<p>I’ll be a freshman at Northeastern University (Boston) this fall, and I’ve been seriously considering doing graduate school, specifically, PhD, after I graduate. I’ve talked about it before in earlier threads, if you care about my intentions, but one thing about graduate work- perhaps college in general- that I have been somehow unable to grasp is what exactly research is- What exactly does it consist of? What exactly are you doing when you “research”?</p>
<p>It seems to be a simple concept to me, but endless Google searches yield little of what you actually do when you research something.</p>
<p>I’m aware it would be highly dependent on what field you are researching in, even <em>what</em> you’re researching, and pardon my naivety, but would anyone care to explain it to me?</p>
<p>If it helps any, I’ll be trying to find out myself once I spend a semester or so at Northeastern.</p>
<p>What are you going to be studying - that’ll help people tailor their answer to your specific needs. It’s very difficult to give a good description of research in general without being overly vague.</p>
<p>I should say I’m not from hearing descriptions from other majors- on the contrary, I welcome them! I hate to make a single purpose topic, it reduces its usefulness for others.</p>
<p>systematic investigation to establish facts</p>
<p>If you want to research the probability of heads when you flip a coin, and come up with an academic paper on the subject:</p>
<p>You would first go to the library and investigate the topic “flipping coins” and any related topics like types of coins and possibly past experiments in flipping coins. </p>
<p>You now have some answers and you now need to see for yourself if those answers are true so you would find and select a method of determining the probability of heads in flipping coins. </p>
<p>You could:
Ask people ( a lot of people) if they ever flipped coins and how often do they get heads. (this is probably the worst and least accurate method)
run a computer simulation. Design the algorithm, Punch in the variables and let it fly. (this is quick and dirty but you don’t quite get a feel for the coin)
Actually flip coins (a lot of times) to see what happens. This is tedious but fun if you add a cup, friends, and some beer.</p>
<p>You now have data that means absolutely nothing to you. It doesn’t look remotely familiar with what you found in the library. If you publish that you would get an F and be the laughing stock of your class.</p>
<p>So you organize the data and manipulate it. You probably use statistics. Some science is not quantifiable so they may need another method. For coin flipping simple statistics is enough and you find that out of 20,000 coin flips - or better yet 20 sets of 1000 coin flips heads came up on average 50% of the time with some statistical deviation, variance blah blah, F-stat, yadda yadda, and other statistical vocab nonsense that makes you sound smart</p>
<p>So you question was: probability of heads
your theory said: probability = 1/2
Your research said : your theory was right </p>
<p>You write a paper and get an A. But you professor is sadistic so his next problem is “well I have a 3 sided coin and the heads side is wet, the tails side is dry, and the blank side is something else. Now, what is the probability of heads?”</p>
<p>I don’t think you should (or perhaps can) “seriously consider graduate school” until you know what research is, have had an opportunity to conduct research and learn that you really love doing research in a particular field…normally one learns they love it, and THEN choose graduate school to pursue it. If you want a PhD, with just a few exceptions, I think it would be crazy to pursue unless you loved doing research in a particular field. Wherever you go to undergrad, be sure to choose a school that will give you a chance to experience a lot of research firsthand. </p>
<p>Research is identifying important questions that have not been answered in one’s field or area of study and seeking to answer them using the methods and data considerable acceptable to that field or area of study. </p>
<p>The questions addressed in research are extremely diverse, as are the possible areas and sub-areas of study. Was famous writer X influenced by Y? Can we find a new method for freezing J to transport chemical P? Does saturated fat cause Y? How does (insert-big-giant-technical-here) cause action in (insert-other-big-technical-word-here). Does educational system y produce this effect in population z? The questions are endless!</p>
<p>Answering the questions depends on what is and is not considered acceptable by the standards of one’s field or sub-area and the type of data one has to work with to provide evidence. Each area has its own history and norms and expectations about what is considered quality research. It might involve an experiment of chemicals, humans, other physical entities. It might be a mathematical simulation. It might be uncovering and analyzing old texts or integrating them in new ways. It might be examining population and census records maintained by governments. Many researcher approaches require one to analyze data using statistics or mathematics, others may require a ‘contextual analysis’ and others may be essays. Approaches to research vary hugely across fields, and the nature of data is as big as the questions one can ask-- it can include anything in our world. </p>
<p>A researcher generates questions, tests them, writes up the results in a study. Researcher then presents the research to others doing research in the same area, and sends his or her study to a journal (which is like a quarterly magazine read by people in one’s area) for consideration to be published. Usually 2-3 people in one’s area read the study, critique it, and decide if it might be worth fixing…and the researcher then fixes it and tries again. Eventually if it goes thorugh that process it might get accepted for publication. Typically ‘the best journals’ accept about 5-10% of the studies it receives. Researchers are rewarded for the number of such publications they obtain and how much their studies are read and used by other people for doing their own research studies (which is known because researchers mention other studies in their own studies).</p>
<p>I probably left out some important bits, but this might give you a big picture of it all. I hope its a bit helpful.</p>
<p>Starbright, that is much better than my explanation of flip cup. I agree. I also agree with idea that you sould consider whether research interest you before you go into any in depth planning for graduate school. You should talk to your professors about what they do for research</p>
<p>I disagree, but not completely, about the questions studied. Some questions have been answered but not in a way that is satisfactory to the researcher. The easiest example is in economics where there can be different outcomes from the same experiment due to the period of time used in a time series analysis. Or the original researchers perspective or philosophy was different. Maybe the flip cup experiment (below) should have been done sober?</p>
<p>Sometimes the technology is improved and we can run better experiments with different but more correct outcomes. That works with economics again. The whole field has changed since the introduction of the computer and high speed calculations. Adam Smith was an economic cave man.</p>
<p>Undergraduate research is different in scope that the kind of research you would do as a graduate student. Graduate students usually start off working on a particular professor’s project and then branch off to tackle a particular problem/question/facet of the main project. Undergraduates are much more directed, at least at first, and they should explore different subfields within their major to determine which interests them. In computer science, that may mean working with a professor on a program that better predicts, say, rain spatter (the graduate student would work on a new algorithm) or working on a robotics car. You would contact the professor and ask to work with him. Undergraduates should also use their summers wisely. There are many summer research programs that pay a stipend. Your university professors may even hire you over the summer to work on their project, provided that they have the funding.</p>
<p>Undergraduates learn what research is and how it works. Graduate students initiate research.</p>
<p>Wow, I was not expecting such thorough responses. I greatly appreciate the answers and I will take them all to heart when I start research in both graduate and undergraduate institutions.</p>
<p>I should have further clarified my intentions regarding graduate school- though I have a slight interest at the moment generated from what I have read about it and what relatives have told me about it, my undergraduate school is full of options that I have yet to learn much about. There are co-ops worked into the program, both abroad and back here in the states, periods of time when you can go for full-time research, and even the basic study abroad.</p>
<p>Jobs might catch my interest a lot more than graduate school would, but if by chance my desire to go on for a PhD intensifies, I’ll be prepared in what to expect and how to get research done prior to applying.</p>
<p>I don’t do academic research I do research for my business. Sometimes that requires reading the results and interpretations of academic research. Most of the time I get the watered down version for lay people.</p>
<p>The information helps me to make business decisions and give answers. I use it to make decisions rather than bets and guesses. So it helps as a professional and a graduate student that doesn’t do a lot of research to understand what processes are used to 1)gather and compile the data 2)manipulate the data, and 3) analyze the data. </p>
<p>So undergrad (at least in business school) is designed to make sure you are familiar with how the researcher got to the end product (His research publication), and why his results do or do not make sense. You can make decisions and justify those decisions based on established facts. Rather, the statistic of the moment. After all, is there really such a thing as settled science?</p>