The Research Process

1. The Research Process An Introduction

2. Remember the writing process? It’s recursive Plan Get ideas Draft Get them on paper Revise Make them better Publish Share with others

3. Research can be Billy trail Goal Billy’s path Family Circus

4. 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)

5. Research: They Say + I Say They Say: Professional Literature I say:Thesis

6. Research: Conversation A research paper is a record of intelligent reading in several sources on a particular subject. • Which is best? • Can these ideas be combined? • Why do things happen this way? • How could thingsbe made better?

7. Who cares what they know? In academic writing, your opinion is only as good as your evidence. Doctors detected signs of autism in the movies. Schwetter: These dinosaur bones smell. Huh? DNA was recovered.

8. Who cares what they know? In academic writing, your opinion is only as good as your evidence. Advantages of Personal Opinion Limits of Personal Opinion Anecdotal evidence is not enough.

9. 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)

10. 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)

11. 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).

12. 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)

13. 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

14. 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).

15. Who is Hans Selye?

16. 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” GroopmanHow Doctors Think (2007)

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

18. Conversation: Assignments Explore professional literature. Form a tentative thesis. Find evidence to support your thesis. Refine your thesis. Write your paper. THEYSAY ISAY

20. 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

21. I say • “Those who attend class 95% of the time are significantly more likely to earn an A or B grade.” Any bias there?

22. in-text citation reference list entry 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 April 12, 2004, from Academic Search Elite database.

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

24. 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)

25. Conversation: CSI effect Prosecutors Say: Juries expecttoo much evidence Defenders Say: Juries understandour case better I say:Thesis

26. 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

27. Research can be Billy trail Goal Billy’s path Family Circus

28. A research flowchart

29. 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….

30. How do I get started? Find a topic. Read about it. Ask—Can I find enough information?—Will this hold my interest? Explore other topics. Choose the best.

31. What’s the “best” topic? • Arguable • Discussable • Adds something to the conversation

32. What’s a starting place? http://word-crafter.net/CompI/ TopicExploration.html

33. 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)

34. 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…

35. 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).

36. 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

37. 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.’ Andthey 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 intothat 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?"