Terry L.
Abbott
Technical Writing 1030
Mrs. Kallen Knopp
Chapter 6 Reading Notes
Researching Your Subject
I. Understanding the Differences between Academic and Workplace Research
a. In academic research, your goal is to find information that will help
you answer a scholarly question: “What would be the effect on the
balance of trade between the United States and China if China
lowered the value of its currency?”
b. In workplace research, your goal is to find information to help you
answer a practical question, usually one that involves the organization
you work for: “Should we stay with our distributed printing
configuration or adopt a centralized configuration?”
II. Understanding The Research Process
a. Analyze your audience-Are your most important reader’s experts,
technicians, managers, or general readers?
b. Analyze your purpose- Why are you writing? Understanding your
purpose helps you understand the types of information readers will
expect.
c. Analyze your subject-What do you already know about your subject?
What do you still need to find out?
d. Work Out a Schedule and a Budget for the Project-When is the
deliverable the document or the presentation-due? Do you have a
budget for phone calls, database searches, or travel to libraries or
other sites?
e. Visualize the Deliverable- What kind of document will you need to
deliver; a proposal, a report, a Web site?
f. Determine what information Will Need to Be Part of the Deliverable-
Draft an Outline of the contents, focusing on the kinds of information
that readers will expect to see in each part.
g. Determine What Information you still need to Acquire
h. Create Questions you need to answer in your deliverable
Terry L. Abbott
Technical Writing 1030
Mrs. Kallen Knopp
i. Conduct Secondary Research-Study journal articles and Web-based
sources such as online journals, discussion groups, and bulletin
boards.
j. Conduct Primary Research-You can answer some of your questions
by consulting company records, interviewing experts in your
organization, distributing questionnaires, and interviewing other
people in your company.
k. Evaluate your information-Once you have your information, you need
to evaluate its quality: is it accurate, comprehensive, unbiased, and
current?
l. Do more Research-If the information you have acquired doesn’t
sufficiently answer your questions, do more research.
III. Choosing Appropriate Research Methods-Choosing research methods means
choosing the ways in which you will conduct your research. Start by
thinking about the questions you need to answer:
What types of research media might you use?
What types of research tools might you use?
What types of primary research might you conduct?
a. Be persistent
b. Record your data carefully
c. Triangulate your research methods
IV. Conducting Secondary Research
a. Understanding the Research Media
b. Using Basic Research Tools
i. Online Catalogs
ii. Reference Works
iii. Periodical Indexes
1. Applied Science & Technology Index
2. Business Periodicals Index
3. Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature
4. Engineering Index
iv. Newspaper indexes
1. The New Your Times
2. The Christian Science Monitor
Terry L. Abbott
Technical Writing 1030
Mrs. Kallen Knopp
3. The Wall Street Journal
v. Abstract Services
c. Researching Government Information
d. Evaluating the Information
i. Accurate
ii. Unbiased
iii. Comprehensive
iv. Appropriately technical
v. Current
vi. Clear
V. Conducting Primary Research
a. Observations and Demonstrations
b. Inspections
c. Experiments
i. Establishing a hypothesis
ii. Testing the hypothesis
iii. Analyzing the data
iv. Reporting the data
d. Field Research
i. The effect of the experiment on the behavior you are studying
ii. Bias in the recording and analysis of the data.
e. Interviews
i. What questions do you want answered?
ii. Who could provide this information?
iii. Is the person willing to be interviewed?
VI. Inquiry Letters or E-mails
VII. Questionnaires
a. Some of the questions will misfire.
b. You won’t obtain as many responses as you want.
c. You cannot be sure the respondents are representative.
d. Asking Effective Questions