This assignment is intended to help you to narrow a topic and formulate the direction you want your research to take. As you will discover from the reading assignment for this topic, the strategies used in getting started with a topic are very important if you want the product to be of any worth.

Let’s consider some principles:

Research Has a Purpose

You need to buy a new car, and you certainly want something better than the lemon you currently own. Knowing your own transportation needs and your budget, you decide to do some research on automobiles. For weeks, you scour every book and magazine you can find. You even take notes on what you are learning and write a summary of your findings. Then you put everything in a drawer and buy the same model of car that you had before, except that it is four years newer.

Foolish? Of course it is. Your past car was a lemon, a disaster. After all the research you did, you must have seen data about better automobiles. But finding a better car depends on your intent in research. If you were simply gathering information about cars in order to summarize it and put it in a drawer, you were not meeting the goal of finding the best car for you. You were not, in fact, doing research at all, just gathering data.

Let’s consider the reason why we do research. We do research because we have a problem to resolve. Research has a purpose, a goal, an intent. It is not just the gathering of data.

There’s a Difference Between Data and Information

Data constitutes the facts about a topic. Information is what you do with those facts. Let’s look at it this way: When you did your research on automobiles, your intent was to find out which car you should buy, given your budget and transportation needs. In other words, you began with a question you needed to answer, a question that was focused and purposeful: Which car should I buy? You may gather as much data about cars as you want, but if your data doesn’t lead ultimately to an answer to your question, it’s of limited value.  Only as you sift through the data and evaluate it does it become information that can bring you to a solution.

All too often, people assume that we do research in order to discover facts. Actually, we do research to gather facts that will help us answer our question. Facts must never be an end in themselves. Rather, they are a means to determining what we should do or believe.

Let’s consider a few examples:

You want to investigate the claims of the theological position, "Open Theism." You could simply find the writings of some Open Theists, determine what this theological movement is saying and then conclude with something like, "There appear to be some critics of Open Theism, so it might be a good idea for someone to investigate its claims." But that isn't really research until you actually do the investigation yourself and come up with a conclusion on Open Theism.

You’ve been told to write a research paper on Sigmund Freud. Your research and subsequent paper could be entitled "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Freud in Ten Pages Plus Table of Contents and Bibliography," but if you have simply gathered facts in order to regurgitate them, you have not really done research. It is when you ask a question like: "Has Freud's approach to psychotherapy demonstrated the success rate that proponents of Psychoanalysis assure us exists?" that the data becomes information.

The relationship between data and information works this way:

Data = the facts about a topic.

Information = evaluated data used to answer a question.

In its most basic form then, research is the gathering of data to identify information that can answer a question, leading to a conclusion that will influence belief or action. Anything less than this is not research. It will never tell you what car to buy or what you’re supposed to do with Open Theism or with Freud’s Superego.

Read the material related to this assignment from Research Strategies. APPENDIX ONE is especially helpful, because it contains lots of examples. Be sure that your research question is focused, researchable, and that it is only one question rather than several. You want to avoid gathering existing information just so that you can report on it (information as goal).  You want to use information to solve a problem or deal with an issue whose answer is not obvious (information as tool).

Create a Sermon-Free Zone

Seminary students love to preach.  They are often so eager to preach that they do only minimal investigation before launching into a huge exhortation intended to make all things right in this fallen world.

But you must remember this dictum: A research project is not a sermon, nor is it a how-to manual. 

What's the difference?

Don't preach sermons when what you need to do is investigate an issue in order to find an answer.

1. Read Research Strategies,5th edition, Preface, Chapter One, Chapter Two, and Appendix One, A1.1.1-A1.1.8 (p. 250-260 - the appendix is especially helpful.)
2. View the presentation, "What is Scholarship?" - https://prezi.com/sq7xqbxurr9p/what-is-scholarship/, and answer the following questions arising out of the presentation:

a. Explain what is meant by the statement, "Authority depends on context."
b. Why is it important to understand the process by which information was created?
c. What are four "dimensions of value" given to information?
d. In considering Research as Inquiry, what is true research and what is not?
e. What is meant by "Scholarship is a Conversation?"
f. In what ways is searching "Strategic?"