Research Skills

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>>It's a process of fullness. You're going to find a lot of things that you're not going to use at all, you're going to find a lot information and material that you might use for a different project down the road that doesn't fit into what you're working on at the moment. But the fun part for me, about research, is you go into an archive room, say, or you go into a big library or a big records room downtown and it's just you and the records. In a way you're solving a mystery, you're trying to find out what happened, who did it, how can the information that you gleaned from that help push knowledge further?

>>There are several things that I recommend for anybody who is planning on doing research. The first is look at it as a learning experience. You could come at research as producing something that supports your bias about the situation and we must be very careful about that as researchers. I think we need to look at it as learning what don't I know about this situation that I need to? What questions do I need to ask?

The second recommendation that I would make is ask the right questions. If you ask the wrong questions, you're going to come up with information that's distorted. It provides you a path that you don't belong on. You need to learn to ask the right questions about a situation, and that takes some work, that takes some dialog with other professionals. It takes a dialog within the organization you're going to research. What do I want to know? What's the right question about this situation?

I think a third one would be use critical thinking in a situation. If something doesn't make sense, go back and think about it again. If it looks too good to be true in an organization or it's too obvious of why this organization is not doing what you think it should be doing, use some critical thinking about what are the forces acting upon these people. What are the forces going on in this situation? Use critical thinking about the questions you've asked. If your question was how was power used in this organization effectively and you're finding no effective use of power, now go back and critically think what's getting in the way of shared power? Go back and revise your question. Critical thinking is absolutely critical.

A fourth piece would be treat research as a new learning experience. When you're first doing it you're kind of scared to death and you're saying well I don't know if I'm going to ask the right questions and I don't know if I'm going to talk to the right people to give me balanced information and it looks like a lot of work. It is an absolute joy though to discover something new about an organization or about a phenomena that you hadn't thought about. Look at it as a discovery process. If you're going in and you're thinking with preconceived bias, I'm going in looking for these factors then probably you're going to get worn out looking for those factors. But, how about going into the situation saying I'm going to try to ask the best questions I have and I'm going to look and expect to be surprised. It's the surprise factors that make you a good researcher. You see something you hadn't planned on; you see something nobody else has thought about. That's the wonderful part. When I go into church and I see some dynamic going on between people that nobody's thought about, this is a new phenomenon, that's just a wonderful piece for you. You'll feel good about doing that. So I think that fourth piece is important, that going in with a sense of discovery about it.

A fifth piece would be use good research method. Be very clear about your method. I think write it down before you do it and talk about it and get involved in it. Don't go in haphazard saying well I'm just going to look for what I find and I'll take notes here and there. Have a good research method of I'm going to talk to whom first? I'm going to give surveys to who and why? Why do I want them to do surveys? How will they return the surveys to me? If I'm going to do a group, who should be involved in that group? How will I analyze the information? None of these should be just random. You actually have a process in which you say I'm going to do this then I'm going to this and I'm going to do this and I know why. Otherwise what's going to happen is you're going to get stuff all over the map and it's not going to be coordinated well and you want your research to be coordinated, even if you say I am only going to do a couple of group experiences because it takes way too much time to do 25 interviews, fine, so I'll do 2 groups of 5 of people who will give me different perspectives in the organization. That's fine. You know why you are doing it. If you were to do it again and you got more time you might do it different the second time, but create some kind of a research method that fits with getting the best information and getting the right information at the organization that you're dealing with. Last thing about that is that it's always going to come up. Who do you talk to in an organization? Who do you survey? I ask them. I'm not bashful about talking to a manager and saying who knows best of what's going on here? Or to a CEO, if you had to name five people who really have their pulse on this organization, who would you talk to? I ask them. Otherwise you're going to come in, you're going to take a chart and you're going to say well, I should interview this person, this person and this person because they are in positions of authority. It's not always the people of authority who know what's going on. In fact, I find most of the time they're the people who don't know what's going on. So, I'll ask who knows what and they'll say somebody who's been there 10 or 15 years, but they're in an administrative role. Fine, that's somebody I need to talk to.

>>Well, I think specifically what a person can do when they start their research is to get a big notebook and get a couple of pens, and tell themselves, give themselves eight hours to go play around in the library, or play around on their computer and just say okay I'm not going to take email, I'm not going to listen to a song, but I'm going to check on the database and look for the material that I'm looking for. Then as you go you can thin out the information that you don't need. I mean at first you may get 1800 responses to what you're looking for. Then you thin that out, narrow it down, and narrow it down. The harder part is when, with your subject if you type it in, you enter it, check the database and you get five entries. It's always easier to pare down then to build up. If you get five, that can be the start of where yours needs to be as the sixth or the seventh. I also think with the research you do make sure that you're saying something significant, don't just throw off another essay about whatever you're writing about. Go ahead and think that you're taking your place in this tradition of information about the subject you're writing. So, it's really important that number one you get it right, number two that you say it well and number three that you go ahead and make that public so when people are doing research they can come and find you.
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