Craft of Research, 1

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Craft of Research, 1
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Use of research, pubic private

• From the researchers point of view - a craft
• Research is carefully planned
• May not know precisely what ones 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

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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 ones ability to
  retrieval relevant documents
• Novel trends in some fields (e.g.,
  bioinformatics, bibliomining)

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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

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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.

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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)

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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?

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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)

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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

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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)

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Asking Questions, Finding Answers

• From Topics to Questions - well 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

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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 _____.

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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.

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Before continuing

• Well 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

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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

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From questions to sources

• Assignment 1 emphasizes finding resources in
  libraries - getting to know the lay of the land

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From questions to sources

• Librarians
• Experts
• Other people subjects
• Printed resources
• Primary
• Secondary
• Tertiary
• Which has more research value and why?

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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

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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

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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?

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Warrants

• Quality of the warrant
• False
• Unclear
• Inappropriate
• Inapplicable
• Discuss examples

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Quali?cations

• 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?

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Quali?cations

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

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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?!

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Preparing to draft, drafting revising

• Main points
• Are the quotes, c., accurate
• Is there a logical structdure to the argument
• Dont be afraid to draft and revise a lot!
• Because researchers construct carefully, we can
  deconstruct carefully.

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Communicating visually

• (Well 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 Tuftes works
• More examples to follow from the literature and
  during the SPSS demo

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Recap and conclusions

• Whats the main points from the perspective of
  the
• Researchers
• Librarian (as facilitator)
• Consumers of research (public and other
  researchers)