing a Journal Article" (Univ. of Guelph)

This template will help students break down any article that has a specific, testable hypothesis. 

"Reading in the Humanities and Social Sciences" (Trent Univ.)

This reading guide is tailored specifically for the humanities and other fields where scholars write both books and articles. Be sure to click on the reading template link on page three.

How to Integrate Scholarly Sources Into an Essay or Research Paper

"Incorporating Sources into Research Writing" (Germanna C.C.)

Pages five through nine of this guide provide clear, detailed instructions for using scholarly sources in an academic paper. There are also two examples provided. 

"Integrating Sources into Your Writing" (James Madison Univ. via YouTube)

This guide to integrating sources includes numerous examples and illustrations. In addition to discussing incorporating sources, it touches on evaluating the credibility of sources.

"Paraphrasing Exercise" (Purdue OWL)

Instructors can use this exercise to help students practice the sometimes tricky technique of incorporating sources via paraphrase.

"Incorporating Sources Exercises" (Wilmington Univ.)

This webpage links to nearly 20 resources for students who are struggling with quotation, paraphrase, summary, or similar techniques. 

How to Avoid Academic Integrity Issues

Everyone knows copying and pasting from the Internet or directly lifting material from a book constitutes cheating. But what makes a good paraphrase? What is "common knowledge," and what needs to be cited? Can you plagiarize yourself? These are all legitimate, good-faith questions students might have about using scholarly sources. These online resources can help address those challenging gray areas.

"Incorporating Sources and Avoiding Plagiarism" (UC Irvine)

This detailed, example-rich presentation (helpfully written from a STEM perspective) dispels some common myths about what does and doesn't count as plagiarism.

"How Students Commit Academic Dishonesty: Plagiarism" (Northern Illinois Univ.)

This webpage contains links to lots of plagiarism examples. These examples are useful because they illustrate the difference between things like good and bad paraphrasing.

"Paraphrasing" (Univ. of Guelph)

Paraphrasing is a difficult skill and honest, well-meaning students sometimes commit academic dishonesty unintentionally by not paraphrasing correctly. This presentation discusses the elements of a good paraphrase and provides examples.

"Citation Builder" (NC State)

This webpage generates citations in MLA, APA, and Chicago format.

Here are the citation guides for the three major academic writing formats:

• APA Citation Guide (BibMe.org)
• Chicago Manual of Style Citation Guide
• MLA Citation Guide (EasyBib.com)

Included here are links to resource collections that are free of charge to any user, or that students can access through their  public or academic libraries. Remember, if you can't get access to a particular scholarly source because your public library or educational institution doesn't have access, be sure to investigate the Interlibrary Loan option mentioned earlier in this guide.

Freely Accessible Resources

The academic world becomes more accepting of open-source journals with every passing year. JURN is a database of scholarly articles from over 3,000 journals in a variety of disciplines.

Library of Congress eResources

The Library of Congress provides access to a staggering number of databases across all academic disciplines. Not all the resources are free, but many are.

Library of Congress Map Collections

Maps are valuable resources for students, professional scholars, independent scholars, and interested amateurs. The Library of Congress has access to multiple collections of current and historical maps.

U.S. National Library of Medicine

This service is provided by the National Institutes of Health. The NLM includes PubMed, an important collection of journal articles and abstracts. Many resources at the NLM are free, but not all of them are. 

Resources Available at Public Libraries

Some public library systems may have no access or limited access to these resources. Please consult your local library system's website.

EBSCO allows users to search a wide variety of databases. The version of EBSCO available at most public libraries includes access to newspaper and genealogy  databases. Users who connect through a university library will access Academic Search Premier, EBSCO's scholarly database collection.

Learning Express Hub College Prep Center

This database has resources to help students prepare for Advanced Placement, the SAT, the ACT, and a variety of other exams.

LexisNexis Public Library Express

LexisNexis created this service to meet the needs of public library systems. Patrons can use this resource to search current events, business news, and legal news.

ProQuest Libraries

ProQuest's list of databases for public libraries includes searchable news databases, genealogy databases, and medical health databases.

Resources Available at Most College or University Libraries

Some colleges or universities may not have all these databases, or they may have limited access. If you need a source that your library doesn't have access to, use ILL (see "How to Deal with Hard-to-find Sources").

JSTOR is a leading database of academic journals from a wide variety of disciplines.

LexisNexis is one of the leading databases for legal and business research. 

Project MUSE

Project MUSE is a database with strong offerings in the humanities and social sciences.

ProQuest Academic

This is another database collection that contains links to journals from a variety of disciplines.

PsycINFO is hosted by the American Psychological Association. It is an important database for psychologists and other social scientists.

SAGE Journals

SAGE is a leading academic publisher. Its journals are sorted by four categories: Health Sciences, Social Sciences and Humanities, Life and Biomedical Sciences, and Materials Science and Engineering.

The idea of doing "research" is daunting for many students. A good way to make students more comfortable with the process is to break the giant concept of "research" into smaller pieces. These resources help teachers break down the research process effectively. "Resources for High School Teachers" help instructors understand the context and challenges of teaching their students about research, and provide sample assignments and exercises. "Resources for College Instructors" are focused more narrowly on teaching undergraduate students about formal academic papers. 

Resources for High School Teachers

"How Teens do Research in the Internet World" (Pew Research Institute)

This 2012 Pew study summarizes the challenges high school teachers face when it comes to teaching students about responsible online research. The study's findings serve as a jumping off point for teachers to discuss effective strategies and probable obstacles and constraints.

"The 6 Online Research Skills Your Students Need" (Scholastic)

This article suggests classroom activities appropriate for freshmen and sophomores.

Questia School: "Teacher Guide for Research Tutorials" (Cengage)

This lengthy, free guide from a leading educational publisher provides teachers with nearly 100 pages of tutorials and exercises that introduce every element of brainstorming and writing a research paper. 

"Research Paper Complete Resource Pack" (Teachers Pay Teachers)

This resource pack (designed primarily for MLA or APA style) contains worksheets and exercises to help students learn annotating, editing, integrating sources, and more. 

Resources for College Instructors

"Creating Successful Research Skills Assignments" (Univ. of Pennsylvania)

This guide contains suggested assignments that help students become more comfortable with various aspects of the research process.

"Teaching Students to Write Good Papers" (Yale)

This resource discusses general strategies for teaching students to write well. Most importantly, it contains links to numerous worksheets and handouts that are useful for struggling students.

"Effective Assignment Sequencing for Scaffolding Learning" (Univ. of Michigan)

Many instructors are proponents of the scaffolding approach to research papers. This approach requires students to focus more carefully on the intermediate steps in the process, and is also effective against plagiarism. This guide from Michigan's Writing Center provides detailed instructions and suggestions for creating a scaffolded assignment.

"Keys to Designing Effective Writing and Research Assignments" (FacultyFocus)

This collection of short papers asks provocative questions and offers suggestions for new ways of looking at research paper assignments.

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Basic Steps in the Research Process

The following steps outline a simple and effective strategy for writing a research paper. Depending on your familiarity with the topic and the challenges you encounter along the way, you may need to rearrange these steps.

Step 1: Identify and develop your topic

Selecting a topic can be the most challenging part of a research assignment. Since this is the very first step in writing a paper, it is vital that it be done correctly. Here are some tips for selecting a topic:

• Select a topic within the parameters set by the assignment. Many times your instructor will give you clear guidelines as to what you can and cannot write about. Failure to work within these guidelines may result in your proposed paper being deemed unacceptable by your instructor.
• Select a topic of personal interest to you and learn more about it. The research for and writing of a paper will be more enjoyable if you are writing about something that you find interesting.
• Select a topic for which you can find a manageable amount of information. Do a preliminary search of information sources to determine whether existing sources will meet your needs. If you find too much information, you may need to narrow your topic; if you find too little, you may need to broaden your topic.
• Be original. Your instructor reads hundreds of research papers every year, and many of them are on the same topics (topics in the news at the time, controversial issues, subjects for which there is ample and easily accessed information). Stand out from your classmates by selecting an interesting and off-the-beaten-path topic.
• Still can't come up with a topic to write about? See your instructor for advice.

Once you have identified your topic, it may help to state it as a question. For example, if you are interested in finding out about the epidemic of obesity in the American population, you might pose the question "What are the causes of obesity in America ?" By posing your subject as a question you can more easily identify the main concepts or keywords to be used in your research.

Step 2 : Do a preliminary search for information

Before beginning your research in earnest, do a preliminary search to determine whether there is enough information out there for your needs and to set the context of your research. Look up your keywords in the appropriate titles in the library's Reference collection (such as encyclopedias and dictionaries) and in other sources such as our catalog of books, periodical databases, and Internet search engines. Additional background information may be found in your lecture notes, textbooks, and reserve readings. You may find it necessary to adjust the focus of your topic in light of the resources available to you.

Step 3: Locate materials

With the direction of your research now clear to you, you can begin locating material on your topic. There are a number of places you can look for information:

If you are looking for books, do a subject search in One Search . A Keyword search can be performed if the subject search doesn't yield enough information. Print or write down the citation information (author, title,etc.) and the location (call number and collection) of the item(s). Note the circulation status. When you locate the book on the shelf, look at the books located nearby; similar items are always shelved in the same area. The Aleph catalog also indexes the library's audio-visual holdings.

Use the library's  electronic periodical databases  to find magazine and newspaper articles. Choose the databases and formats best suited to your particular topic; ask at the librarian at the Reference Desk if you need help figuring out which database best meets your needs. Many of the articles in the databases are available in full-text format.

Use search engines ( Google ,  Yahoo , etc.) and subject directories to locate materials on the Internet. Check the  Internet Resources  section of the NHCC Library web site for helpful subject links.

Step 4: Evaluate your sources

See the  CARS Checklist for Information Quality   for tips on evaluating the authority and quality of the information you have located. Your instructor expects that you will provide credible, truthful, and reliable information and you have every right to expect that the sources you use are providing the same. This step is especially important when using Internet resources, many of which are regarded as less than reliable.

Step 5: Make notes

Consult the resources you have chosen and note the information that will be useful in your paper. Be sure to document all the sources you consult, even if you there is a chance you may not use that particular source. The author, title, publisher, URL, and other information will be needed later when creating a bibliography.

Step 6: Write your paper

Begin by organizing the information you have collected. The next step is the rough draft, wherein you get your ideas on paper in an unfinished fashion. This step will help you organize your ideas and determine the form your final paper will take. After this, you will revise the draft as many times as you think necessary to create a final product to turn in to your instructor.

Step 7: Cite your sources properly

Give credit where credit is due; cite your sources.

Citing or documenting the sources used in your research serves two purposes: it gives proper credit to the authors of the materials used, and it allows those who are reading your work to duplicate your research and locate the sources that you have listed as references. The  MLA  and the  APA  Styles are two popular citation formats.

Failure to cite your sources properly is plagiarism. Plagiarism is avoidable!

Step 8: Proofread

The final step in the process is to proofread the paper you have created. Read through the text and check for any errors in spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Make sure the sources you used are cited properly. Make sure the message that you want to get across to the reader has been thoroughly stated.

Additional research tips:

• Work from the general to the specific -- find background information first, then use more specific sources.
• Don't forget print sources -- many times print materials are more easily accessed and every bit as helpful as online resources.
• The library has books on the topic of writing research papers at call number area LB 2369.
• If you have questions about the assignment, ask your instructor.
• If you have any questions about finding information in the library, ask the librarian.

Contact Information

Craig larson.

Librarian 763-424-0733 [email protected] Zoom:  myzoom   Available by appointment

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Doing Research: A New Researcher’s Guide pp 1–15 Cite as

What Is Research, and Why Do People Do It?

• James Hiebert 6 ,
• Jinfa Cai 7 ,
• Stephen Hwang 7 ,
• Anne K Morris 6 &
• Charles Hohensee 6  
• Open Access
• First Online: 03 December 2022

15k Accesses

Part of the book series: Research in Mathematics Education ((RME))

Abstractspiepr Abs1

Every day people do research as they gather information to learn about something of interest. In the scientific world, however, research means something different than simply gathering information. Scientific research is characterized by its careful planning and observing, by its relentless efforts to understand and explain, and by its commitment to learn from everyone else seriously engaged in research. We call this kind of research scientific inquiry and define it as “formulating, testing, and revising hypotheses.” By “hypotheses” we do not mean the hypotheses you encounter in statistics courses. We mean predictions about what you expect to find and rationales for why you made these predictions. Throughout this and the remaining chapters we make clear that the process of scientific inquiry applies to all kinds of research studies and data, both qualitative and quantitative.

You have full access to this open access chapter,  Download chapter PDF

Part I. What Is Research?

Have you ever studied something carefully because you wanted to know more about it? Maybe you wanted to know more about your grandmother’s life when she was younger so you asked her to tell you stories from her childhood, or maybe you wanted to know more about a fertilizer you were about to use in your garden so you read the ingredients on the package and looked them up online. According to the dictionary definition, you were doing research.

Recall your high school assignments asking you to “research” a topic. The assignment likely included consulting a variety of sources that discussed the topic, perhaps including some “original” sources. Often, the teacher referred to your product as a “research paper.”

Were you conducting research when you interviewed your grandmother or wrote high school papers reviewing a particular topic? Our view is that you were engaged in part of the research process, but only a small part. In this book, we reserve the word “research” for what it means in the scientific world, that is, for scientific research or, more pointedly, for scientific inquiry .

Exercise 1.1

Before you read any further, write a definition of what you think scientific inquiry is. Keep it short—Two to three sentences. You will periodically update this definition as you read this chapter and the remainder of the book.

This book is about scientific inquiry—what it is and how to do it. For starters, scientific inquiry is a process, a particular way of finding out about something that involves a number of phases. Each phase of the process constitutes one aspect of scientific inquiry. You are doing scientific inquiry as you engage in each phase, but you have not done scientific inquiry until you complete the full process. Each phase is necessary but not sufficient.

In this chapter, we set the stage by defining scientific inquiry—describing what it is and what it is not—and by discussing what it is good for and why people do it. The remaining chapters build directly on the ideas presented in this chapter.

A first thing to know is that scientific inquiry is not all or nothing. “Scientificness” is a continuum. Inquiries can be more scientific or less scientific. What makes an inquiry more scientific? You might be surprised there is no universally agreed upon answer to this question. None of the descriptors we know of are sufficient by themselves to define scientific inquiry. But all of them give you a way of thinking about some aspects of the process of scientific inquiry. Each one gives you different insights.

Exercise 1.2

As you read about each descriptor below, think about what would make an inquiry more or less scientific. If you think a descriptor is important, use it to revise your definition of scientific inquiry.

Creating an Image of Scientific Inquiry

We will present three descriptors of scientific inquiry. Each provides a different perspective and emphasizes a different aspect of scientific inquiry. We will draw on all three descriptors to compose our definition of scientific inquiry.

Descriptor 1. Experience Carefully Planned in Advance

Sir Ronald Fisher, often called the father of modern statistical design, once referred to research as “experience carefully planned in advance” (1935, p. 8). He said that humans are always learning from experience, from interacting with the world around them. Usually, this learning is haphazard rather than the result of a deliberate process carried out over an extended period of time. Research, Fisher said, was learning from experience, but experience carefully planned in advance.

This phrase can be fully appreciated by looking at each word. The fact that scientific inquiry is based on experience means that it is based on interacting with the world. These interactions could be thought of as the stuff of scientific inquiry. In addition, it is not just any experience that counts. The experience must be carefully planned . The interactions with the world must be conducted with an explicit, describable purpose, and steps must be taken to make the intended learning as likely as possible. This planning is an integral part of scientific inquiry; it is not just a preparation phase. It is one of the things that distinguishes scientific inquiry from many everyday learning experiences. Finally, these steps must be taken beforehand and the purpose of the inquiry must be articulated in advance of the experience. Clearly, scientific inquiry does not happen by accident, by just stumbling into something. Stumbling into something unexpected and interesting can happen while engaged in scientific inquiry, but learning does not depend on it and serendipity does not make the inquiry scientific.

Descriptor 2. Observing Something and Trying to Explain Why It Is the Way It Is

When we were writing this chapter and googled “scientific inquiry,” the first entry was: “Scientific inquiry refers to the diverse ways in which scientists study the natural world and propose explanations based on the evidence derived from their work.” The emphasis is on studying, or observing, and then explaining . This descriptor takes the image of scientific inquiry beyond carefully planned experience and includes explaining what was experienced.

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, “explain” means “(a) to make known, (b) to make plain or understandable, (c) to give the reason or cause of, and (d) to show the logical development or relations of” (Merriam-Webster, n.d. ). We will use all these definitions. Taken together, they suggest that to explain an observation means to understand it by finding reasons (or causes) for why it is as it is. In this sense of scientific inquiry, the following are synonyms: explaining why, understanding why, and reasoning about causes and effects. Our image of scientific inquiry now includes planning, observing, and explaining why.

We need to add a final note about this descriptor. We have phrased it in a way that suggests “observing something” means you are observing something in real time—observing the way things are or the way things are changing. This is often true. But, observing could mean observing data that already have been collected, maybe by someone else making the original observations (e.g., secondary analysis of NAEP data or analysis of existing video recordings of classroom instruction). We will address secondary analyses more fully in Chap. 4 . For now, what is important is that the process requires explaining why the data look like they do.

We must note that for us, the term “data” is not limited to numerical or quantitative data such as test scores. Data can also take many nonquantitative forms, including written survey responses, interview transcripts, journal entries, video recordings of students, teachers, and classrooms, text messages, and so forth.

Exercise 1.3

What are the implications of the statement that just “observing” is not enough to count as scientific inquiry? Does this mean that a detailed description of a phenomenon is not scientific inquiry?

Find sources that define research in education that differ with our position, that say description alone, without explanation, counts as scientific research. Identify the precise points where the opinions differ. What are the best arguments for each of the positions? Which do you prefer? Why?

Descriptor 3. Updating Everyone’s Thinking in Response to More and Better Information

This descriptor focuses on a third aspect of scientific inquiry: updating and advancing the field’s understanding of phenomena that are investigated. This descriptor foregrounds a powerful characteristic of scientific inquiry: the reliability (or trustworthiness) of what is learned and the ultimate inevitability of this learning to advance human understanding of phenomena. Humans might choose not to learn from scientific inquiry, but history suggests that scientific inquiry always has the potential to advance understanding and that, eventually, humans take advantage of these new understandings.

Before exploring these bold claims a bit further, note that this descriptor uses “information” in the same way the previous two descriptors used “experience” and “observations.” These are the stuff of scientific inquiry and we will use them often, sometimes interchangeably. Frequently, we will use the term “data” to stand for all these terms.

An overriding goal of scientific inquiry is for everyone to learn from what one scientist does. Much of this book is about the methods you need to use so others have faith in what you report and can learn the same things you learned. This aspect of scientific inquiry has many implications.

One implication is that scientific inquiry is not a private practice. It is a public practice available for others to see and learn from. Notice how different this is from everyday learning. When you happen to learn something from your everyday experience, often only you gain from the experience. The fact that research is a public practice means it is also a social one. It is best conducted by interacting with others along the way: soliciting feedback at each phase, taking opportunities to present work-in-progress, and benefitting from the advice of others.

A second implication is that you, as the researcher, must be committed to sharing what you are doing and what you are learning in an open and transparent way. This allows all phases of your work to be scrutinized and critiqued. This is what gives your work credibility. The reliability or trustworthiness of your findings depends on your colleagues recognizing that you have used all appropriate methods to maximize the chances that your claims are justified by the data.

A third implication of viewing scientific inquiry as a collective enterprise is the reverse of the second—you must be committed to receiving comments from others. You must treat your colleagues as fair and honest critics even though it might sometimes feel otherwise. You must appreciate their job, which is to remain skeptical while scrutinizing what you have done in considerable detail. To provide the best help to you, they must remain skeptical about your conclusions (when, for example, the data are difficult for them to interpret) until you offer a convincing logical argument based on the information you share. A rather harsh but good-to-remember statement of the role of your friendly critics was voiced by Karl Popper, a well-known twentieth century philosopher of science: “. . . if you are interested in the problem which I tried to solve by my tentative assertion, you may help me by criticizing it as severely as you can” (Popper, 1968, p. 27).

A final implication of this third descriptor is that, as someone engaged in scientific inquiry, you have no choice but to update your thinking when the data support a different conclusion. This applies to your own data as well as to those of others. When data clearly point to a specific claim, even one that is quite different than you expected, you must reconsider your position. If the outcome is replicated multiple times, you need to adjust your thinking accordingly. Scientific inquiry does not let you pick and choose which data to believe; it mandates that everyone update their thinking when the data warrant an update.

Doing Scientific Inquiry

We define scientific inquiry in an operational sense—what does it mean to do scientific inquiry? What kind of process would satisfy all three descriptors: carefully planning an experience in advance; observing and trying to explain what you see; and, contributing to updating everyone’s thinking about an important phenomenon?

We define scientific inquiry as formulating , testing , and revising hypotheses about phenomena of interest.

Of course, we are not the only ones who define it in this way. The definition for the scientific method posted by the editors of Britannica is: “a researcher develops a hypothesis, tests it through various means, and then modifies the hypothesis on the basis of the outcome of the tests and experiments” (Britannica, n.d. ).

Notice how defining scientific inquiry this way satisfies each of the descriptors. “Carefully planning an experience in advance” is exactly what happens when formulating a hypothesis about a phenomenon of interest and thinking about how to test it. “ Observing a phenomenon” occurs when testing a hypothesis, and “ explaining ” what is found is required when revising a hypothesis based on the data. Finally, “updating everyone’s thinking” comes from comparing publicly the original with the revised hypothesis.

Doing scientific inquiry, as we have defined it, underscores the value of accumulating knowledge rather than generating random bits of knowledge. Formulating, testing, and revising hypotheses is an ongoing process, with each revised hypothesis begging for another test, whether by the same researcher or by new researchers. The editors of Britannica signaled this cyclic process by adding the following phrase to their definition of the scientific method: “The modified hypothesis is then retested, further modified, and tested again.” Scientific inquiry creates a process that encourages each study to build on the studies that have gone before. Through collective engagement in this process of building study on top of study, the scientific community works together to update its thinking.

Before exploring more fully the meaning of “formulating, testing, and revising hypotheses,” we need to acknowledge that this is not the only way researchers define research. Some researchers prefer a less formal definition, one that includes more serendipity, less planning, less explanation. You might have come across more open definitions such as “research is finding out about something.” We prefer the tighter hypothesis formulation, testing, and revision definition because we believe it provides a single, coherent map for conducting research that addresses many of the thorny problems educational researchers encounter. We believe it is the most useful orientation toward research and the most helpful to learn as a beginning researcher.

A final clarification of our definition is that it applies equally to qualitative and quantitative research. This is a familiar distinction in education that has generated much discussion. You might think our definition favors quantitative methods over qualitative methods because the language of hypothesis formulation and testing is often associated with quantitative methods. In fact, we do not favor one method over another. In Chap. 4 , we will illustrate how our definition fits research using a range of quantitative and qualitative methods.

Exercise 1.4

Look for ways to extend what the field knows in an area that has already received attention by other researchers. Specifically, you can search for a program of research carried out by more experienced researchers that has some revised hypotheses that remain untested. Identify a revised hypothesis that you might like to test.

Unpacking the Terms Formulating, Testing, and Revising Hypotheses

To get a full sense of the definition of scientific inquiry we will use throughout this book, it is helpful to spend a little time with each of the key terms.

We first want to make clear that we use the term “hypothesis” as it is defined in most dictionaries and as it used in many scientific fields rather than as it is usually defined in educational statistics courses. By “hypothesis,” we do not mean a null hypothesis that is accepted or rejected by statistical analysis. Rather, we use “hypothesis” in the sense conveyed by the following definitions: “An idea or explanation for something that is based on known facts but has not yet been proved” (Cambridge University Press, n.d. ), and “An unproved theory, proposition, or supposition, tentatively accepted to explain certain facts and to provide a basis for further investigation or argument” (Agnes & Guralnik, 2008 ).

We distinguish two parts to “hypotheses.” Hypotheses consist of predictions and rationales . Predictions are statements about what you expect to find when you inquire about something. Rationales are explanations for why you made the predictions you did, why you believe your predictions are correct. So, for us “formulating hypotheses” means making explicit predictions and developing rationales for the predictions.

“Testing hypotheses” means making observations that allow you to assess in what ways your predictions were correct and in what ways they were incorrect. In education research, it is rarely useful to think of your predictions as either right or wrong. Because of the complexity of most issues you will investigate, most predictions will be right in some ways and wrong in others.

By studying the observations you make (data you collect) to test your hypotheses, you can revise your hypotheses to better align with the observations. This means revising your predictions plus revising your rationales to justify your adjusted predictions. Even though you might not run another test, formulating revised hypotheses is an essential part of conducting a research study. Comparing your original and revised hypotheses informs everyone of what you learned by conducting your study. In addition, a revised hypothesis sets the stage for you or someone else to extend your study and accumulate more knowledge of the phenomenon.

We should note that not everyone makes a clear distinction between predictions and rationales as two aspects of hypotheses. In fact, common, non-scientific uses of the word “hypothesis” may limit it to only a prediction or only an explanation (or rationale). We choose to explicitly include both prediction and rationale in our definition of hypothesis, not because we assert this should be the universal definition, but because we want to foreground the importance of both parts acting in concert. Using “hypothesis” to represent both prediction and rationale could hide the two aspects, but we make them explicit because they provide different kinds of information. It is usually easier to make predictions than develop rationales because predictions can be guesses, hunches, or gut feelings about which you have little confidence. Developing a compelling rationale requires careful thought plus reading what other researchers have found plus talking with your colleagues. Often, while you are developing your rationale you will find good reasons to change your predictions. Developing good rationales is the engine that drives scientific inquiry. Rationales are essentially descriptions of how much you know about the phenomenon you are studying. Throughout this guide, we will elaborate on how developing good rationales drives scientific inquiry. For now, we simply note that it can sharpen your predictions and help you to interpret your data as you test your hypotheses.

Hypotheses in education research take a variety of forms or types. This is because there are a variety of phenomena that can be investigated. Investigating educational phenomena is sometimes best done using qualitative methods, sometimes using quantitative methods, and most often using mixed methods (e.g., Hay, 2016 ; Weis et al. 2019a ; Weisner, 2005 ). This means that, given our definition, hypotheses are equally applicable to qualitative and quantitative investigations.

Hypotheses take different forms when they are used to investigate different kinds of phenomena. Two very different activities in education could be labeled conducting experiments and descriptions. In an experiment, a hypothesis makes a prediction about anticipated changes, say the changes that occur when a treatment or intervention is applied. You might investigate how students’ thinking changes during a particular kind of instruction.

A second type of hypothesis, relevant for descriptive research, makes a prediction about what you will find when you investigate and describe the nature of a situation. The goal is to understand a situation as it exists rather than to understand a change from one situation to another. In this case, your prediction is what you expect to observe. Your rationale is the set of reasons for making this prediction; it is your current explanation for why the situation will look like it does.

You will probably read, if you have not already, that some researchers say you do not need a prediction to conduct a descriptive study. We will discuss this point of view in Chap. 2 . For now, we simply claim that scientific inquiry, as we have defined it, applies to all kinds of research studies. Descriptive studies, like others, not only benefit from formulating, testing, and revising hypotheses, but also need hypothesis formulating, testing, and revising.

One reason we define research as formulating, testing, and revising hypotheses is that if you think of research in this way you are less likely to go wrong. It is a useful guide for the entire process, as we will describe in detail in the chapters ahead. For example, as you build the rationale for your predictions, you are constructing the theoretical framework for your study (Chap. 3 ). As you work out the methods you will use to test your hypothesis, every decision you make will be based on asking, “Will this help me formulate or test or revise my hypothesis?” (Chap. 4 ). As you interpret the results of testing your predictions, you will compare them to what you predicted and examine the differences, focusing on how you must revise your hypotheses (Chap. 5 ). By anchoring the process to formulating, testing, and revising hypotheses, you will make smart decisions that yield a coherent and well-designed study.

Exercise 1.5

Compare the concept of formulating, testing, and revising hypotheses with the descriptions of scientific inquiry contained in Scientific Research in Education (NRC, 2002 ). How are they similar or different?

Exercise 1.6

Provide an example to illustrate and emphasize the differences between everyday learning/thinking and scientific inquiry.

Learning from Doing Scientific Inquiry

We noted earlier that a measure of what you have learned by conducting a research study is found in the differences between your original hypothesis and your revised hypothesis based on the data you collected to test your hypothesis. We will elaborate this statement in later chapters, but we preview our argument here.

Even before collecting data, scientific inquiry requires cycles of making a prediction, developing a rationale, refining your predictions, reading and studying more to strengthen your rationale, refining your predictions again, and so forth. And, even if you have run through several such cycles, you still will likely find that when you test your prediction you will be partly right and partly wrong. The results will support some parts of your predictions but not others, or the results will “kind of” support your predictions. A critical part of scientific inquiry is making sense of your results by interpreting them against your predictions. Carefully describing what aspects of your data supported your predictions, what aspects did not, and what data fell outside of any predictions is not an easy task, but you cannot learn from your study without doing this analysis.

Analyzing the matches and mismatches between your predictions and your data allows you to formulate different rationales that would have accounted for more of the data. The best revised rationale is the one that accounts for the most data. Once you have revised your rationales, you can think about the predictions they best justify or explain. It is by comparing your original rationales to your new rationales that you can sort out what you learned from your study.

Suppose your study was an experiment. Maybe you were investigating the effects of a new instructional intervention on students’ learning. Your original rationale was your explanation for why the intervention would change the learning outcomes in a particular way. Your revised rationale explained why the changes that you observed occurred like they did and why your revised predictions are better. Maybe your original rationale focused on the potential of the activities if they were implemented in ideal ways and your revised rationale included the factors that are likely to affect how teachers implement them. By comparing the before and after rationales, you are describing what you learned—what you can explain now that you could not before. Another way of saying this is that you are describing how much more you understand now than before you conducted your study.

Revised predictions based on carefully planned and collected data usually exhibit some of the following features compared with the originals: more precision, more completeness, and broader scope. Revised rationales have more explanatory power and become more complete, more aligned with the new predictions, sharper, and overall more convincing.

Part II. Why Do Educators Do Research?

Doing scientific inquiry is a lot of work. Each phase of the process takes time, and you will often cycle back to improve earlier phases as you engage in later phases. Because of the significant effort required, you should make sure your study is worth it. So, from the beginning, you should think about the purpose of your study. Why do you want to do it? And, because research is a social practice, you should also think about whether the results of your study are likely to be important and significant to the education community.

If you are doing research in the way we have described—as scientific inquiry—then one purpose of your study is to understand , not just to describe or evaluate or report. As we noted earlier, when you formulate hypotheses, you are developing rationales that explain why things might be like they are. In our view, trying to understand and explain is what separates research from other kinds of activities, like evaluating or describing.

One reason understanding is so important is that it allows researchers to see how or why something works like it does. When you see how something works, you are better able to predict how it might work in other contexts, under other conditions. And, because conditions, or contextual factors, matter a lot in education, gaining insights into applying your findings to other contexts increases the contributions of your work and its importance to the broader education community.

Consequently, the purposes of research studies in education often include the more specific aim of identifying and understanding the conditions under which the phenomena being studied work like the observations suggest. A classic example of this kind of study in mathematics education was reported by William Brownell and Harold Moser in 1949 . They were trying to establish which method of subtracting whole numbers could be taught most effectively—the regrouping method or the equal additions method. However, they realized that effectiveness might depend on the conditions under which the methods were taught—“meaningfully” versus “mechanically.” So, they designed a study that crossed the two instructional approaches with the two different methods (regrouping and equal additions). Among other results, they found that these conditions did matter. The regrouping method was more effective under the meaningful condition than the mechanical condition, but the same was not true for the equal additions algorithm.

What do education researchers want to understand? In our view, the ultimate goal of education is to offer all students the best possible learning opportunities. So, we believe the ultimate purpose of scientific inquiry in education is to develop understanding that supports the improvement of learning opportunities for all students. We say “ultimate” because there are lots of issues that must be understood to improve learning opportunities for all students. Hypotheses about many aspects of education are connected, ultimately, to students’ learning. For example, formulating and testing a hypothesis that preservice teachers need to engage in particular kinds of activities in their coursework in order to teach particular topics well is, ultimately, connected to improving students’ learning opportunities. So is hypothesizing that school districts often devote relatively few resources to instructional leadership training or hypothesizing that positioning mathematics as a tool students can use to combat social injustice can help students see the relevance of mathematics to their lives.

We do not exclude the importance of research on educational issues more removed from improving students’ learning opportunities, but we do think the argument for their importance will be more difficult to make. If there is no way to imagine a connection between your hypothesis and improving learning opportunities for students, even a distant connection, we recommend you reconsider whether it is an important hypothesis within the education community.

Notice that we said the ultimate goal of education is to offer all students the best possible learning opportunities. For too long, educators have been satisfied with a goal of offering rich learning opportunities for lots of students, sometimes even for just the majority of students, but not necessarily for all students. Evaluations of success often are based on outcomes that show high averages. In other words, if many students have learned something, or even a smaller number have learned a lot, educators may have been satisfied. The problem is that there is usually a pattern in the groups of students who receive lower quality opportunities—students of color and students who live in poor areas, urban and rural. This is not acceptable. Consequently, we emphasize the premise that the purpose of education research is to offer rich learning opportunities to all students.

One way to make sure you will be able to convince others of the importance of your study is to consider investigating some aspect of teachers’ shared instructional problems. Historically, researchers in education have set their own research agendas, regardless of the problems teachers are facing in schools. It is increasingly recognized that teachers have had trouble applying to their own classrooms what researchers find. To address this problem, a researcher could partner with a teacher—better yet, a small group of teachers—and talk with them about instructional problems they all share. These discussions can create a rich pool of problems researchers can consider. If researchers pursued one of these problems (preferably alongside teachers), the connection to improving learning opportunities for all students could be direct and immediate. “Grounding a research question in instructional problems that are experienced across multiple teachers’ classrooms helps to ensure that the answer to the question will be of sufficient scope to be relevant and significant beyond the local context” (Cai et al., 2019b , p. 115).

As a beginning researcher, determining the relevance and importance of a research problem is especially challenging. We recommend talking with advisors, other experienced researchers, and peers to test the educational importance of possible research problems and topics of study. You will also learn much more about the issue of research importance when you read Chap. 5 .

Exercise 1.7

Identify a problem in education that is closely connected to improving learning opportunities and a problem that has a less close connection. For each problem, write a brief argument (like a logical sequence of if-then statements) that connects the problem to all students’ learning opportunities.

Part III. Conducting Research as a Practice of Failing Productively

Scientific inquiry involves formulating hypotheses about phenomena that are not fully understood—by you or anyone else. Even if you are able to inform your hypotheses with lots of knowledge that has already been accumulated, you are likely to find that your prediction is not entirely accurate. This is normal. Remember, scientific inquiry is a process of constantly updating your thinking. More and better information means revising your thinking, again, and again, and again. Because you never fully understand a complicated phenomenon and your hypotheses never produce completely accurate predictions, it is easy to believe you are somehow failing.

The trick is to fail upward, to fail to predict accurately in ways that inform your next hypothesis so you can make a better prediction. Some of the best-known researchers in education have been open and honest about the many times their predictions were wrong and, based on the results of their studies and those of others, they continuously updated their thinking and changed their hypotheses.

A striking example of publicly revising (actually reversing) hypotheses due to incorrect predictions is found in the work of Lee J. Cronbach, one of the most distinguished educational psychologists of the twentieth century. In 1955, Cronbach delivered his presidential address to the American Psychological Association. Titling it “Two Disciplines of Scientific Psychology,” Cronbach proposed a rapprochement between two research approaches—correlational studies that focused on individual differences and experimental studies that focused on instructional treatments controlling for individual differences. (We will examine different research approaches in Chap. 4 ). If these approaches could be brought together, reasoned Cronbach ( 1957 ), researchers could find interactions between individual characteristics and treatments (aptitude-treatment interactions or ATIs), fitting the best treatments to different individuals.

In 1975, after years of research by many researchers looking for ATIs, Cronbach acknowledged the evidence for simple, useful ATIs had not been found. Even when trying to find interactions between a few variables that could provide instructional guidance, the analysis, said Cronbach, creates “a hall of mirrors that extends to infinity, tormenting even the boldest investigators and defeating even ambitious designs” (Cronbach, 1975 , p. 119).

As he was reflecting back on his work, Cronbach ( 1986 ) recommended moving away from documenting instructional effects through statistical inference (an approach he had championed for much of his career) and toward approaches that probe the reasons for these effects, approaches that provide a “full account of events in a time, place, and context” (Cronbach, 1986 , p. 104). This is a remarkable change in hypotheses, a change based on data and made fully transparent. Cronbach understood the value of failing productively.

Closer to home, in a less dramatic example, one of us began a line of scientific inquiry into how to prepare elementary preservice teachers to teach early algebra. Teaching early algebra meant engaging elementary students in early forms of algebraic reasoning. Such reasoning should help them transition from arithmetic to algebra. To begin this line of inquiry, a set of activities for preservice teachers were developed. Even though the activities were based on well-supported hypotheses, they largely failed to engage preservice teachers as predicted because of unanticipated challenges the preservice teachers faced. To capitalize on this failure, follow-up studies were conducted, first to better understand elementary preservice teachers’ challenges with preparing to teach early algebra, and then to better support preservice teachers in navigating these challenges. In this example, the initial failure was a necessary step in the researchers’ scientific inquiry and furthered the researchers’ understanding of this issue.

We present another example of failing productively in Chap. 2 . That example emerges from recounting the history of a well-known research program in mathematics education.

Making mistakes is an inherent part of doing scientific research. Conducting a study is rarely a smooth path from beginning to end. We recommend that you keep the following things in mind as you begin a career of conducting research in education.

First, do not get discouraged when you make mistakes; do not fall into the trap of feeling like you are not capable of doing research because you make too many errors.

Second, learn from your mistakes. Do not ignore your mistakes or treat them as errors that you simply need to forget and move past. Mistakes are rich sites for learning—in research just as in other fields of study.

Third, by reflecting on your mistakes, you can learn to make better mistakes, mistakes that inform you about a productive next step. You will not be able to eliminate your mistakes, but you can set a goal of making better and better mistakes.

Exercise 1.8

How does scientific inquiry differ from everyday learning in giving you the tools to fail upward? You may find helpful perspectives on this question in other resources on science and scientific inquiry (e.g., Failure: Why Science is So Successful by Firestein, 2015).

Exercise 1.9

Use what you have learned in this chapter to write a new definition of scientific inquiry. Compare this definition with the one you wrote before reading this chapter. If you are reading this book as part of a course, compare your definition with your colleagues’ definitions. Develop a consensus definition with everyone in the course.

Part IV. Preview of Chap. 2

Now that you have a good idea of what research is, at least of what we believe research is, the next step is to think about how to actually begin doing research. This means how to begin formulating, testing, and revising hypotheses. As for all phases of scientific inquiry, there are lots of things to think about. Because it is critical to start well, we devote Chap. 2 to getting started with formulating hypotheses.

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Hiebert, J., Cai, J., Hwang, S., Morris, A.K., Hohensee, C. (2023). What Is Research, and Why Do People Do It?. In: Doing Research: A New Researcher’s Guide. Research in Mathematics Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19078-0_1

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How to Do Research: A Step-By-Step Guide: Step 1: Develop a Topic

• Get Started
• 1a. Select a Topic
• 1b. Develop Research Questions
• 1c. Identify Keywords
• 1d. Find Background Information
• 1e. Refine a Topic
• 2a. Search Strategies
• 2d. Articles
• 2e. Videos & Images
• 2f. Databases
• 2g. Websites
• 2h. Grey Literature
• 2i. Open Access Materials
• 3a. Evaluate Sources
• 3b. Primary vs. Secondary
• 3c. Types of Periodicals
• 4a. Take Notes
• 4b. Outline the Paper
• 4c. Incorporate Source Material
• 5a. Avoid Plagiarism
• 5b. Zotero & MyBib
• 5c. MLA Formatting
• 5d. MLA Citation Examples
• 5e. APA Formatting
• 5f. APA Citation Examples
• 5g. Annotated Bibliographies

Developing a Topic

Developing a good research question can sometimes be the most difficult part of the research process. If you are struggling, follow the links below.

• Select a topic
• Develop research questions
• Identify keywords
• Find background information
• Refine your topic

Choosing a Topic - Video Overview

Video has been posted with permission from Pfau Library, California State University-San Bernardino.

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Choose Your Test

Sat / act prep online guides and tips, 113 great research paper topics.

General Education

One of the hardest parts of writing a research paper can be just finding a good topic to write about. Fortunately we've done the hard work for you and have compiled a list of 113 interesting research paper topics. They've been organized into ten categories and cover a wide range of subjects so you can easily find the best topic for you.

In addition to the list of good research topics, we've included advice on what makes a good research paper topic and how you can use your topic to start writing a great paper.

What Makes a Good Research Paper Topic?

Not all research paper topics are created equal, and you want to make sure you choose a great topic before you start writing. Below are the three most important factors to consider to make sure you choose the best research paper topics.

#1: It's Something You're Interested In

A paper is always easier to write if you're interested in the topic, and you'll be more motivated to do in-depth research and write a paper that really covers the entire subject. Even if a certain research paper topic is getting a lot of buzz right now or other people seem interested in writing about it, don't feel tempted to make it your topic unless you genuinely have some sort of interest in it as well.

#2: There's Enough Information to Write a Paper

Even if you come up with the absolute best research paper topic and you're so excited to write about it, you won't be able to produce a good paper if there isn't enough research about the topic. This can happen for very specific or specialized topics, as well as topics that are too new to have enough research done on them at the moment. Easy research paper topics will always be topics with enough information to write a full-length paper.

Trying to write a research paper on a topic that doesn't have much research on it is incredibly hard, so before you decide on a topic, do a bit of preliminary searching and make sure you'll have all the information you need to write your paper.

#3: It Fits Your Teacher's Guidelines

Don't get so carried away looking at lists of research paper topics that you forget any requirements or restrictions your teacher may have put on research topic ideas. If you're writing a research paper on a health-related topic, deciding to write about the impact of rap on the music scene probably won't be allowed, but there may be some sort of leeway. For example, if you're really interested in current events but your teacher wants you to write a research paper on a history topic, you may be able to choose a topic that fits both categories, like exploring the relationship between the US and North Korea. No matter what, always get your research paper topic approved by your teacher first before you begin writing.

113 Good Research Paper Topics

Below are 113 good research topics to help you get you started on your paper. We've organized them into ten categories to make it easier to find the type of research paper topics you're looking for.

Arts/Culture

• Discuss the main differences in art from the Italian Renaissance and the Northern Renaissance .
• Analyze the impact a famous artist had on the world.
• How is sexism portrayed in different types of media (music, film, video games, etc.)? Has the amount/type of sexism changed over the years?
• How has the music of slaves brought over from Africa shaped modern American music?
• How has rap music evolved in the past decade?
• How has the portrayal of minorities in the media changed?

Current Events

• What have been the impacts of China's one child policy?
• How have the goals of feminists changed over the decades?
• How has the Trump presidency changed international relations?
• Analyze the history of the relationship between the United States and North Korea.
• What factors contributed to the current decline in the rate of unemployment?
• What have been the impacts of states which have increased their minimum wage?
• How do US immigration laws compare to immigration laws of other countries?
• How have the US's immigration laws changed in the past few years/decades?
• How has the Black Lives Matter movement affected discussions and view about racism in the US?
• What impact has the Affordable Care Act had on healthcare in the US?
• What factors contributed to the UK deciding to leave the EU (Brexit)?
• What factors contributed to China becoming an economic power?
• Discuss the history of Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies  (some of which tokenize the S&P 500 Index on the blockchain) .
• Do students in schools that eliminate grades do better in college and their careers?
• Do students from wealthier backgrounds score higher on standardized tests?
• Do students who receive free meals at school get higher grades compared to when they weren't receiving a free meal?
• Do students who attend charter schools score higher on standardized tests than students in public schools?
• Do students learn better in same-sex classrooms?
• How does giving each student access to an iPad or laptop affect their studies?
• What are the benefits and drawbacks of the Montessori Method ?
• Do children who attend preschool do better in school later on?
• What was the impact of the No Child Left Behind act?
• How does the US education system compare to education systems in other countries?
• What impact does mandatory physical education classes have on students' health?
• Which methods are most effective at reducing bullying in schools?
• Do homeschoolers who attend college do as well as students who attended traditional schools?
• Does offering tenure increase or decrease quality of teaching?
• How does college debt affect future life choices of students?
• Should graduate students be able to form unions?

• What are different ways to lower gun-related deaths in the US?
• How and why have divorce rates changed over time?
• Is affirmative action still necessary in education and/or the workplace?
• Should physician-assisted suicide be legal?
• How has stem cell research impacted the medical field?
• How can human trafficking be reduced in the United States/world?
• Should people be able to donate organs in exchange for money?
• Which types of juvenile punishment have proven most effective at preventing future crimes?
• Has the increase in US airport security made passengers safer?
• Analyze the immigration policies of certain countries and how they are similar and different from one another.
• Several states have legalized recreational marijuana. What positive and negative impacts have they experienced as a result?
• Do tariffs increase the number of domestic jobs?
• Which prison reforms have proven most effective?
• Should governments be able to censor certain information on the internet?
• Which methods/programs have been most effective at reducing teen pregnancy?
• What are the benefits and drawbacks of the Keto diet?
• How effective are different exercise regimes for losing weight and maintaining weight loss?
• How do the healthcare plans of various countries differ from each other?
• What are the most effective ways to treat depression ?
• What are the pros and cons of genetically modified foods?
• Which methods are most effective for improving memory?
• What can be done to lower healthcare costs in the US?
• What factors contributed to the current opioid crisis?
• Analyze the history and impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic .
• Are low-carbohydrate or low-fat diets more effective for weight loss?
• How much exercise should the average adult be getting each week?
• Which methods are most effective to get parents to vaccinate their children?
• What are the pros and cons of clean needle programs?
• How does stress affect the body?
• Discuss the history of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
• What were the causes and effects of the Salem Witch Trials?
• Who was responsible for the Iran-Contra situation?
• How has New Orleans and the government's response to natural disasters changed since Hurricane Katrina?
• What events led to the fall of the Roman Empire?
• What were the impacts of British rule in India ?
• Was the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki necessary?
• What were the successes and failures of the women's suffrage movement in the United States?
• What were the causes of the Civil War?
• How did Abraham Lincoln's assassination impact the country and reconstruction after the Civil War?
• Which factors contributed to the colonies winning the American Revolution?
• What caused Hitler's rise to power?
• Discuss how a specific invention impacted history.
• What led to Cleopatra's fall as ruler of Egypt?
• How has Japan changed and evolved over the centuries?
• What were the causes of the Rwandan genocide ?

• Why did Martin Luther decide to split with the Catholic Church?
• Analyze the history and impact of a well-known cult (Jonestown, Manson family, etc.)
• How did the sexual abuse scandal impact how people view the Catholic Church?
• How has the Catholic church's power changed over the past decades/centuries?
• What are the causes behind the rise in atheism/ agnosticism in the United States?
• What were the influences in Siddhartha's life resulted in him becoming the Buddha?
• How has media portrayal of Islam/Muslims changed since September 11th?

Science/Environment

• How has the earth's climate changed in the past few decades?
• How has the use and elimination of DDT affected bird populations in the US?
• Analyze how the number and severity of natural disasters have increased in the past few decades.
• Analyze deforestation rates in a certain area or globally over a period of time.
• How have past oil spills changed regulations and cleanup methods?
• How has the Flint water crisis changed water regulation safety?
• What are the pros and cons of fracking?
• What impact has the Paris Climate Agreement had so far?
• What have NASA's biggest successes and failures been?
• How can we improve access to clean water around the world?
• Does ecotourism actually have a positive impact on the environment?
• Should the US rely on nuclear energy more?
• What can be done to save amphibian species currently at risk of extinction?
• What impact has climate change had on coral reefs?
• How are black holes created?
• Are teens who spend more time on social media more likely to suffer anxiety and/or depression?
• How will the loss of net neutrality affect internet users?
• Analyze the history and progress of self-driving vehicles.
• How has the use of drones changed surveillance and warfare methods?
• Has social media made people more or less connected?
• What progress has currently been made with artificial intelligence ?
• Do smartphones increase or decrease workplace productivity?
• What are the most effective ways to use technology in the classroom?
• How is Google search affecting our intelligence?
• When is the best age for a child to begin owning a smartphone?
• Has frequent texting reduced teen literacy rates?

How to Write a Great Research Paper

Even great research paper topics won't give you a great research paper if you don't hone your topic before and during the writing process. Follow these three tips to turn good research paper topics into great papers.

#1: Figure Out Your Thesis Early

Before you start writing a single word of your paper, you first need to know what your thesis will be. Your thesis is a statement that explains what you intend to prove/show in your paper. Every sentence in your research paper will relate back to your thesis, so you don't want to start writing without it!

As some examples, if you're writing a research paper on if students learn better in same-sex classrooms, your thesis might be "Research has shown that elementary-age students in same-sex classrooms score higher on standardized tests and report feeling more comfortable in the classroom."

If you're writing a paper on the causes of the Civil War, your thesis might be "While the dispute between the North and South over slavery is the most well-known cause of the Civil War, other key causes include differences in the economies of the North and South, states' rights, and territorial expansion."

#2: Back Every Statement Up With Research

Remember, this is a research paper you're writing, so you'll need to use lots of research to make your points. Every statement you give must be backed up with research, properly cited the way your teacher requested. You're allowed to include opinions of your own, but they must also be supported by the research you give.

#3: Do Your Research Before You Begin Writing

You don't want to start writing your research paper and then learn that there isn't enough research to back up the points you're making, or, even worse, that the research contradicts the points you're trying to make!

Get most of your research on your good research topics done before you begin writing. Then use the research you've collected to create a rough outline of what your paper will cover and the key points you're going to make. This will help keep your paper clear and organized, and it'll ensure you have enough research to produce a strong paper.

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Definition of research

 (Entry 1 of 2)

Definition of research  (Entry 2 of 2)

transitive verb

intransitive verb

• disquisition
• examination
• exploration
• inquisition
• investigation
• delve (into)
• inquire (into)
• investigate
• look (into)

Examples of research in a Sentence

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'research.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

Middle French recerche , from recercher to go about seeking, from Old French recerchier , from re- + cerchier, sercher to search — more at search

1577, in the meaning defined at sense 3

1588, in the meaning defined at transitive sense 1

Phrases Containing research

research and development

• research park
• marketing research
• market research
• translational research
• operations research
• oppo research

Dictionary Entries Near research

Cite this entry.

“Research.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/research. Accessed 14 Apr. 2024.

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White-sounding names get called back for jobs more than Black ones, a new study finds

Joe Hernandez

A sign seeking job applicants is seen in the window of a restaurant in Miami, Florida, on May 5, 2023. Joe Raedle/Getty Images hide caption

A sign seeking job applicants is seen in the window of a restaurant in Miami, Florida, on May 5, 2023.

Twenty years ago, two economists responded to a slew of help-wanted ads in Boston and Chicago newspapers using a set of fictitious names to test for racial bias in the job market.

The watershed study found that applicants with names suggesting they were white got 50% more callbacks from employers than those whose names indicated they were Black.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Chicago recently took that premise and expanded on it, filing 83,000 fake job applications for 11,000 entry-level positions at a variety of Fortune 500 companies.

Their working paper , published this month and titled "A Discrimination Report Card," found that the typical employer called back the presumably white applicants around 9% more than Black ones. That number rose to roughly 24% for the worst offenders.

The research team initially conducted its experiment in 2021, but their new paper names the 97 companies they included in the study and assigns them grades representing their level of bias, thanks to a new methodology the researchers developed.

"Putting the names out there in the public domain is to move away from a lot of the performative allyship that you see with these companies, saying, 'Oh, we value inclusivity and diversity,'" said Pat Kline, a University of California, Berkeley economics professor who worked on the study. "We're trying to create kind of an objective ground truth here."

America Reckons With Racial Injustice

From jobs to homeownership, protests put spotlight on racial economic divide.

The names that researchers tested include some used in the 2004 study as well as others culled from a database of speeding tickets in North Carolina. A name was classified as "racially distinctive" if more than 90% of people with that name shared the same race.

Applicants with names such as Brad and Greg were up against Darnell and Lamar. Amanda and Kristen competed for jobs with Ebony and Latoya.

What the researchers found was that some firms called back Black applicants considerably less, while race played little to no factor in the hiring processes at other firms.

Dorianne St Fleur, a career coach and workplace consultant, said she wasn't surprised by the findings showing fewer callbacks for presumed Black applicants at some companies.

"I know the study focused on entry-level positions. Unfortunately it doesn't stop there. I've seen it throughout the organization all the way up into the C-suite," she said.

St Fleur, who primarily coaches women of color, said many of her clients have the right credentials and experience for certain jobs but aren't being hired.

"They are sending out dozens, hundreds of resumes and receiving nothing back," she said.

What the researchers found

Much of a company's bias in hiring could be explained by its industry, the study found. Auto dealers and retailers of car parts were the least likely to call back Black applicants, with Genuine Auto Parts (which distributes NAPA products) and the used car retailer AutoNation scoring the worst on the study's "discrimination report card."

"We are always evaluating our practices to ensure inclusivity and break down barriers, and we will continue to do so," Heather Ross, vice president of strategic communications at Genuine Parts Company, said in an email.

AutoNation did not reply to a request for comment.

The companies that performed best in the analysis included Charter/Spectrum, Dr. Pepper, Kroger and Avis-Budget.

Workplace Diversity Goes Far Past Hiring. How Leaders Can Support Employees Of Color

Several patterns emerged when the researchers looked at the companies that had the lowest "contact gap" between white and Black applicants

Federal contractors and more profitable companies called back applicants from the two racial groups at more similar rates. Firms with more centralized human resources departments and policies also exhibited less racial bias, which Kline says may indicate that a standardized hiring workflow involving multiple employees could help reduce discrimination.

When it came to the sex of applicants, most companies didn't discriminate when calling back job-seekers.

Still, some firms preferred one sex over another in screening applicants. Manufacturing companies called back people with male names at higher rates, and clothing stores showing a bias toward female applicants.

What can workplaces — and workers — do

Kline said the research team hoped the public would focus as much on companies doing a bad job as those doing a good one, since they have potentially found ways to remove or limit racial bias from the hiring process.

"Even if it's true, from these insights in psychology and behavioral economics, that individuals are inevitably going to carry biases along with them, it's not automatic that those individual biases will translate into organizational biases, on average," he said.

St Fleur said there are several strategies companies can use to cut down on bias in the hiring process, including training staff and involving multiple recruiters in callback decisions.

Companies should also collect data about which candidates make it through the hiring process and consider standardizing or anonymizing that process, she added.

St Fleur also said she often tells her job-seeking clients that it's not their fault that they aren't getting called back for open positions they believe they're qualified for.

"The fact that you're not getting callbacks does not mean you suck, you're not a good worker, you don't deserve this thing," she said. "It's just the nature of the systemic forces at play, and this is what we have to deal with."

Still, she said job candidates facing bias in the hiring process can lean on their network for new opportunities, prioritize inclusive companies when applying for work and even consider switching industries or locations.

Read our research on: Gun Policy | International Conflict | Election 2024

Regions & Countries

About 1 in 4 u.s. teachers say their school went into a gun-related lockdown in the last school year.

Twenty-five years after the mass shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado , a majority of public K-12 teachers (59%) say they are at least somewhat worried about the possibility of a shooting ever happening at their school. This includes 18% who say they’re extremely or very worried, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to better understand public K-12 teachers’ views on school shootings, how prepared they feel for a potential active shooter, and how they feel about policies that could help prevent future shootings.

To do this, we surveyed 2,531 U.S. public K-12 teachers from Oct. 17 to Nov. 14, 2023. The teachers are members of RAND’s American Teacher Panel, a nationally representative panel of public school K-12 teachers recruited through MDR Education. Survey data is weighted to state and national teacher characteristics to account for differences in sampling and response to ensure they are representative of the target population.

We also used data from our 2022 survey of U.S. parents. For that project, we surveyed 3,757 U.S. parents with at least one child younger than 18 from Sept. 20 to Oct. 2, 2022. Find more details about the survey of parents here .

Here are the questions used for this analysis , along with responses, and the survey methodology .

Another 31% of teachers say they are not too worried about a shooting occurring at their school. Only 7% of teachers say they are not at all worried.

This survey comes at a time when school shootings are at a record high (82 in 2023) and gun safety continues to be a topic in 2024 election campaigns .

Teachers’ experiences with lockdowns

About a quarter of teachers (23%) say they experienced a lockdown in the 2022-23 school year because of a gun or suspicion of a gun at their school. Some 15% say this happened once during the year, and 8% say this happened more than once.

High school teachers are most likely to report experiencing these lockdowns: 34% say their school went on at least one gun-related lockdown in the last school year. This compares with 22% of middle school teachers and 16% of elementary school teachers.

Teachers in urban schools are also more likely to say that their school had a gun-related lockdown. About a third of these teachers (31%) say this, compared with 19% of teachers in suburban schools and 20% in rural schools.

Do teachers feel their school has prepared them for an active shooter?

About four-in-ten teachers (39%) say their school has done a fair or poor job providing them with the training and resources they need to deal with a potential active shooter.

A smaller share (30%) give their school an excellent or very good rating, and another 30% say their school has done a good job preparing them.

Teachers in urban schools are the least likely to say their school has done an excellent or very good job preparing them for a potential active shooter. About one-in-five (21%) say this, compared with 32% of teachers in suburban schools and 35% in rural schools.

Teachers who have police officers or armed security stationed in their school are more likely than those who don’t to say their school has done an excellent or very good job preparing them for a potential active shooter (36% vs. 22%).

Overall, 56% of teachers say they have police officers or armed security stationed at their school. Majorities in rural schools (64%) and suburban schools (56%) say this, compared with 48% in urban schools.

Only 3% of teachers say teachers and administrators at their school are allowed to carry guns in school. This is slightly more common in school districts where a majority of voters cast ballots for Donald Trump in 2020 than in school districts where a majority of voters cast ballots for Joe Biden (5% vs. 1%).

What strategies do teachers think could help prevent school shootings?

The survey also asked teachers how effective some measures would be at preventing school shootings.

Most teachers (69%) say improving mental health screening and treatment for children and adults would be extremely or very effective.

About half (49%) say having police officers or armed security in schools would be highly effective, while 33% say the same about metal detectors in schools.

Just 13% say allowing teachers and school administrators to carry guns in schools would be extremely or very effective at preventing school shootings. Seven-in-ten teachers say this would be not too or not at all effective.

How teachers’ views differ by party

Republican and Republican-leaning teachers are more likely than Democratic and Democratic-leaning teachers to say each of the following would be highly effective:

• Having police officers or armed security in schools (69% vs. 37%)
• Having metal detectors in schools (43% vs. 27%)
• Allowing teachers and school administrators to carry guns in schools (28% vs. 3%)

And while majorities in both parties say improving mental health screening and treatment would be highly effective at preventing school shootings, Democratic teachers are more likely than Republican teachers to say this (73% vs. 66%).

Parents’ views on school shootings and prevention strategies

In fall 2022, we asked parents a similar set of questions about school shootings.

Roughly a third of parents with K-12 students (32%) said they were extremely or very worried about a shooting ever happening at their child’s school. An additional 37% said they were somewhat worried.

As is the case among teachers, improving mental health screening and treatment was the only strategy most parents (63%) said would be extremely or very effective at preventing school shootings. And allowing teachers and school administrators to carry guns in schools was seen as the least effective – in fact, half of parents said this would be not too or not at all effective. This question was asked of all parents with a child younger than 18, regardless of whether they have a child in K-12 schools.

Like teachers, parents’ views on strategies for preventing school shootings differed by party. 

Note: Here are the questions used for this analysis , along with responses, and the survey methodology .

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About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

How pregnancy may speed up the aging process

The fatigue and pangs of pregnancy have made many women feel older than their years. Now there’s new research that suggests pregnancy may, in fact, accelerate the aging process.

Two new studies of genetic markers in the blood cells of pregnant women suggest that their cells seem to age at an exaggerated clip, adding extra months or even years to a woman’s so-called biological age as her pregnancy progresses.

But one of the studies also suggests this process may reverse itself once a woman gives birth, rewinding time so that some mothers’ cells seemingly end up biologically younger afterward than they’d been during gestation, especially if a mother breastfeeds her baby.

Together, the studies underscore how physically demanding pregnancy is. But they also raise important questions about aging itself and whether it really can be sped up, slowed or reversed by pregnancy.

Aging in pregnancy

The newest of the studies , published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found pregnancy “has a big impact on a woman’s body” and biological age, said Calen P. Ryan, an associate research scientist at the Columbia Aging Center at Columbia University in New York, who led the new research.

In it, scientists used several different biological-age “clocks” and other measures to analyze DNA markers in blood samples. These clocks aren’t timepieces but, instead, algorithms, developed using artificial intelligence programs, that examine the patterns of specialized chemical markers found on the outside of some genes. These markers accumulate and change in response to our age, health and lifestyles, a process known as epigenetics.

The algorithms can use these epigenetic markers to estimate the relative age of cells. This measure, often referred to as biological age, can differ from someone’s chronological age, which just means how long he or she’s been alive.

In the new study, the researchers checked blood samples from 825 young women in the Philippines, all born in the same year. Some had been or were pregnant, and others hadn’t conceived. Analyzing these samples, the epigenetic clocks broadly agreed that the biological age of the young women who’d been or were pregnant tended to be higher than that of the others, by at least several months, even after the researchers controlled for economic disparities and other social and health factors.

Pregnancy as a stress test

Similarly, the other new study, published in March in Cell Metabolism , used several different epigenetic clocks to estimate the changing internal age of pregnant women at several points during their pregnancies.

“We were very interested in looking at the impacts of pregnancy as a naturally occurring stress test,” said Kieran J. O’Donnell, an assistant professor at the Yale Child Study Center and Yale School of Medicine, who oversaw one of the new studies.

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With blood samples from 119 pregnant American women and five different clocks, the researchers tracked the epigenetic changes related to the women’s biological age, starting early in gestation and ending three months after they’d given birth.

The clocks again agreed that pregnancy seemed to be aging the incipient moms as they approached full term, making their blood cells’ DNA appear to be as much as two years older than it had been earlier in the pregnancy.

More encouraging, though, O’Donnell said, is that this aging seemed to reverse for most of the women within three months after birth. In general, their patterns of DNA markers soon reverted to an earlier, more-youthful state, and for some new moms who’d breastfed exclusively in the first three months postpartum, overshot the mark, leaving them apparently “younger” biologically than before, by as much as eight years, the study’s authors wrote, “indicating a pronounced reversal of biological aging.”

Disagreement about aging

But some researchers who study aging, longevity and epigenetics are skeptical of the studies’ findings and conclusions. “It seems unlikely to me that pregnancy induces a whole-body acceleration of biological aging which is then reversed soon after pregnancy,” said Matt Kaeberlein, a longtime longevity researcher who serves as CEO of Optispan, a company that promotes longevity and produces the “Optispan” podcast.

Charles Brenner, who studies metabolism, cancer and aging at the Beckman Research Institute of the City of Hope National Medical Center in California was blunter in an email. “100%, it’s a misuse of aging biomarkers,” he wrote.

Both scientists, as well as others who’ve discussed the studies online, speculate that the epigenetic shifts seen during pregnancy probably reflect the profound physiological demands of carrying a child. They’re “a transient response to the stress of pregnancy, particularly in the immune system,” Kaeberlein said.

What they aren’t is evidence that pregnant women suddenly get older and then younger, these researchers say, or experience lasting effects that could directly shorten or lengthen their life spans.

But the cellular changes being picked up and analyzed by the epigenetic clocks might someday be useful health indicators. If a pregnant woman’s epigenetic markers don’t soon bounce back once she’s no longer pregnant, she and her doctor might want to closely monitor her blood pressure, blood sugar and other standard measures of health, not because she suddenly seems older after becoming pregnant, but because, Ryan said, “pregnancy is such a big deal, physically.”

Do you have a fitness question? Email [email protected] and we may answer your question in a future column.

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6 Common Leadership Styles — and How to Decide Which to Use When

• Rebecca Knight

Being a great leader means recognizing that different circumstances call for different approaches.

Research suggests that the most effective leaders adapt their style to different circumstances — be it a change in setting, a shift in organizational dynamics, or a turn in the business cycle. But what if you feel like you’re not equipped to take on a new and different leadership style — let alone more than one? In this article, the author outlines the six leadership styles Daniel Goleman first introduced in his 2000 HBR article, “Leadership That Gets Results,” and explains when to use each one. The good news is that personality is not destiny. Even if you’re naturally introverted or you tend to be driven by data and analysis rather than emotion, you can still learn how to adapt different leadership styles to organize, motivate, and direct your team.

Much has been written about common leadership styles and how to identify the right style for you, whether it’s transactional or transformational, bureaucratic or laissez-faire. But according to Daniel Goleman, a psychologist best known for his work on emotional intelligence, “Being a great leader means recognizing that different circumstances may call for different approaches.”

• RK Rebecca Knight is a journalist who writes about all things related to the changing nature of careers and the workplace. Her essays and reported stories have been featured in The Boston Globe, Business Insider, The New York Times, BBC, and The Christian Science Monitor. She was shortlisted as a Reuters Institute Fellow at Oxford University in 2023. Earlier in her career, she spent a decade as an editor and reporter at the Financial Times in New York, London, and Boston.

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Methodology

• What Is Qualitative Research? | Methods & Examples

What Is Qualitative Research? | Methods & Examples

Published on June 19, 2020 by Pritha Bhandari . Revised on June 22, 2023.

Qualitative research involves collecting and analyzing non-numerical data (e.g., text, video, or audio) to understand concepts, opinions, or experiences. It can be used to gather in-depth insights into a problem or generate new ideas for research.

Qualitative research is the opposite of quantitative research , which involves collecting and analyzing numerical data for statistical analysis.

Qualitative research is commonly used in the humanities and social sciences, in subjects such as anthropology, sociology, education, health sciences, history, etc.

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• What factors influence employee retention in a large organization?
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Table of contents

Approaches to qualitative research, qualitative research methods, qualitative data analysis, advantages of qualitative research, disadvantages of qualitative research, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about qualitative research.

Qualitative research is used to understand how people experience the world. While there are many approaches to qualitative research, they tend to be flexible and focus on retaining rich meaning when interpreting data.

Common approaches include grounded theory, ethnography , action research , phenomenological research, and narrative research. They share some similarities, but emphasize different aims and perspectives.

Note that qualitative research is at risk for certain research biases including the Hawthorne effect , observer bias , recall bias , and social desirability bias . While not always totally avoidable, awareness of potential biases as you collect and analyze your data can prevent them from impacting your work too much.

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Each of the research approaches involve using one or more data collection methods . These are some of the most common qualitative methods:

• Observations: recording what you have seen, heard, or encountered in detailed field notes.
• Interviews:  personally asking people questions in one-on-one conversations.
• Focus groups: asking questions and generating discussion among a group of people.
• Surveys : distributing questionnaires with open-ended questions.
• Secondary research: collecting existing data in the form of texts, images, audio or video recordings, etc.
• You take field notes with observations and reflect on your own experiences of the company culture.
• You distribute open-ended surveys to employees across all the company’s offices by email to find out if the culture varies across locations.
• You conduct in-depth interviews with employees in your office to learn about their experiences and perspectives in greater detail.

Qualitative researchers often consider themselves “instruments” in research because all observations, interpretations and analyses are filtered through their own personal lens.

For this reason, when writing up your methodology for qualitative research, it’s important to reflect on your approach and to thoroughly explain the choices you made in collecting and analyzing the data.

Qualitative data can take the form of texts, photos, videos and audio. For example, you might be working with interview transcripts, survey responses, fieldnotes, or recordings from natural settings.

Most types of qualitative data analysis share the same five steps:

• Prepare and organize your data. This may mean transcribing interviews or typing up fieldnotes.
• Review and explore your data. Examine the data for patterns or repeated ideas that emerge.
• Develop a data coding system. Based on your initial ideas, establish a set of codes that you can apply to categorize your data.
• Assign codes to the data. For example, in qualitative survey analysis, this may mean going through each participant’s responses and tagging them with codes in a spreadsheet. As you go through your data, you can create new codes to add to your system if necessary.
• Identify recurring themes. Link codes together into cohesive, overarching themes.

There are several specific approaches to analyzing qualitative data. Although these methods share similar processes, they emphasize different concepts.

Qualitative research often tries to preserve the voice and perspective of participants and can be adjusted as new research questions arise. Qualitative research is good for:

• Flexibility

The data collection and analysis process can be adapted as new ideas or patterns emerge. They are not rigidly decided beforehand.

• Natural settings

Data collection occurs in real-world contexts or in naturalistic ways.

• Meaningful insights

Detailed descriptions of people’s experiences, feelings and perceptions can be used in designing, testing or improving systems or products.

• Generation of new ideas

Open-ended responses mean that researchers can uncover novel problems or opportunities that they wouldn’t have thought of otherwise.

Researchers must consider practical and theoretical limitations in analyzing and interpreting their data. Qualitative research suffers from:

• Unreliability

The real-world setting often makes qualitative research unreliable because of uncontrolled factors that affect the data.

• Subjectivity

Due to the researcher’s primary role in analyzing and interpreting data, qualitative research cannot be replicated . The researcher decides what is important and what is irrelevant in data analysis, so interpretations of the same data can vary greatly.

• Limited generalizability

Small samples are often used to gather detailed data about specific contexts. Despite rigorous analysis procedures, it is difficult to draw generalizable conclusions because the data may be biased and unrepresentative of the wider population .

• Labor-intensive

Although software can be used to manage and record large amounts of text, data analysis often has to be checked or performed manually.

If you want to know more about statistics , methodology , or research bias , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Chi square goodness of fit test
• Degrees of freedom
• Null hypothesis
• Discourse analysis
• Control groups
• Mixed methods research
• Non-probability sampling
• Quantitative research
• Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Research bias

• Rosenthal effect
• Implicit bias
• Cognitive bias
• Selection bias
• Negativity bias
• Status quo bias

Quantitative research deals with numbers and statistics, while qualitative research deals with words and meanings.

Quantitative methods allow you to systematically measure variables and test hypotheses . Qualitative methods allow you to explore concepts and experiences in more detail.

There are five common approaches to qualitative research :

• Grounded theory involves collecting data in order to develop new theories.
• Ethnography involves immersing yourself in a group or organization to understand its culture.
• Narrative research involves interpreting stories to understand how people make sense of their experiences and perceptions.
• Phenomenological research involves investigating phenomena through people’s lived experiences.
• Action research links theory and practice in several cycles to drive innovative changes.

Data collection is the systematic process by which observations or measurements are gathered in research. It is used in many different contexts by academics, governments, businesses, and other organizations.

There are various approaches to qualitative data analysis , but they all share five steps in common:

• Prepare and organize your data.
• Review and explore your data.
• Develop a data coding system.
• Assign codes to the data.
• Identify recurring themes.

The specifics of each step depend on the focus of the analysis. Some common approaches include textual analysis , thematic analysis , and discourse analysis .

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