Craft of Research, 1

1. Craft of Research, 1

2. Use of research, pubic & private • From the researcher’s point of view - a craft • Research is carefully planned: • May not know precisely what one’s looking for, but know in general the kinds of materials needed • How to find them • How to use them • Assemble them into an acceptable, cogent whole

3. Value of Research • For the neophyte researcher, helps one understand the material • More distantly, skills of research & of writing will help you in your career … • As a (very modest) researcher, • Helping others gather resources (reference), • Organize them into a cogent whole (BI) • Report reliably and persuasively (as librarian)

4. Your multiple roles • Understand the production of research: • Writing, research techniques, statistical methods, argumentation, interpretations and alternatives • The referee process • Printed and online versions

5. Your multiple roles • As a librarian (or other info professional) you should be aware of the physical traits of resource documents on retrieval: • Surrogates, controlled vocabularies, thesauri • Full-text retrieval (“IR”) • Abstracts and abstracting services • How these issues affect one’s ability to retrieval relevant documents • Novel trends in some fields (e.g., bioinformatics, bibliomining)

6. Your multiple roles • Communication: impact of • Writing styles (on consumer research, recommending research reports, IR) • Expectations by domain (scientific research techniques vs. humanities techniques) • Graphic communication • Statistical communication

7. Your multiple roles • Learn to critique research: establish a base of perspective and rationale … • Yet be sensitive to the influences & pressures on researchers • Look for alternative interpretations • Encourage others to do the same.

8. Your multiple roles: • Understand the various applications of research, depending on role and location (and whether the activity really is “research”) • Library administrators • Librarians as faculty • Librarians as practitioners • Other info professionals’ needs • Public (non-academic) • Students (academic libraries)

9. Thinking in Print (chapter 1) • Why conduct research? • Reliable published research • Write to remember • Write to understand • Write to gain perspective • What do you think?

10. Connecting with the Reader • Conversations among researchers: • Precise writing reflects the researchers’ judgment about the reader [compare this with the editors’ p.o.v] • Intended audience • Social roles (cf. The library applications mentioned above)

11. Connecting with the reader • Researchers create their own role (research activities, writer, intentions in sharing the work) • Understand the intended reader: choice of journal to publish the work • Prestige • Intended audience • Expectations of readers’ knowledge

12. Reader concerns • Readers will want to know the significance of the problem (the “so what” factor) • You want them to accept new knowledge • And to change their beliefs about the issue • Booth provides a checklist for understanding your reader (pp. 26-27)

13. Asking Questions, Finding Answers • From Topics to Questions - we’ll return to this theme several times • Researchers try to answer a significant question • Actually trying to pose and then solve a problem that others recognize as worth solving • Narrowing the topic to a “researchable problem” is not easy! See pp 37-38. • But research requires an actual question, not a topic

14. From topics to questions • When reading an article, can you fill in the blanks [p. 44] • The author is studying _______. • Because s/he wants to find out who/how/why ______. • In order to understand how/why/what _____.

15. From questions to problems • Research should discover, show, explain, and convince. • Turning practical problems into research problems • Is the problem actually significant? • There are two types of research: pure and applied.

16. Before continuing … • We’ll continue our look at research from the “developing researchers’” perspective; • Keep in mind these points addressed to researchers-as-authors when we examine them as part of the fountainhead of research: reflective inquiry

17. From Questions to Sources Review Ch. 5 and the Appendix - finding resources in libraries. Sources: • Reference librarians • General encyclopedia and dictionaries • Bibliographic guides • Online catalogues (cards for historical collections) • Domain specific encyclopedia & dictionaries • Specialized bibliographies • Guides

18. From questions to sources • Assignment 1 emphasizes finding resources in libraries - getting to know the lay of the land

19. From questions to sources • Librarians • Experts • Other people [subjects] • Printed resources: • Primary • Secondary • Tertiary • [Which has more research ‘value’ and why?]

20. Using sources • Careful notes! [bibliographic data] • Careful notes, redux! • For accurate summaries and abstracts • Get the context right: • A work cited out of context is suspect • Anticipate claims, supporting claims, warrants, biases & assumptions

21. Claims & supporting them • Making good arguments • Part of a strategy of persuasion • “good” research makes explicit the cause-and-effect: [you claim x caused y because …] • Consider the readers’ questions (or the librarian patrons’ questions) and how the expression of the claim can be interpreted by human judges & by IR systems

22. Claims & supporting them • Making good arguments • The warrant • Key to persuasion • Great opportunity to mislead by accident or design • Is the warrant somehow qualified? Should it be? • Does the qualification affect interpretation?

23. Warrants • Quality of the warrant: • False • Unclear • Inappropriate • Inapplicable • Discuss examples

24. Qualifications • Does the research qualify the claim? If so, is there a complete, accurate, fair explanation of the: • Rebuttals: • Complete review of all relevant aspects of the problem? Does the author pick-and-choose evidence? • Concessions: • Updated research on the problem • Corrected by other researchers acknowledge?

25. Qualifications • Limiting conditions • Qualifications affect the generalizability of the research results. • Is the scope of the work also limited?

26. Preparing to draft, drafting & revising • Before writing, authors try to gather all the evidence: • Warrants • Objections to rebut • [The literature review] • What are your preliminary interpretations? • What are your alternative interpretations? • More importantly, does the research question get answered?!

27. Preparing to draft, drafting & revising • Main points: • Are the quotes, &c., accurate • Is there a logical structdure to the argument • Don’t be afraid to draft and revise a lot! • Because researchers construct carefully, we can deconstruct carefully.

28. Communicating visually • (We’ll return to this theme again.) • Visual evidence is intended • To be accurate • To be interpreted quickly • Common, tho, for some outlets to manipulate graphics to lie • See Tufte’s works • More examples to follow from the literature and during the SPSS demo

29. Recap and conclusions • What’s the main points from the perspective of the: • Researchers • Librarian (as facilitator) • Consumers of research (public and other researchers)