Student's guide to writing college papers, Fourth edition - Kate L. Turabian 2010
Introduction: Why research?
Who Does Research
Why Professionals Do Research
Why You Should Learn to Do Research Now
Our Promise to You
Who Does Research
What comes to mind when you think of research? Those hours you spent collecting random information on some assigned topic for a high school “research paper”? Or maybe you picture a scientist in a lab coat, peering into a microscope? Perhaps a white-bearded professor silently taking notes in a hushed library? You might, however, have pictured Oprah, planning her next show or business venture. Or Fred Smith, founder of Federal Express, who developed the idea for his business in a class research paper. Or what about Sig Mejdal? He's the chief researcher for baseball's St. Louis Cardinals, whose manager, Tony La Russa, has had researchers on his stafffor decades.
Research is everywhere in the professional world. If you know a lawyer, a doctor, a business executive, a marketer, an event planner, a construction manager, or any other professional, then you know someone whose job depends on research. In our aptly named “age of information” (or, too often, misinformation), more jobs than ever require you not only to find information, but to evaluate it, sort the good from the bad, and then report it clearly and accurately. In the age of the assembly line, workers had to learn one set of tasks that they performed the same way, over and over. These days the key to most jobs is not just how much you know, but how good you are at finding out what you don't. In this new century—your century—the skills of research are essential for just about anyone who wants to succeed.
Did you also think of yourself as a researcher? The fact is you do research almost every day. You are a researcher whenever you dig up the information you need to accomplish a goal—from selecting the most popular chemistry teacher, to finding an affordable apartment that allows pets, to figuring out which laptop is best for gaming. Typically these searches are too quick to feel like a research “project,” but you are doing what good researchers always do: collecting information to solve a problem or answer a question.
When you thought of researchers, did you also think of your teachers? We college teachers teach, but we also do research. That research begins in our area of expertise, with what we know, but what gets us excited are the things we don't know but wish that we did: What's the connection between morality and the biology of the brain? Will knowing grammar rules make you a betterwriter? Can we reduce global warming by removing the greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere? Did the prehuman Neanderthals die out naturally, or did our human ancestors kill them off? We teachers spend much of our working lives with research questions like those, either asking and answering our own or studying the questions and answers of our colleagues.
Why should the research experience of teachers matter to you? For one thing, it's good to know that we practice what we teach. More importantly, our lives of research color the kind of learning that we value most—and that we expect from you. New college students are often surprised to discover that just knowing the facts is not enough for most teachers. It's not enough in our own work: more than knowing things, what energizes us is our habit of seeking out new questions, the cast of mind that drives all research. And it's not enough in yours: more than checking that you know the facts, we want to see what you can do with the facts, what new questions, combinations, possibilities, or puzzles you discover—or invent. We value and reward good answers, but we reward good questions more.
When your teacher asks more from you than just rehashing the facts, she is looking for signs of a critical mind with a questioning bent. She's looking for a mind-set that is keen to find out not just what is already known but what no one knows and perhaps never even thought to ask. The two of us hope that our book can inspire most of you to try on that mind-set, at least for a while. It won't be a waste of time, even if the fit is not right. For even if you are certain that questions are not for you and that what you like are settled answers—and many successful people do—you'll still need to know how to find those answers, and we'll help you do that too.
Why Professionals Do Research
Research in the workplace takes many forms, but the basic structure of every research project is the same. Someone has a problem or a goal, and they cannot decide what to do about it until they figure out something they don't know: A business is losing customers to a competitor but cannot respond until it researches why customers are leaving. A shipping company wants to reduce its insurance costs, so it researches OSHA requirements for federal safety certification. A local volleyball league wants to raise money to build a practice facility, but it cannot approach potential donors until it has research showing that it can cover ongoing costs by renting the facility for other sports.
The need for this kind of research is greater now than ever. Whenever a business or professional organization takes an action that might affect the value of its stock or the well-being of its employees or customers, it faces legal requirements for “due diligence.” That is, it must thoroughly research the likely consequences or be liable if things go wrong. But beyond those legal requirements, that kind of research is now considered standard practice. No responsible professional these days makes a major decision without knowing all they can about it.
YOUR FIRST RESEARCH ASSIGNMENT
Researching Research in the Workplace
Here's a useful way to start thinking about research: Professionals do research because they need the answer to a question in order to accomplish some goal. Let's suppose that you have a goal—to motivate yourself to care enough about your research assignments that you will do good work on them. And to achieve that goal, you need the answer to a question: Is research really that important in the workplace?
So your first miniassignment is to research the answer. Find five people you know with jobs that you might like to have—not your perfect job, but work that you can imagine doing. Ask them about research on their job. Don't just stop with those activities they call research. Ask about any tasks that require them to find out something they didn't know in order to accomplish some goal. Also ask how much those skills matter in their evaluations of their colleagues. Share your results with your classmates.
Why You Should Learn to Do Research Now
Research is at the heart of every college curriculum, and it will show up in your classes in both obvious and hidden forms. Colleges have been this way for centuries, but it's not just tradition that explains why we expect you to learn research.
The first reason is practical: it concerns your economic future more than your current education. You may not yet be a practicing professional who depends on research, but the chances are good that you will be. The research you do now will prepare you for the day when your job depends on your ability to find answers for yourself or to evaluate and use the answers of others. It will also prepare you to get that job in the first place: although potential employers care about what you know, the workplace changes so quickly these days that they care more about how prepared you are to find out what you don't yet know.
A second reason has to do with your education, now and for a lifetime of learning. When you understand research, you are better able to avoid the trap of passive learning, where your only choices are to absorb, or not, what some textbook or teacher says. Doing research, you'll discover how the knowledge we all rely on is only as good as the research that supports it. You'll also discover that what you learn from the research of others depends on what questions you ask—and don't ask.
The greatest problem in research today is not finding information—we are awash in it as never before—but finding information we can trust. The Internet and cable flood us with “facts” about government, the economy, the environment, the products we buy. Some are sound; most are not. Your own research will let you experience the messy reality behind what is so smoothly and confidently presented by experts on the job, in the press, or on TV. As you learn to do research, you'll learn to distinguish unsupported assertions from reliable research reported clearly, accurately, and with appropriate qualification.
Our third reason you might think idealistic. We teachers ask you to do research because it is the most intellectually exciting part of any education. We hope you too will experience the sheer pleasure of solving a research puzzle: research can spark all the excitement of unraveling a mystery. (TV's Adrian Monk is an amazing researcher, as are Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple, and all the heroes of detective fiction.) We also hope you can experience the self-confidence that comes from discovering something that no one else knows. When knowledge is king and businesses—and countries—are valued on their intellectual capital, the one who knows is a special person. If we can teach you to love the hunt for knowledge, we'll have given you a gift you'll long treasure.
We must be candid, though: doing research carefully and reporting it clearly can be hard work, consisting of many tasks, often competing for your attention at the same time. And no matter how carefully you plan, research follows a crooked path, taking unexpected turns, sometimes up blind alleys, even looping back on itself. As complex as that process is, we will work through it step-by-step so that you can see how its parts work together. When you can manage its parts, you can manage the often intimidating whole and look forward to your next research project with greater confidence.
Our Promise to You
We have based this book on a lifetime—two lifetimes—of research into how experienced researchers do their work, how experienced writers put together effective texts, what readers look for and what they need in a research report, and what a developing writer needs to know to write better and struggle less. Rest assured that what you read here is grounded not in our opinions or preferences but in our best efforts to know what there is to know about doing and reporting research.
We have also based this book on two lifetimes of helping writers learn to writer better, not just beginners but some of the most distinguished and successful professionals. So you can also rest assured that what you read here will be the most practical advice we know how to give. We know what it is to have to get a paper out the door, and we'll respect your need to get your papers done.
We have written this book to inspire some of you to experience not just the work but the joys of research. We have written it to educate most of you about the nature of research and its reporting, so that you can understand the reasons for the advice we give. And we have written it to give all of you our best practical, step-by-step guidance on how to do your best research and write the best paper you can—now and for the rest of your career. We hope that every one of you will go with us as far down each of those roads as you can or will. But we are confident that if you commit to do your part, we'll help you get that paper out the door—done, and done right.