Throughout my high school experience I performed research one way. I received a topic, I researched said topic for said answers, and then wrote about said answers in a paper I’d likely outlined before I’d even researched said topic. However, after reading the article “What Is It We Do When We Write Articles Like This One- and How Can We Get Students to Join Us?” by Michael Kleine I discovered I may have been going about my research all wrong.
Throughout his article Kleine describes two types of researchers: hunters and gatherers. Hunters, which is what I would classify my former self as, are students who go into their research assignment already knowing what they want to find, and only searching for said information. This means (yes I know it’s bad) that these students will ignore other information on the topic, even if it conflicts with their argument, because it doesn’t contribute to what they are wanting to say. While it is good to have some direction when performing a research a project, too much can keep you from fully exploring the topic you are covering.
The other sort of researcher Kleine describes, in a much more positive light I must add, is the gatherer. The gatherer goes into a research project seeing all that they can find on said topic before coming to a conclusion on what they’re going to write about. This is a better way to approach a topic because it allows you to fully understand all aspects of what you are covering before deciding what area you want to cover and what your viewpoints are on that area. This allows for a fuller research process and probably more accurate given that the content of the paper was decided post research.
While I would say I am typically a hunter, during my archival research process (which I wrote about in Archival Research Process: Things get Personal) I took more a gatherer approach when shifting my paper to focus more on women’s rights than on my actual research process. After finding information during my research that really spurred a personal connection and wanting my paper to cover not only how I found it but what it meant to me, I shifted the point of my paper from the archives to the long lasting effects of patriarchal societies. Having an open enough mind during my research process to find this was important because I ended up finding information I was much more passionate about than I originally expected.
To all of you out there who think research is boring (trust me I was one of them) I think you will find that taking a more open approach of your topics will help make your research more interesting. While it may be a little bit more time consuming it allows you to get further invested in your topic and actually learn about it, opposed to just locating the exact sources you needed in order to back up your pre conceived notions.