Josie Epperson

Socl 345

December 7, 2022

Final Reflection

Research methods is a valuable class that has given me new skills in how I conduct research. At the beginning of the semester, I was incredibly lost and needed help from the professor quite often. However, as time went on, I became more comfortable with the process of researching. Learning how to put together good survey questions for my activity was a daunting task. However, I improved my skills at teamwork and discussion skills while we worked together to ensure our questions were easy to read as well as helpful with giving us good feedback. The task that provided the most trouble was smart objectives. However, once my group had a discussion on what not to do and what needed to be done, we proved that this task too could be completed. Finally, completing the actual research I thought would be relatively easy, since I had done many research papers in the past. However, finding the perfect resources to use in my paper proved harder than I thought. There were not many articles discussing what our research study was on which limited my search for articles that would be useful. However, using more research databases and changing what exactly I searched, I was able to find more sources that pertained to my study.

When trying to find articles that could be used in my paper, I had to search through different studies that usually had nothing to do with what I originally searched for. Once I had found sources related to my study, I discussed them in my Literature Review. These articles helped develop my ideas and discussed what the paper was talking about. It also gave factual information on the ideas I was presenting and helped me discuss why these ideas made sense and how they worked. However, for my final paper, I did have to add some sources in order to discuss new ideas I developed along the way as well as add more factual information for ideas I already had. These articles all discussed how involvement in a child’s life is crucial in ensuring academic as well as life success. I made sure each article discussed how involvement was crucial for a child’s success, but also had to make sure each article looked at this topic in a different way. This was done so I did not have a ton of articles discussing the same issue in the same way and could learn as well as write about these articles without them discussing the exact same issues. 

Issues that I was presented with while doing this research included not being able to find sources right away. With previous research projects, sources were found quickly that dealt with the issues at hand. However, I had to adjust my search multiple times to find sources related to my topic. I also had issues with vagueness in different sources found. As stated earlier, I came across an issue with some of the sources being too similar in their information. I needed sources that discussed the same topic, however, talked about different methods or data found. I needed different aspects in each study to discuss and that could give me factual data that I included in my study. However, the solution seemed to have worked pretty easily, which included adjusting what I searched for and where I searched for it.

My perspective and attitude changed dramatically throughout this course. In the beginning, I underestimated the requirements and assignments listed for this course. I went in with the mindset that this class would be like any other research class and would be easy to complete. However, at the halfway point when assignments began to increase, I soon realized that I was going to have to put more effort into this class. The research required needed to be near perfect in order to get the statistics we were looking for. I changed my work ethic along with how much effort I put into researching. I realized that I was going to have to do more research than in other classes to make sure our data collected agreed with other studies. To “Think like a researcher” to me means to think strategically while also questioning every step along the way. Researchers do not get perfect research after one study, it takes time and great amounts of effort to get low error percentages. While this class brought difficult obstacles and assignments, it made the outcome even greater when success was made. I enjoyed this course and gained many new research skills and tools for future use. I can take everything learned in this course, and use it in future projects and studies and have much more confidence when completing them.