What is Research?

Research may refer to

1. a body of knowledge on a topic
   • When professionals talk about research, they typically are referencing peer-reviewed research on a particular topic.
     • For most researchers, the first step in any research project involves strategic searching to learn what the current and best research, theory, and scholarship is on a topic.
2. the act of creating new knowledge
   • Researchers in different disciplines have unique and sometimes even contrasting ideas about what knowledge is and how to develop it. For example,
     • scholars create knowledge by engaging in textual research, interpretation, and hermeneutics.
     • scientists create knowledge by engaging in observation and systematic experimentation.
     • sociologists, psychologists, and educational researchers may use
       • Qualitative Research Methods
         • Case Study
         • Ethnography
         • Participant Observation
       • Quantitative Research Methods
         • Survey Research
3. a method for creating new products, applications, and services
   • Entrepreneurs endeavor to apply knowledge and new knowledge claims to solve real-world problems. For instance founders and product managers may engage in
     • Customer Discover Research
       • “a systematic application of knowledge toward the production of useful materials, devices, and systems or methods, including design, development, and improvement of prototypes and new processes” (NSF n.d.)
     • Venture Design
       • a process, a research methodology, that follows the principles of lean design.

Related Concepts

Discourse Community; Research Community – Methodological Community; Research Methodology; Research Methods; Epistemology

Related Course Assignments

Below are writing assignments designed to help undergraduate students understand the genres, rhetorical moves, methods, and epistemological assumptions of contemporary research communities:

1. Key Terms, Concepts, and Research Methods

Why Does Research Matter?

Overall, research is essential for advancing knowledge, solving problems, informing decision-making, fostering innovation, and promoting critical thinking. It plays a crucial role in shaping the world we live in and the future we create.

1. Advancing knowledge:
   • Research allows us to better understand the world around us, from the fundamental workings of the universe to the intricacies of human behavior. By conducting research, scholars can uncover new information, develop new theories and models, and identify gaps in existing knowledge that need to be filled. This knowledge can help students and teachers to better understand the world around them and develop new solutions to the problems facing society.
2. Solving problems:
   • Research helps us identify and solve problems. It can help us find ways to improve our health, protect the environment, reduce poverty, and develop new technologies.
3. Informing decision-making:
   • Research provides important information that can inform policy decisions, business strategies, and individual choices. By studying trends, analyzing data, and conducting experiments, researchers can help us make better-informed decisions.
4. Fostering innovation:
   • Research often leads to new technologies, products, and services. By pushing the boundaries of what is currently possible, researchers can inspire and fuel innovation.
5. Promoting critical thinking:
   • Research teaches us to question assumptions, evaluate evidence, and think critically. These skills are important for students to develop because they enable them to become more informed and engaged citizens, able to make more informed decisions and contribute to society in meaningful ways.
6. Enhancing career opportunities:
   • Research experience can be an asset in many career fields, including academia, business, government, and nonprofit organizations. By conducting research as an undergraduate student, students can develop valuable skills and experience that can help them to succeed in their future careers.

Types of Research

Informal vs. Formal Research, Basic vs. Applied Research

Research can be classified in various ways, and two common distinctions are:

1. Informal vs. Formal Research

Informal Research involves gathering information in non-systematic ways—through everyday experiences, casual conversations, web browsing, or personal reflections. It often serves as a starting point to spark preliminary ideas or gauge whether a topic is worth exploring in depth.

Formal Research is more structured and systematic. It typically involves designing experiments or studies, collecting and analyzing data, or engaging in rigorous textual analysis. These processes often follow established protocols and may be peer-reviewed, published, or otherwise documented in an official capacity.

2. Basic vs. Applied Research

Basic Research is driven by curiosity about fundamental principles or theories, without necessarily having an immediate practical goal. For instance, investigating the molecular structure of a certain protein to advance scientific understanding—regardless of whether it leads directly to a new medication.

Applied Research targets real-world problems, aiming to create practical solutions or products. This might include designing a new mobile app interface, implementing a community outreach program, or optimizing a manufacturing process.

While each community generally relies on formal approaches, they can still include informal techniques—such as brainstorming sessions or exploratory discussions—within a broader, systematic framework.

Likewise, a single community can engage in research that is basic (theory-driven or exploratory) or applied (focused on real-world solutions). For example, a Designer might investigate conceptual design principles as a purely theoretical exercise or create and test a specific user-interface for a client’s app. A Quantitative Empiricist could study fundamental physics questions or perform a market analysis for a new product launch.

In other words, each community chooses methods and levels of rigor depending on the goals of the project. With that in mind, let’s look at the distinctive characteristics of the five most common research methods.

What Are the Five Most Common Research Methods?

Now that we’ve explored how research can be informal or formal and basic or applied, let’s see how these ideas come to life in five major methodological communities:

1. Mixed Methods
2. Scholarly and Theoretical Research (Textual Research)
3. Design and Creative Methods
4. Empirical Methods: Qualitative
5. Empirical Methods: Quantitative

To learn more about these methods, see Research Methods.

Research & Mindset

Researchers are curious about the world. They embrace openness, a growth mindset, and collaboration. They undertake research projects in order to review existing knowledge and generate original knowledge claims about the topic, thesis, research question they are investigating. Research finds evidence.

Research Ethics

Researchers and consumers of research are wise to view research claims and research plans from an ethical perspective. Given human nature — such as the tendency to look for confirming evidence and ignore disconfirming evidence and to allow emotions to cloud reasoning — it’s foolhardy to disregard critical literacy practices when consuming the research of others.

Ethics are important to undergraduate students as researchers because ethics provide a framework for conducting research that is responsible, respectful, and accountable:

1. Protecting participants:
   • Ethics ensure that participants in research are treated with respect and dignity, and that their rights and well-being are protected. As a student researcher, it is important to obtain informed consent from participants, ensure their confidentiality, and minimize any potential harm or discomfort.
2. Ensuring integrity:
   • Ethics ensure that research is conducted with integrity and honesty. This means that data is collected and analyzed accurately, and that findings are reported truthfully and transparently.
3. Ethos:
   • Ethics help to build trust between researchers and the public. When research is conducted ethically, participants and the wider community are more likely to trust the findings and the researchers themselves.
4. Developing professional skills:
   • Adhering to ethical standards in research can help students to develop important professional skills, such as critical thinking, problem-solving, and communication. These skills can be useful in a wide range of career fields, including academia, healthcare, and government.
5. Professionalism:
   • Ethical research is a professional obligation. By conducting research ethically, students are fulfilling their obligations to the wider research community.

Research as an Iterative, Recursive, Chaotic Process

Research is commonly depicted on websites and textbooks on research methods as systematic work (see, e.g., Wikipedia’s Research page).

Depicting research as systematic work is certainly valid, especially in natural and social science research. For instance, scientists in the lab working with a virus like COVID-19 or Ebola aren’t going to play around. Their professionalism and safety is tied to rigorously following research protocols.

That said, it’s an oversimplification to suggest research processes are invariably systematic. Discoveries have emerged from basic research that have been wildly popular and useful real-world applications. (See, for example, 24 Unintended Scientific Discoveries — the video below). Scientists may begin researching hypothesis A but rewrite that hypothesis multiple times until they find hypothesis Z — something that explains the data. Then they go back and repackage their investigation, following ethical standards, for a wider audience.

Ultimately, because research is such an iterative process, the thesis or hypothesis a researcher began with may not be the one the researcher ends up with. The takeaway here is that research is a learning process. Research efforts can lead to unpredictable applications and insights. Research finds evidence.

Ultimately, research is about curiosity and openness. The question that initiates a research effort may morph into other questions as researchers

• dig deeper into the literature on the topic and become more conversant
• endeavor to make sense of the data/information they have gathered during the conduct of the study.