Primary and secondary research - Research methods for technical communication

Practical models for technical communication - Shannon Kelley 2021

Primary and secondary research
Research methods for technical communication

Research in technical communication follows two methods: primary and secondary research. For your project to succeed, you need to quickly determine what kind of research is required based on time constraints and available resources. Contrary to the implied order of their names, you will most likely start by skimming secondary research before engaging in primary research.

Primary Research

Primary research is new data that has not been collected before. This is often called fieldwork because it requires running experiments, doing interviews, collecting surveys, and getting out into the world.

If you want to do a research project that develops primary research, you’ll need to consider the following:

Fieldwork is valuable, but it takes time. You need to account for how much time you have to complete a project before deciding fieldwork is your best option. Often, effective fieldwork requires exposure to statistics and advanced research methods. If you’re unfamiliar with these, leave it to the experts.

Effective surveys and interviews provide firsthand experience, but the questions can be difficult to write. Poorly written survey questions can produce false results. Think about online surveys you encounter periodically. Can you detect that the author wants you to answer in a particular way? If so, that’s an invalid survey. If you’re interested in conducting an interview or survey, ask your instructor or boss if there are institutional or company guidelines for writing effective questions.

Self-reported data is less reliable than other more objective means of data collection. This is another potential problem you may encounter. If you were doing research on texting while driving among teens as part of a safety study, you would have to account for the possibility that some of the survey responses are probably untrue. This is why you see margins of error listed in polls or surveys conducted by credible sources such as Pew Research Center.

Check for existing studies. Chances are high that the fieldwork you’d like to do has been performed already. Check before you decide to venture out on your own.

An example of fieldwork when choosing a mattress might include conducting stress tests to determine durability, sleeping on the mattress for a hundred days or more to see if you feel more rested, or setting the mattress on fire to check flammability. This takes time and might be expensive. An appropriate time to conduct primary research is when you discover a serious gap in information that will prevent you from making a clear, ethical conclusion.

Secondary Research

Secondary research involves data that already exists. Trade journals, industry publications, and government reports are types of secondary research. This is the kind of research you do most of the time. Before deciding to tackle primary research, look at the secondary research in the field to see if people have already done some (or all) of the research for your topic. Secondary research exists in several levels of credibility and depth (figure 5.5).

Figure 5.5. Hierarchy of Credible Sources. Notice how the bulk of sources are at the bottom of this pyramid. As a researcher, your job is to sort out what’s reliable from what’s not. And there’s a lot that’s not.

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Level One: Blogs, Personal Websites, and Propaganda

The sources on this level have little to no editorial oversight. Frequently this means that the person writing is responsible for producing, fact-checking, editing, and publishing the content. The source might be a message board or other user-generated site that has few restrictions on content.

You’ll need to do some serious background checks if you plan to use sources of this kind. Does the source have an “about” page that defines its stance, publishing standards, or code of ethics? Watch out for sources that have weird URLs, come from personal blogs, or are published on hyperpartisan fringe platforms like U.S. Uncut (on the far left) or Breitbart (on the far right). The chances that you can use any source from this research strata are slim to none, since this level is dominated by opinion, misrepresented data, and amateur reportage.

Level Two: General News Publications

News media is where you usually make first contact with a research topic you’d like to pursue. If you’re assigned a project though work or school, general news publications are a good place to get an overview and find the language to use as you dive deeper.

Most news sources have a history of following journalistic standards, such as triple verifying sources before publishing them. Wikipedia articles may fall into this category as a starting place for basic information and useful search terms. These sources are typically not useful for deeper technical reports, but they can put you on a trail, especially if the publications focus on objective analysis and heavily cover science and industry.

Level Three: Trade or Specialized Publications

At this level, you’re getting into more credible sources. Trade-oriented publications are accessible to a general audience and a good place to go when you need help understanding the experts.

Examples of specialized publications include Wired, Popular Science, and Scientific American. These publications specialize in general STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) topics and publish articles that the layperson, or someone outside the specialty, can understand. These publications do long-form journalism or articles that involve substantial research. They usually employ writers with expertise in their subjects.

Level Four: Scholarly Publications

This level features the highest form of credible research because these sources are written by experts in their field and reviewed by a panel of experts for potential flaws prior to publication. This process of examination by a group of experts is called peer review and is standard practice in most scholarly works. This level is also where you may find meta-analyses, which are the collected findings of multiple independent research projects into the same or similar subjects to determine statistical significance.

Peer-reviewed journals are tightly focused on specific fields of inquiry, and you can usually find a publication for the field you need to research. For instance, at least six U.S.-based peer-reviewed journals cover fisheries alone, and at least one peer-reviewed journal covers baseball. Scholarly publications are the best resource for deep dives into your research topics.