Transcript The Craft of Research

Early in the Research
From “The Craft of Research” by
Wayne C. Booth
Gregory G. Colomb
Joseph M. Williams
What are you worried about?
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How to look for a research topic?
Where to find relevant information?
How to organise the information?
There is no reason to worry
Even experienced researchers
feel a bit anxious when they
have to undertake a new
research project.
What are the differences
between the experienced
researchers and you then?
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They know what lies ahead - hard work.
The kinds of material they will need.
How to find them.
How to use them.
Are there any similarity?
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They too may not know precisely what
they are looking for at the beginning.
Should you start writing once
start assembling the materials?
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No.
What to do then?
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plan a product of a certain kind and
certain shape.
– to express your deliberate intention to achieve a
particular end.
Do researchers let their plan
box them in?
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No, good researchers are ready to
change their plan if..
– they run into a problem.
– or suddenly understand their project better.
– or discover some by-way a more interesting
objective that requires a new direction.
When do they start writing?
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Once the plans start execution.
From the beginning of the project to its
end.
Do not wait until the end of the process.
Why to write?
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To remember what they find.
– Listing sources, assembling research summaries,
keeping lab notes.
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To understand and to see more clearly
the relationships among the ideas
– arranging and rearranging the results in new ways,
outlines, diagrams of how facts relate, summaries
– to see connections and contrasts, complications and
implications.
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To gain perspective
– to improve the thinking
– to see the ideas in a clearer light
Your writing for others will
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Reflect judgements you have made
about your readers knowledge and
understanding.
Include, what you want them to recognise
as significant in your research.
Writing for others
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You need help to see your ideas for what
they are rather than for what you want
them to be.
You invariably understand your ideas
better when you write to make them
accessible to others.
To justify the value of your research.
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If you misjudge how much background
they need.
If you offer your findings in a way that
does not speak to their interests.
then
You will loose the credibility
that every writer needs to hold
Understanding your readers
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Prefer writing that impose as little unnecessary
difficulty as possible.
Eager to understand the point of your writing
and how you reached it.
Want to know how you think your research will
change their thinking and beliefs.
Are you to offer a solution to a problem that
they have long felt needed solving, or are you
trying to sell a solution which is not at all of
their interest.
Significance of a research
problem
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If you can find a problem that you alone want
the solution, you have achieved something
substantial.
If you can find a solution that changes only
what you thing about a good many things, you
have achieved something more significant.
If you can pose a problem that the others
recognise not just as your problem, but as their
problem as well, a problem whose solution will
change their thinking in ways they think
significant then it is excellent.
Planning your project
No single formula can guide
everyone’s research: you will spend
time searching and reading just to
discover where you are and where are
you going.
You will spend time in blind narrow alleys;
and you will learn more than you thesis
requires, in the end the extra work will
pay off, not just in a good thesis, but in
you ability to deal with new problems.
First steps to take in planning
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Must settle on a topic specific enough to let you
master a reasonable amount of information.
– Not “the history of scientific writing,”
– but “essays in the proceedings of the royal society
(1800-1900) as a precursor to the scientific article”
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Out of the topic, develop questions that will guide
your research and point you toward a problem
that you intend to solve.
Gather data relevant to answering your question
– as collect, sort, and assemble your information, plan
to do lots of writing to remember and understand, may
not in the neat order
Finding topics and questions
If you are free to pursue any research
topic that interests you, that freedom
may be frustrating - so many choices,
so little time.
Finding a topic, is only the first step,
does not mean that once you have a
topic, you need only to search for
information, and report what you find.
What else to do then
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You have to find a reason for devoting
your time to pursue it and then for asking
readers to spend time reading about it.
Determine the significance of the topic
– for the researcher
– to others - to the supervisor,
colleagues, entire community of
researchers
Researcher must view his/her
task differently
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Aim not just answering a question, but at
posing and solving a problem the others
also should recognise as worth solving.
– Do not feel dismayed if at first you cannot
find something as above, but at least
something you might find worth solving
(genuinely)
Research interest and topic
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Interest
– a general area of inquiry that we like to explore
(e.g., society and language, textual coherence and cognition,
ethics and research)
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topic
– an interest specific enough to support research
that one might plausibly report on a book or
article that help others to advance their thinking
and understanding.
(e.g., “Linguistic signals of social change in Elizabethan England”,
“the role of mental scenarios in the reader’s creation of coherence”
“ the degree to which the current research is motivated by underthe-counter payments”)
Setting the topic from interests
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Start with what interests you most deeply.
List four or five areas that you would like
to learn more about.
Pick one with the best potential for
yielding a topic that is specific and that
might lead to good sources of data.
Some guidance
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Look at the matters of interest in your
field of study.
Looking in a recent text book.
Talking to another student.
Consulting your teacher/supervisor.
Or from another course.
Even from a general bibliographical
resource in the library
Warning
Ensure that the topic you have
selected is rich in literature.
If you pick your topic first and after
considerable searching discover that the
sources are thin, you will have to start over
Narrowing down a broad topic
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A topic is probably too broad if you can
state it in fewer than four or five words.
e.g.,
Free will and historical
The conflict of free will and
inevitability in Tolstoy’s War historical inevitability in
and Peace
Tolstoy’s description of three
battles in War and Peace
The history of commercial
aviation
The contribution of the military
to the development of DC-3 in
the early years of commercial
aviation
Narrow down topics using nouns derived from verbs
Advantage of a specific topic
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Easy to recognise gaps, inconsistencies
and puzzles that you can question, which
help turning your topic into research
question
Caution
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You narrow your topic too severely when
you cannot easily find sources
The history of commercial aviation
Military support for development of the DC-3 in the early
years of commercial aviation
The decision to lengthen the wing tips on the DC-3 prototype
as a result of the military desire to use the DC-3 as a cargo
carrier
From a narrowed topic to
questions
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Once you have a topic to research, you
should find in it questions to answer
– they are crucial, because the starting point
of good research is always what you do not
know or understand but feel you must
– ask the standard who, what, when and
where questions. Record your questions, but
don’t stop for their answers.
Four perspectives to organise
questions
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What are the parts of your topic and what
larger whole is it a part of?
What is its history and what larger history
is it a part of?
What kinds of categories can you find in
it and to what larger categories of things
does it belong?
What good is it? What can you use it for?
Further questions on topic
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Identify questions that begin with Who,
What, When or Where.
– They only about matters of fact
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Emphasise on questions that begin with
How and Why
Concentrate questions that need more
than one- or two word answer.
Decide which questions stop you for a
moment, challenge you, spark some
special interest.
From a question to its
significance
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You need to decide how significant your
research might be not just to yourself but
to others
– a simple guideline
Step 1 (Naming your topic)
• attempt to describe your work in a
sentence like
I am studying the repair process for cooling systems
I am working on the motivation of President Bushe’s early
speeches
From a question to its
significance - a simple guideline
Step 2 (suggesting and defining the topic and
the reason)
• describe your work more exactly by
adding to that sentence an indirect
question that specifies something about
your topic that you do not know or fully
understand.
I am studying X because I want to find out who/ what/
when/ where/ whether/ why/ how __________
fill in the blank with a subject and a verb:
From a question to its
significance - a simple guideline
Step 3 (motivating the question)
• add an element that explains why you are
asking your question what you intend to get
out of its answer
1. I am studying repair process for cooling systems,
2. Because, I want to find out how experts repairers
analyse failures
3. In order to understand how to design a computerised
system that could diagnose and prevent failures
Thank You