Strategies For Conducting Research

Primary v. Secondary Research

There are two basic kinds of research: primary research and secondary research.

Primary research often uses first-person accounts and can be helpful when researching a local issue that may not have been addressed previously and/or has little published research available. You may also use primary research to supplement, confirm, or challenge national or regional trends with local information.

Primary research can include:

• Interviews
• Surveys
• Questionnaires
• Observations and analysis
• Ethnography (the study and description of people, cultures, and customs)

Many students are most familiar with secondary research. This type of research generally requires searching libraries and other research institutions’ holdings. Secondary research requires reading published studies and research to learn more about your topic, determine what others have written and said, and then develop a conclusion about your ideas on the topic in light of what others have done and said.

Some examples of sources that might be used in secondary research include:

• Academic, scientific, and technical journal articles
• Governmental reports
• Raw data and statistics
• Trade and professional organization data

It is rare to see a persuasive argument that doesn’t include primary and secondary research. Let’s look at an example. Say you are interested in using STEM knowledge to improve the quality of life for the homeless population in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The most helpful project would use both secondary and primary research. The following two sections will demonstrate what this might look like.

Secondary Research in Action

First, the secondary research will help establish best or common practices, trends, statistics, and current research about homelessness broadly in the United States and Colorado, and then more narrowly into Colorado Springs.

Your brainstorming would likely lead to questions regarding the following:

• The major issues facing homelessness and combating homelessness in the United States.
• The homeless population and demographics for Colorado and Colorado Springs.
• Services are currently available for the homeless in Colorado Springs.
• Services are available in other cities.

The above information would likely be available through secondary research sources. Helpful information would likely be available through city and state government agencies, such as the Colorado Department of Local Affairs, and local and national homeless advocacy groups, such as the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless. You must also search relevant research databases discussed below in the Where Do I Look? Section—in engineering, sociology, social work, and government documents.

Primary Research in Action

Primary research, such as interviews or surveys, can provide more in-depth and local perspectives on the numbers and details supplied by secondary sources. Some examples of groups to interview or survey include local homeless advocates, shelter and outreach employees and volunteers, people currently or previously experiencing homelessness, and researchers or university-affiliated groups that conduct, compile, and apply research on homelessness.

Will all this research generate a lot of content for your report? Most definitely.

Where Do I Look?

Now that you can distinguish between secondary research from primary research, where do you find them?

In the 21st century, we generally turn to the Internet for questions. We can still use the Internet for technical, scientific, and academic research, but where we visit changes. We will discuss a few places where you can research, including Google, Google Scholar, and your college library website.

Google and Google Scholar

Most students tend to use Google as their default research site. Google can be a great starting place for a variety of research. You can use Google to find news articles and other popular sources, such as magazine articles and blog posts. You can use Google to discover keywords, alternative terms, and relevant professional, for-profit, and non-profit businesses and organizations.

The most important thing to remember about using Google is that search results are organized by popularity, not accuracy. Further, because Google customizes search results based on a user’s search history, searches performed by different people or on other browsers may provide slightly different results.

Google will not provide access to the appropriate and necessary sources and information for many technical, scientific, and scholarly topics. Google Scholar, however, searches only academic and scientific journals, books, patents, and governmental and legal documents. This means the results will be more technical and scholarly, which is more appropriate for much of the research you will be expected to perform as a student.

However, while Google Scholar will show academic and technical results, that does not mean you can access the full-text documents. Many sources on Google Scholar appear from databases, publishers, or libraries, meaning they are often behind paywalls or password-protected. Do not pay for these documents! There is a good chance you can access them through the college library.

Learn how to link your college’s library to the Google Scholar database by following each step in the Linking Your School Library to Google Scholar article.

College Libraries

The Pikes Peak State College Library has access to databases, peer-reviewed journals, and books, which are generally the best choices for accurate and more technical information. A Google search might yield millions of results, and a Google Scholar search may yield tens or hundreds of thousands. Still, a library search generally yields only a couple of thousands, hundreds, or even dozens of results.

You may think, “Isn’t fewer results a bad thing? Doesn’t that mean limiting the possibilities for the project?” The quick answer is yes, fewer results mean fewer options for your project, but no, using the library does not limit the possibilities for a project.

Overall, library resources are more tightly controlled and vetted. Anyone can create a blog or website and post information, regardless of its accuracy or usefulness. Library resources, in contrast, have generally gone through rigorous processes and revisions before publication. For example, academic and scientific journals have a review system, such as a peer-review process or an editorial board. Both feature panels of people with expertise in the areas under consideration. Publishers of books also feature editorial boards that determine the usefulness and accuracy of information.

Of course, this does not mean that every peer-reviewed journal article or book is 100% accurate and useful all of the time. Biases still exist, and many commonly accepted facts change over time with more research and analysis. Overall, the process for these types of publications requires that multiple people read and comment on the work, providing some checks and balances that are not present for general internet sources.

Common Types of Library Sources

• Databases: Databases are specialized search services that provide access to sources such as academic and scientific journals, newspapers, and magazines. JSTOR and EBSCO Host are examples of databases.
• Journals are specialized publications focused on an often narrow topic or field. For example, Computers & Composition is a peer-reviewed journal focused on the intersection of computers, technology, and composition (i.e., writing) classrooms. Another example is the Journal of Applied Communication Research.
• Books: Also called monographs, books generally cover topics in more depth than can be done in a journal article. Sometimes, books contain contributions from multiple authors, with each chapter authored separately.
• Various media: Depending on the library, you may access multiple media, including documentaries, videos, audio recordings, and more. Some libraries offer streaming media you can watch directly on the website without downloading files.

How Do I Perform a Search?

Research is not a linear process. It requires back-and-forth between sources, your ideas and analysis, and the rhetorical situation for your research.

The research process is a bit like an eye exam. The doctor makes the best guess for the most appropriate lens strength and then adjusts the lenses. Sometimes, the first option is the best and most appropriate; sometimes, it takes a few tries with several options before finding the best one for you and your situation.

Once you decide on a focused topic and research question, you will need to determine keywords that you can use to search different resources.

A wide range of keywords is vital because not all terms have the same information. A quick Google search can aid in developing a list of keywords. A Google search may reveal more official language or terms, broader or narrower terms and concepts, or related terms and concepts. You can also search for the term + synonym to find other words you might use. Keep in mind that a synonym search will not work for all terms. For technical and scientific topics, though, Google may not be a lot of help for finding other terms.

You can use a couple of different tricks to narrow your search. Using quotation marks around two or more words means the search results will contain those words only in that specific order. For example, based on the exercise above, a search for “homelessness in Colorado” would only provide results where these words appear in this exact order, with no words between them. A search for homelessness in Colorado without quotation marks will search for those words and any sources with the words homelessness and Colorado anywhere in the text.

If you still are not sure where to start, or if you hit a wall, the librarians at the Pikes Peak State College are here to help! You can go to any of the Centennial or Rampart Range campuses’ libraries to ask for help or use the chat feature on the library website to talk to them directly from your computer.

Determining a topic and finding relevant resources are the first steps in the research process. Once you locate sources, you must read them and decide how useful and appropriate they are for your research context. If you would like some tips on doing that, please check out the Understanding and Documenting information in Appendix D.