Research: An Introduction
Not all of the work you will produce as a professional writer will require research; however, since some of it will (including the article youâll be writing for this course!), it wonât hurt to review some basic information regarding researchâthe best, the worst, how to do it.
This chapter will offer you basic guidelines about how to conduct research for a projectâa report, an article, a proposal, whateverâthat requires support for the data or information it presents. It will focus on the types of research you might find useful.
Additionally, though, whenever we use human subjects in our research â such as when we interview an expert or conduct a survey to gather a large amount of material quickly â we must consider whether what we are doing requires the approval of Virginia Techâs Institutional Review Board, which is charged with ensuring that research projects treat their subjects ethically. This chapter will cover that information as well.
Researching for Authority and Accuracy
By the time most of us graduate from high school, we have become very familiar with research. We have written about Walt Whitman or Emily Dickinson, the exports of Peru, the development of NASAâor any number of topics that we cannot explain fully to an audience without the use of outside information.
When you write for any audience, you must guarantee that your work speaks with authority and accuracy.
That goes doubly for technical writing documents, which might mean the difference between your company getting a contract or losing it, your design advancing the use of robots in the general workplace or setting it back several years.
When you produce a technical writing document, your readers must believe 110% that you are the authority on the subject at hand. But we all know that none of us, particularly if we are just undertaking a career, are truly experts. Sometimes we need to research in order not just to prove but to develop our expertise. And research can take many forms. Among the most common are library sources (hard texts, microfilm, etc.), web sources, images, interviews, and surveys.