Research Terms

Science is a system we have developed for the acquisition of knowledge about the sensory world. That world includes people, institutions, culture, technology; in short, anything you can see, hear, feel, touch, or smell. Scientists do research to try and find answers to questions, usually in an effort to solve problems, but sometimes simply for its own sake. They are usually looking for cause and effect relationships between the things in that world.

Research Methods
Research methods are the processes researchers use to obtain and analyze data. They are the processes researchers use in order to increase their understanding of a part of their world. These processes have been developed by the scientific community over time and have become an accepted part of the culture in which we are socialized and educated. But no matter how hard the scientific community works at achieving objectivity, research is still done by people, so when you look at the results of research (typically in a publication or other form of report) you should remember that we learn as much about the researcher as what they researched.

The interpretations which result from research (data, theories, program proposals, etc.) produce findings not facts and what you make of that product, its value to you, depends on the degree to which the perspective and processes used by the researcher are compatible with your own. Furthermore, although their methods are generally more explicit and formalized, researchers really don't have any additional intellectual tools available to them than you do. Those doing hard science research (chemistry, biology, medicine, etc.) simply have access to expensive instruments or a staff of assistants. Those doing soft research (sociology, psychology, anthropology, etc.) have the money to send out questionnaires or teams of interviewers. But they both find out about their part of the world by observing it or by asking others about it and then analyzing the raw data.

Finding A Topic

Getting a topic idea is relatively easy for the professionals. They have substantial experience, they know what they’re dealing with, and they know how to convert the topic into one of sufficient specificity and focus so that their research makes a contribution to knowledge and is "doable" within the parameters of time, resources and opportunity. The key to doing the latter is generally specificity in reviewing previous and existing research or intervention projects. That is, simply reading texts or summaries or popularized accounts of those projects is not sufficient. One needs to become as familiar as possible with those projects and that usually means examining the complete descriptions published in journals, presented at conferences, or critiqued in a variety of professional forums.

Research Terms

Here are a few terms you may come across as you do your own research into the reports and documents which result from the research of scientists.

Paradigms
A paradigm is a framework implicit in any research. There are four major paradigms which affect research:

• Ontology: the conceptual framework for classifying phenomena in some domain of inquiry
• Assumptions: Beliefs about the nature of the domain of inquiry
• Epistemology: beliefs about the proper way to acquire knowledge about the domain
• Methodology: specification of appropriate methods of inquiry about the domain Goals (or aims): associated with the knowledge

Data
Unadulturated information about phenomena; a pile of questionnaires is a set of data.

Cause
A factor in the relationship between phenomena; in western culture, cause must meet these criteria: