The Research Process

An Introduction

Remember the writing process?It’s recursive

Plan Get ideas

Draft Get them on paper

Revise Make them better

Publish Share with others

Research can be Billy trail

Family Circus

Goal

Billy’s path

Kuhlthau’s Model of Research

Stage

Initiation

Selection

Exploration

Formulation

Collection

Presentation

Task

what do I do?

what’s my topic?

what’s out there?

what do I think?

what will I use?

how will I sharewhat I learn?

Feelings

uncertainty

optimism

confusion

clarity

confidence

satisfaction (or not)

Another model: Conversation

Selye (1978): stress has both positive

and negative effects

Benson (2000): The Relaxation

Response

Cousins (1995): Anatomy of an Illness

as Perceivedby the Patient

Cannon (1915): mind-body connection

Another model: Conversation

Simons & Chabris(1999):

“Gorillas in Our Midst”

Spinney (2008): “Lineups on Trial”

Loftus (1996): leading questions

can influence witness

Innocence Project (1992):

uses DNA to clearmistaken identifications

Research: They Say + I Say

They Say:Professional Literature

I say:Thesis

I say

“Those who attend class 95% of the time are significantly more likely to earn an A or B grade.”

Any bias there?

They say

A study by Snell and Meikes (1995), found that “those who attended class 95% of the time were significantly more likely to earn an A or B grade.”

Snell, J., & Meikes, S. (1995). Student attendance and academic achievement: A research note. Journal of Instructional Psychology, 22(2). Retrieved from Academic Search Elite database.

in-text citation

reference list entry

I say: CSI

Real-life crimes are solved using blood spatter and lots of other reliable forensic evidence,just like the ones on CSI.

They say: CSI

Joseph Peterson, acting director of the Dept. of Criminal Justice at the University of Illinois-Chicago, says DNA is rarely culled from crime scenes and analyzed.

Crime scenes today are much like they were in the 1970s, Peterson says, when his studies found that fingerprints and tool marks were the most common types of evidence left at crime scenes.

Blood was found only 5 percent of the time, usually at murder scenes. (Roane, 2005)

Conversation: CSI effect

Prosecutors Say:Juries expect

too much evidence

I say:Thesis

Defenders Say:Juries understand

our case better

Research: Conversation

Which is best? Can these ideas be combined? Why do things

happen this way? How could things

be made better?

A research paper is a record of intelligent reading in several sources on a particular subject.

Who cares what they know?

In academic writing, your opinion is only as good as your evidence.

Personal Experience Community of Experts

Parents: Home movies show no autism symptoms before vaccination

Doctors detected signs of autism in the movies.

Schwetter: These dinosaur bones smell.

Huh? DNA was recovered.

Why read what they know?

You’ll be up-to-date.

“Ninety percent of what we know about Alzheimer’s has been discovered in the last 15 years.” (A. Riesenberg, as cited in “Health Questions,” 2007)

Why read what they know?

You’ll have a complete picture.

“An estimated 5 to 15 percent of people with anorexia or bulimia are male.” (National Institutes of Mental Health, 2007)

“In certain overachieving circles, breast-feeding…is the ultimate badge of responsible parenting. Yet the actual health benefits of breast feeding are…far thinner than the popular literature indicates.” (Rosin, 2009)

Why read what they know?

You may be surprised.

Does Prison Harden Inmates?Chen and Shapiro’s 2003 findings “cast grave doubt on at least one model of deterrence, which holds that a few years of grim prison conditions will spook criminals back onto the straight and narrow. Whatever the deterrent effects of hard prison conditions, the authors conclude, they may often be outweighted by the increased criminal propensities of the prisoners subject to them” (p. 33).

Why read what they know?

You need to be well-informed to be credible.

“Lancaster, England,…is arguably the capital of survivor studies. This is where John Leach teaches and writes papers cited in almost every important study of survival” (Sherwood, 2009, p. 45).

Who cares what they know?

In academic writing, your opinion is only as good as your evidence.

Advantages of Personal Opinion

Limitsof Personal Opinion

Anecdotal evidence is not enough.

How do you find experts?

They cite sources.

They are cited as sources.

They are described as• experts• pioneers• founder of the field of….

Their writings are found in the scholarly literature:• EBSCO• Scholar Google• FindArticles.com

Can you trust Paula Begoun?

Check out www.cosmeticscop.com What are her sources?

Two ingredients almost universally added to cosmetics, fragrance and preservatives are often thought to be the major culprits when our skin has an allergic or sensitizing reaction to a cosmetic (Source: Contact Dermatitis, June 1999, pages 310–315).

Who is Hans Selye?

Credibility = Quality sources

Professional literature Peer-reviewed journals Professional associations

Respected sources Harvard Business Review National Institutes of Health

Expert opinion Professional training Reputation

Seminal thinkers H. Gardner—multiple intelligences M. Seligman—happiness, learned helplessness J. M. Burns—leadership Gosling—animal psychologoy

“Alpha roosters”Groopman

How Doctors Think (2007)

Popular or scholarly?

GoogleStaley pertype

Go to “Is It a Magazine or a Journal?”www.millikin.edu/staley/research/pertype.asp

Conversation: Assignments

Explore professional literature.Form a tentative thesis.Find evidence to support your thesis.Refine your thesis.Write your paper.

THEY

SAY

I

SAY

Other sites to check out

Save the Pacific Tree Octopuszapatopi.net/treeoctopus.html

Primate Programmingwww.newtechusa.com/ppi/main.asp

British Stick Insect Foundationhttp://www.brookview.karoo.net/Stick_Insects/

Dihydrogen Monoxide Research Divisionhttp://www.dhmo.org/

Museum of Hoaxeswww.museumofhoaxes.com/hoaxsites.html

Snopes.comwww.snopes.com

Conversation: What can I add?

• Answer a question—Do shows like CSI affect the way jurors react

to evidence?—Is the CSI effect good or bad?—Is the CSI effect real?—What is the best treatment for ADHD?

• Sort out conflicting opinions• Suggest a new approach • Update information

Research can be Billy trail

Family Circus

Goal

Billy’s path

A research flowchart

Then there’s serendipity…

Look up schedule for Criminal Minds. Find profiler quiz.

http://www.cbs.com/primetime/criminal_minds/games.shtml

Wonder: can profilers be as fast and accurate as Gideon’s team?

Do some reading. Stumble over CSI effect….

How do I get started?

1. Find a topic.

2. Read about it.

3. Ask—Can I find enough information?—Will this hold my interest?

4. Explore other topics.

5. Choose the best.

What’s the “best” topic?

• Arguable

• Discussable

• Adds something to the conversation

What’s a starting place?

http://word-crafter.net/CompI/ TopicExploration.html

Conversation: Ideas from Ideas

Michael Karin discovered a link between inflammation and cancer.

“This result, Karin notes, may explain the puzzling observation that cutting into tumors…sometimes seems to encourage metastasis.”

If he is correct, the inflammation generated by the [surgery] could be at fault.

Findings by other researchers suggest that inflammation does play a role in cancer.

(G. Stix, “A Malignant Flame,” 2002, p. 65)

Credibility = “Top rooster”

Although one should not necessarily judge an article by where it appears, there is a pecking order in clinical medicine. The New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) are the alpha roosters…

Credibility = “Top rooster”

In my own specialties, the Annals of Internal Medicine, Blood, and the Journal of Clinical Oncology are the most prestigious. When researchers have rigorous, ground-breaking data to announce, they try to publish in one of the top-tier journals; by the same token, these journals seek out epochal reports to add to their luster (Groopman, 2007, p. 215).

Know seminal authors

Anderson and Mather (1993) documented personality in octopuses

Same species, but• Achilles—aggressive• Emily Dickinson—shy• Lucretia McEvil—tore tank apart

Led to new field: animal psychology

•

Know key authors: animal psych

Previously, scientists wanted to avoid anthropomorphism

Gosling reframed question:“[Behaviorists] said,‘Let's get rid of the fuzzy, sentimental…descriptions.’ And they did. They went to great efforts to record…things like how many times a chimpanzee scratched its head.…If I need to know whether I can go into that cage to clean it, it's not useful to tell me the chimp scratched its nose 50,000 times in [a] year. Just tell me, Is it aggressive or not?"