What is research

A university is really place which is about encouraging research – but you as students have done little research until now.  Those of you contemplating post-graduate study need to know more about research, but research skills are really life skills – skills that will help you in getting ahead in the society of the future.

Research is, in simple words, the process of actively (by yourself) finding out about something you do not understand.  Let’s take a very simple example.

Here are [a pair of chopsticks].  Now, let’s say I have never seen these before, so I don’t know what they are, or how they are used.  I can find out about these things in several ways:

1.       Ask other people what they are

2.       Look in a book to find out what they are

3.       Watch and see how they are used, or how they work.

4.       Try using them in various ways in an attempt to discover a use for them

I may use one or all of these methods, and then I can report the result that these are called chopsticks, that they are used in China (and other Asian countries) as a tool for eating (and they may have other uses too!!).

This is a very simple example, but it explains the process of even the most complicated research in even the most abstract of fields.

If a new chemical compund or physical phenomenon is observed that is not understood, research will begin using the steps given above.

If a new archaeological object is found, the same steps will be taken.

If a new linguistic feature is found, the same process will be enacted

And if a new social problem emerges, the same process will be followed.

In other words, no matter what we study, we use the same basic principles of research to find out what something is and how it works / why it appears.

The structure of a research paper is also very similar across all subjects, based on these same simple principles.

1.       Describe what you want to understand (the unknown object; unsolved problem etc.) and why you want to research it.

2.       Describe how you are going to do the research

3.       Describe the results that you found when you used the methods you described

4.       Discuss the meaning of the results, what you have learned from the research, and what needs to be done next.

These five stages can be relabelled quite simply as

1.       Introduction and aim / purpose of research

2.       Method(s)

3.       Result(s)

4.       Discussion