My process for doing academic research has changed since the beginning of the semester for many reasons. First off, in the beginning of the semester I didn’t really have the knowledge when it came to doing academic research. Academic research is not easy due to the thorough research and investigating to discover what is already known about a specific topic. Academic research has to examine not just any source you may find but, scholarly sources because those scholarly sources have been peer reviewed and have gone through the proper steps to be very reliable sources with very straight forward citing of where the information came from if it something they did not find. Compared to my process now after completing this research project has changed dramatically. My process now for doing academic research is more in depth analyzing each piece of scholarly sources in order to learn what we already know and what I do not know in order to begin my research. For example, when I was completing this research project in the beginning, I was not very confident in doing a research project and completing all the necessary steps and in depth examining of scholarly sources. However, now I am able to find different scholarly sources and find the necessary information needed for the research and how to properly cite if what I am finding is not my own work/findings.
My process for evaluating and selecting sources for my research project takes some time and effort and here’s why. When I am taking the time to evaluate and select my sources, I am looking for sources that are not only peer reviewed but also within a certain time period and lastly has a significant amount of detail and finding. This will help me when it comes time to do more research and note my findings, I can reference those sources to information and/or as a guide when putting my research together. I did not have to change my sources for my final assignment after turning in my annotated bibliography because of time and effort I put into making sure the articles I chose in the beginning were correct to avoid this issue.
When it came to challenges, I faced when doing this research project, it did get challenging at times. This is because I was completing this research project the survey was sent out to 99 students to take home to their families. However, a challenge was getting as many families as possible to send back the surveys filled out. Another challenge was being able to have accurate data to go along with the research.
My attitude and perceptions about doing research has definitely changed over the course of the semester here’s why. Originally, my perception of doing research was verry little and of what I did know it seemed difficult and something that did not interest me. However, my perception has changed. My new perception is that research does take time but, it is the time you put in that will pay off when you finally complete the research. Once I had a better understanding of how to properly do the research and what goes into it all I began to like doing research more because I was learning new information firsthand based off my work. For example, the research that we did for this current project is what helped change my perception overall.
What I think it means “To think like a researcher” is that you have to think outside your normal day-to-day life. In order to think like a researcher, you have to be able to look at all different angles of an issue and consider them all to have the best perception of the issue. It is also being able to distinguish the difference between an opinion and facts/evidence. It is also being able to approach the issue with a question and with an open mind and look for a research question to base your future work off of.