Research by Dan Martin

  1. What Is Research?
  2. Why Is Primary Research?
  3. What Is Secondary Research?
  4. What Is Qualitative Research
  5. What Is Quantiative Research?
  6. How Do I Form a Research Question?
  7. How Do I Use the CWU Library Database to Collect Resources?
  8. How Do I Organize Interviews, Surveys, and Observations?
  9. What Is a Research Proposal?
  10. What Is an Annotated Bibliography?

What Is Research

When you hear or see the word research, especially in academic settings, you most likely associate that word with the sciences, labs, and research methods. However, research is much more expansive and broader than bunsen burners and dissecting a frog. Taking pictures and screenshots are research. Collecting data about your writing process is research. Looking through old photographs, letters, and journals is research.

Research decisions are always made for a reason and influenced by a specific set of factors. All research methods are rhetorical because we approach research and data collection in specific ways that we think will allow us to say certain things for certain reasons. We select a method and approach to research because we think it will give us the best chance of solving some particular issue that we have chosen to address for another set of rhetorical purposes. Porter and Sullivan argue that research is a “practical action” (p. 39) and that research comes with a “political and ethical situatedness” (41) that must be transparent. Research is guided and negotiated by the context, researcher, and subject matter. When we conduct research, we need to consider the kairos of the context, the audiences involved, and technologies being used. They contend that “The research process is a continual reshaping of its own picture vis-à-vis the picture in the researchers head” (p. 68).

What Is Primary Research?

You've probably heard the term primary research right before or after you heard the term secondary research. You most likely wondered what the differences are between these two types of research. One form of primary research is the research you create or conduct through interviews, surveys, observations, experiments, textual and discourse analysis. These are just some of the methods associated with primary research. When you think about primary and secondary research, try to remember that primary research is a form of research that you conduct yourself. If you conduct an interview with an expert for a project, you will be conducting primary research. If you published the interview for a journal article, it would become a secondary source that reports on your primary research. Historians might rely on the examination and analysis of a set of primary documents for a primary research project. Examining a collection of newspapers from 1900 to answer a research question about how newspapers structure content would make the newspapers a primary source material.

To learn more about how to conduct primary research, read and consider the following resources:

What Is Secondary Research?

Secondary research is the type of research you are most likely familiar with and use to conducting. This is a form of research you most likely learned about in secondary school at the library, locating sources (books, articles, magazines, etc.) and referencing content from those sources to support a point or thesis in a paper. Locating someone's publication and citing it in your project is an example of secondary research.

To learn more about how to conduct secondary research, read and consider the following resources:

What Is Qualitative Research?

One form of primary research is qualitative research. You've most likley heard the terms qualitative and quantiative research before and wondered how they differ. Qualitative research includes methods of research that rely on interviews, case studies, observations, and surveys.

To learn more about how to conduct qualitative research, read and consider the following resources:

What Is Quantitative Research?

Another form of primary research is quantitative research. Quantitative Research is a type of research that focuses on numbers and the quantification of data and information.

How Do I Form a Research Question?

Finding a research question is a rhetorical process that involves inquiry, reading, analysis, and relevance. A good research question considers how context, purpose, and constraints shape the question. We can only pose a question we have the time and resources to invest in an answer. A good place to begin to find a research question is your reactions to readings, ideas, videos, media, and conversations. What interests you about the topics in the course? What upsets you in the readings, videos, or webtexts? Why? Which sources do you agree with and why?

How Do I Use the CWU Library Database to Collect Resources?

The university spends hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on subscriptions to journals and databases of scholarship and academic resources. Using the university database is an important media literacy that you need to learn and practice while completing your degree. The library offers numerous resources on using the library and learning how to use the library that are extremely valuable. It is important to know what an archive is and how speical collections are organized.

How Do I Organize Interviews, Surveys, and Observations?

Conducting interviews, surveys, and observations requires attention to detail and planning. My father used to tell me that there are five P's in life, maybe you've heard a story like this from your father. Prior planning prevents poor performance. This statement must have been written for surveys, interviews, and observations. Planning an interview takes quite a bit of time. You need to think about who you are going to interview and why. How will the person you intend to interview provide you with information that allows you to answer or engage your research question? Then you need to consider how the questions for the interview will lead the interviewee to answers that are beneficial to you. That means you have to draft out several sets of interview questions and test them on people to see how well they work and how they are being answered. This takes time and patience.

Surveys are similar if not more complicated. Surveys require drafting questions and then testing those questions out on groups of people, prefferable intended audiences and demographics.

What Is a Research Proposal?

Research proposals are an important genre for justifying the research question you intend to investigate. Perhaps that is the defining characteristic of a research proposal. You justify why the question you are posing and engaging is relevant and valuable. You don't answer the question in a research proposal.

What Is an Annotated Bibliography?

Annotated bibliographies are one of the most useful research tools for organizing resources. An annotated bibliography is a list of source materials built around a research focus and question with source commentaries and summaries.

Additional Resources on Research

  1. "Wikipedia Is Good for You!?" by James P. Purdy
  2. "Googlepedia: Turning Information Behaviors into Research Skills" by Randall McClure
  3. "Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Sources" by University of Michigan

Works Cited on This Page

  • Sullivan, Patricia and James E. Porter. (1997). Opening Spaces: Writing Technologies and Critical Research Practices. Greenwich: Ablex Pub. Corp.