Tuesday's Work Part I--Primary Research

Today, I want you to think about whether and how doing some primary research could help you get some valuable perspective on your research question. Primary research is research that you conduct yourself (as opposed to secondary research, which is when you read about research other people did). This might include conducting surveys and/or interviews or perhaps doing some first-hand document analysis. Not everyone in class will choose to do primary research for your project, and that's ok. For some, you won't have time or access to the people or documents you might need; for others, primary research might not give you anything significant enough to spend your time doing it. But, for others, it might make perfect sense; it might provide some local perspective on a larger problem, a way to ground your project for a real purpose and audience you have in mind for your final project. So, I'd like you to spend a few minutes today thinking about how primary research might add to your project. Read the handout on empirical research in writing (in the 1302 folder in Google Docs) and respond to the following questions by replying to this post:

--If you were to do primary research for your question, what type(s) do you think would be most appropriate?
--What specific questions would you like the primary research to help you answer?

For instance, if I was doing this version of Robert's question, "What effects does standardized writing assessment have on students' attitudes towards writing?", I might do several types of primary research (in addition to my secondary research which would give me a larger picture of the overall context of the discussion about how standardized writing assessment affects kids). I could survey high school kids in the 11th grade with the goal of finding out how those kids' ideas about writing have been affected by taking the TAKS test. What do they think the purpose of writing is? How does the school's emphasis on these tests make them feel? I could interview local high school English teachers, trying to find out what they think the effects are of spending so much time teaching to these tests. I could actually analyze a sample writing test from the TAKS 11th grade test, and I could do the same for the new end-of-course STAAR writing exam for 11th grade, trying to figure out what the differences might be and how that might affect students' ideas about writing.

The point here is to identify the possibilities that exist for doing primary research for your project, but I realize that, in summer, we have such a short time frame and your access to the people you need to talk to might be limited, so you'll have to make choices about what kind of primary research you can actually do (this week) and what might not be doable. If you do decide to do primary research, I'll talk with you individually because it'll be important to make sure you have a good plan for doing it (good interview questions, for instance) so you use your time optimally.

First Sources--8/1/11

Once you get some feedback on your keywords, start trying to do some of your research through the databases available to you (most through UTPA's library, but also CompPile, available through the web). Try to locate at least three sources which look promising. Post the information for each here (at least author and title of work) (along with your research question). Read through others' sources to see if any of them might look promising to you as well. (And don't forget our book is an excellent collection of potential sources for you).

Research Questions & Keywords (HW for Monday)

I want everyone to write your research question here and which keywords you're going to try for your first attempt at using databases for your research. You must use a database at first (no google, yahoo, ask.com, etc.). Read through everyone's posts and offer advice about keywords when you see some you think might not work or some that have worked for you if you've already started doing your research. Ask questions if you have them, too, of course:).

Using Sources--Kantz

We've read several articles now that have implications for how and why we do research (remember the readings from last week on research as inquiry as well as today's article by Kantz). How has reading these articles affected your thinking about how to do research? Thinking of Kantz, especially, do you think her ideas will change your approach to doing research and, especially, writing with sources? If so, how?