What is Research?
Research, in simplest terms, is information seeking. However, research is not just finding a piece of information. Instead, research is a process of discovery through a thorough examination.
Research in Biology
In Biology, research can mean one of two related terms. The first type of research is also known as a literature review: it involves locating information, but also reflecting on what you're learned, adapting your ideas, organizing thoughts into a logical order, and then using those sources and ideas to produce a project or come to a decision.
The second kind of research is also known as empirical research: it involves performing an experiment to test a hypothesis by collecting data. Of course, in order to design a a good empirical research project, a scientist performs a literature review to find out everything they can about previous research on the topic. This means that even empirical research begins with a literature review!
The Pre-Research Process in Biology
While you might be tempted to begin searching before completing these steps, the pre-research process will save you valuable time and effort. The first step in the pre-research process is to choose an interesting topic and create a research question. Next, using your research question, you can perform some background research to learn more about your topic. The background research will enable you to refine your topic and write a strong, focused research question, hypothesis, or thesis statement. Your research question, hypothesis, or thesis statement is what you will ultimately use to choose keywords and create search statements.
Get Inspired
Your initial step in deciding on a topic is to find inspiration. Your professor may have provided a specific topic or list of topics to research. If so, choose from those topics. If not, check out some of these tips:
- Review Course Material - Browse your textbook or class notes for topics that interest you. What questions do you have about biology? What personal challenges, questions, or concerns do you have that relate to biology? For example, one student used their grandfather's diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease as the inspiration for their research project.
- Talk with Your Professor - Your professor is an expert in their field and will be able to provide you with great ideas to research. And you will also gain an idea of what topics your professor approves of.
- Browse the Web and Media - Read news sites, watch educational or news television programs, or open a newspaper or magazine. Does anything pique your interest?
Start exploring with these suggested library resources:
- Explore Controversial Science Topics through Opposing ViewpointsCheck out a selection of controversial in science and technology topics in the Opposing Viewpoints database to get inspiration or to dive a little deeper into the topic.
- Popular Science Magazines (Flipster)Flip through popular magazines like National Geographic, Popular Science, or Discover to find inspiration.
From Idea to Research Question
Now that we have a general idea or topic, we need to focus our research question.
Why do we need a focused research question?
Often, students are resistant to focusing on a more specific question or topic, because they worry that they will not be able to find enough information on their topic. But actually, with the huge amount of information that is currently available, that is seldom the case! Indeed, the more narrow we make our focus and topic, the easier the research and writing process become.
By focusing on a specific research question, we can open our mind to new ideas and information while at the same time not getting overwhelmed by the volume of information available. As we search, we will ask our selves if the item or source we have found answers our specific question.
Explore a topic to narrow your research
Let's say that we were interest in exploring the general topic of caffeine and migraines. We can start by doing a very basic search in Primo, the Library Search Engine.
We searched for Migraines and Caffeine, and located over 500 results. This a great indication that we could further focus our topic!
Looking through the search results, we can see that there are articles on all sorts of connections between migraines and caffeine! From research into specific drug combinations to surveys of people with migraines, there's a ton of choices. Any one of these articles could help us narrow our topic down.
For this example, we are going to examine the article "Development and Internal Validation of a Multivariable Prediction Model for Individual Episodic Migraine Attacks Based on Daily Trigger Exposures." Open the item clicking on the item title or the "Available Online" link.
Once we open the item, we can scroll down to see the databases that contain the item and, often, although not always, a short summary or abstract of the article. In this case, there is no summary or abstract, so we can open the item in the database listed under "View Online: Check for full-text." Here, it is Unpaywall.
Now, we can see the summary of the article followed by the full-text of the article. Every database is a little different, however, so you may need to find an option for a PDF to view the full article.
Reading through the abstract of the article, we can notice that the study did find some correlations for predicting migraines, but it sounds like this is a complicated question.
Refining our research question
From here, we could decide that we want to focus specifically on predicting migraines based on potential triggers. Now, we can write our topic in the form of a question: