How to Conduct Academic Research
Students and professionals both know that conducting accurate, valid, and timely research into academic topics such as history, literature, or anthropology is critical to success in the classroom and at work. Writing the results into a paper is also a major step in the process. Here are some basic steps in performing secondary research. 1. Determine your research topic/question. In some classes, students are told to find a topic; this means the exercise is for the purpose of learning the research process. In other situations, the required topic is clearly indicated from the class, your own work, or your professional needs. Your topic can be aroused from a sense of curiosity, hunch and interest over a particular perceived problem that you feel needed to be filled in the gap of knowledge. 2. Understand the difference between primary and secondary research. a. Primary research means doing original research, meaning that this knowledge doesn't appear in any other paper. You might be reading through original treaties, newspaper articles, or authentic letters from authors or statesmen. You might be conducting scientific, medical or engineering experiments. b. Secondary research, the focus of this wikiHow article, means reading other experts' published papers to learn something new about your topic, to survey what others have said and written about it, to reach a conclusion about your ideas on the topic. 3. Determine your scope and time line. Any academic research should lead to a written report ("research paper") which may be a class assignment, a work task, or even a published article. Determine in advance how much total time you have for this work, and make a rough work schedule. c. A work schedule must include the following major steps: 1. Finding and reading sources. 2. Collecting notes from sources. 3.