This week was a short week. We watched and listened to everyone's research proposals and I learned a lot about some of the topics that were presented. In one instance, the presentation that studied the correlation between athletics and musicians and why athletes were the most likely candidates to quit music, most intrigued me. It is a very good topic and a trend that we all see in our schools! However, I didn't even think to study this! I would be most interested to see the results that this study would yield were it to go through!
I have learned a lot over the course of my time in this class. I thought I knew what a research article was until I took this class. There are so many components and thoughts that go into creating a research study and a research article. From the review of literature at the beginning, reading all of the previous work that has been done in this field, creating a methodology that may include questionnaires, tests, or other figures we would need to create, to learning APA citation. I was trained in MLA citation when I was in 11th and 12th grade English in high school. When I say trained, I mean drilled. MLA was really drilled into the students at my school and we came out as proficient in MLA. So to switch from MLA to APA format for this course was a difficult transition. There were so many minor details! The detail that confused me the most was that a citation within a paper looked like this: (Witaszek. p. 1) instead of just (Witaszek 1). That was hard for me to grasp.
I feel as though I have learned a lot about how to conduct a research study and then to format it into a research paper. Including the APA format, studying how to put together a research paper was interesting. We had to start with a title page, page numbers, and a running head. Next came the abstract which was given it's own page. Then came the introduction. That confused me as well for a while. I thought the abstract WAS the introduction but they are two separate things!
After the introduction, we started in on the Review of Literature. The Review of Literature takes a lot of time because it involves reading articles for the study. Some studies are small and have only 10-12 articles to read before the researcher feels prepared for the study. Other researchers might read 20, 30, or 40 articles before being prepared to begin a study!
After the Review of Literature came the Methodology. I wrote my entire original Methodology in past tense before I realized it should be future tense because I haven't actually conducted the study yet. So I went back through and changed the Methodology to future tense before handing it in!
In addition, to come up with all the items for the study including questionnaires and tests also takes a lot of research and time by itself!!
Research is time consuming! I've learned to respect researchers! I always thought research articles were helpful but I didn't realize JUST how much work went into them!
Research does take time. You will eventually learn how to skim through a study to see if it really has what you want. Title scan be misleading. I usually head to the discussion section first. If that is helpful, then I move on to the implications. If it's still worth reading, then I plow through the whole thing. The reference list often has a wealth of other resources too.
ReplyDeleteGood luck with the rest of the program. Have a great school year.