Chapter 3

Chapter 3 discusses the research process involved in technical writing. Applying critical thinking to your research, understanding the difference between primary and secondary research, locating the Web-based and hard-copy secondary sources you need, and consulting primary sources via inquiries, informational interviews and surveys, observations, and experiments are the main objectives. I have been doing research ever since the third grade. I remember the research projects we were assigned but barely recall the process we were taught to go about conducting the actual research. Of course, I was so young then my parents helped me with most of the research projects/reports. All the same, research has been a part of almost everything I’ve learned in school since (except maybe mathematics). I have had different classes in more recent years that have gone over the proper procedures for researching a topic. This section of our English text helped reestablish these steps in my brain. I want to touch on the more outstanding steps for thinking critically about research that this chapter brought back to my attention.

Always ask the right questions.  Trying to limit your research topics to more detailed queries will likely provide better feedback than researching a broad topic. Explore a balance of views. I think this is especially important when your sources come from a single expert, professor, scientist, etc. The more people’s opinions you get, the more views you get on the subject which will often differ. Evaluate your sources. This step is exceptionally important when your sources are online on different websites. Some websites are considered unreliable while others are perfectly credible sources. The issue is being able to tell the accurate from inaccurate web pages. Often times, if you come across several web sites on your topic you can narrow down credible facts to the ideas that all those sites have in common.