Читать книгу Demystifying Research for Medical and Healthcare Students - John L. Anderson - Страница 13

If I were to ask you to come up with a definition of ‘research’, I guess that most people would aim for something which included words like ‘rigorous’, ‘bias‐free’, ‘academic’, ‘random’, ‘systematic’, ‘generalisable’, and so on. They would probably be right … ‐ish. But I do not try to give a flowery, posh definition. The answer to the question is much simpler:

Research is about getting answers to questions.

And it is something which we all engage in every day of our lives. Let's consider what ‘research’ we do in our everyday lives. Think about it. What sort of things do you come up with?

 Planning your journey to work?

 Which car to buy?

 What house to buy?

 What to cook for dinner?

 Where to go on holiday?

 Etc., etc.

All of these involve us in some ‘research’. Let's see … What are the options in travel to work? Walk, bicycle, bus/train, car, etc. So, we calculate how long each mode of transport might take – that is relatively easy. It has an answer in numbers. It is quantifiable – so it is what we call quantitative (sorry! There's an early bit of jargon!) data. So we know how much time each type of journey should take. Next, we work out the cost of each. Again, this is straightforward – we get a number in pounds and pence, and it is easy to say which costs more than another.

Now we are faced with a different form of question – which is the most convenient, and which is the most reliable? The answers to these are based upon personal choice and preferences – they have more to do with the quality of the experience and we can't measure these in numbers, so we are dealing with qualitative (sorry!) data and different types of information will guide our decisions.

The same sets of information can guide us when we buy a TV, a car, a house, or decide upon a meal. If you reflect on the last time you bought something, you may be aware of the sorts of ‘research’ you got involved in and how you found the information which informed your decision. Good old Google! Search engines have helped to make us all much more able to search for answers to questions – to do research.

So, research is something we do every day. But how did we learn to be researchers?