Steps Involved in the Research Process

Whether you are asked to jot down words for web content, thesis, or college assignment, you’ll need to carry out in-depth research. The research process cannot be skipped from the entire writing phase. Be it educational, marketing, or any other type of content, you won’t know what to write without conducting proper research.

Research is the integral and initial process that you need to do before jumping on to the writing part. It basically works as the foundation of your writing; the better research you do, the better quality article you’ll be able to produce.

Many people confuse research with finding relevant information about the assigned topic and reusing it in their own work. You should know that it isn’t the actual research. In reality, the research process involves several steps that need to be followed to curate quality content.

In this blog post, we are going to highlight the steps involved in the research process. 

Continue reading it till the end to understand where exactly you are going wrong in the research phase and how you can overcome those issues!

1. Identify the Problem

How you are going to shape your research depends upon the issue you’ll be addressing, and it needs to be detected first. It is the initial step you need to take in the research process, as the rest of the phase will rely on the problem you have identified. Problem detection is crucial because it helps you set up clear research objectives and goals. The identified problem will also aid your research in finding the right technique to overcome it.

You can get started with this step by first exploring a broad topic. You need to figure out the verdict of people on the topic to find a focal point. Once you have started to understand others’ point of view, you can narrow down your research to a sub-category of your topic. In this phase, you can conduct interviews and surveys and go through case studies to get a better insight into a topic. By digging deeper, you can easily identify the problem and formulate a good research question.

2. Choose the Type of Research

After the identification of the problem, the next step is to settle down on a research type that you’ll conduct to extract data for your research paper. The type of research you need to carry out heavily relies on the problem you have identified. If your research question is vague, it won’t allow you to choose the type of research accurately. Therefore, it’s essential to take the first step right and then move towards this phase.

The four main types of research that you can consider to conduct include qualitative research, quantitative research, descriptive research, and experimental research. If you rely on the data analyzed and calculated by others, it will be considered secondary research. In contrast, your own findings and analysis will be called primary research. Generally, the research papers are written through secondary research. But when it comes to businesses generating reports on market analysis, they conduct primary research.

3. Collect Data from Reliable Sources

After deciding upon the type of research, you need to get started with the collection of data from reliable sources. It’s essential to only rely on data from reliable sources because a single vague or unreliable fact mentioned in your research can brush away its chances of earning validation. It will also take away the interest of readers to go through your research paper. Hence, you must collect data only from reliable sources.

To find reliable sources, you can make use of a search engine. However, it should be kept in mind that on search engine results, you’ll also come across unauthentic sources that must be skipped.

4. Focus on Taking Notes

Until following the last step, you would have collected the right sources to extract data from. Now, instead of starting to write a research paper, you need to consider noting down the data you need to discuss in your research. It depends upon you whether you copy down entire extracts in your notes from the sources or write the important points on your notepad. In either case, it’s essential to be cautious while preparing notes, as you cannot afford to show any negligence in copying down facts, figures, and opinions regarding your research. It’s also recommended to keep a record of the source so that you don’t miss it when required to consult again or include it in the citations.

5. Draft Your Research Paper

Drafting your research paper can become the easiest or most difficult part of this entire process, depending upon how well your research and note-taking skills have played their role in previous steps.

After you are done taking notes, you can start writing the research paper. Here, you need to keep in mind that you have to make use of notes in such a way that keep you going in a flow without any interruptions.

Once the entire draft is completed, you need to make use of the sources from where you have collected data and include them in citations. After it is done, you have to proofread your research paper thoroughly and eliminate all kinds of punctuation, grammar, and spelling errors from it. 

It’s also essential to make your content clean of all sorts of plagiarism by checking its uniqueness with the help of a plagiarism checker. This tool can highlight plagiarized text, and shows accurate sources from where it has been copied.

Conclusion

The steps to conducting research discussed in this blog can help you master your research skills and execute this task efficiently. You must follow these steps in the stated order if you want to conduct successful research. This way, you can curate exceptional research papers that help you achieve the desired results!