The first step in research is to know what the situation calls for in terms of the formality of research required. Although formal research carefully documents sources with citations and references, such as what you will be assigned in your courses, most messages relay on informal research. This is when you quickly look up some information you have access to and email it to the person who requested it.

Whether is is something formal or something informal, you apply skills in retrieving and delivering the needed information to meet your audience’s needs. This is often done by paraphrasing or summarizing, what you have read, an extremely valuable skills coveted by employers. Knowing what research type or “methodology” the situation calls for—formal or informal research, or primary or secondary research—in the first place will keep you on track in this still-preliminary stage of the writing process.

Formal and Informal Research

FORMAL RESEARCH

Formal research is what you are likely to encounter during your academic journey. Formal research takes a systematic approach. You document the sources of information you compiled during your research using a conventional citation and reference system. This makes it easy for the audience to check out your sources themselves to verify their credibility. Formal research is more scientific in discovering needed information or solving a problem. It begins with a hypothesis or your main idea and then tests that hypothesis in a rigorous way. Formal research requires more time, labour, practice, skill, and resources.

INFORMAL RESEARCH

The research methodology, where you look up information and deliver the goods in an email answering someone’s question without needing to cite your sources formally, is informal research. It is by far the most common type of research because any professional does it several times a day in their routine communication with the various audiences they serve. This type of research is used when you’re short on time, and your audience doesn’t need to check your sources.

Primary and Secondary Research

Like formal vs. informal research, primary vs. secondary has much to do with the level of research required.  Primary research generates new knowledge, and secondary research applies it.

PRIMARY RESEARCH

Primary research can include surveys of randomly sampled people to gauge general attitudes on certain subjects and lab experiments that follow the scientific method. The scientific method is a set of assumptions, rules, and procedures used to conduct research. From the collection and analysis of information, conclusions can be drawn from the data and shared with others.^[1]

SECONDARY RESEARCH

Secondary research is what most people—especially students—do when they have academic or professional tasks because it involves finding and using primary research. Depending on whether that secondary research is informal or formal, it may or may not cite and reference sources.

INFORMAL SECONDARY RESEARCH

The easiest, most common, and most expedient research, the kind that the vast majority of informative workplace communication involves, is informal secondary research. This research involves quickly retrieving and relaying information without citing it—not out of laziness or intentional plagiarism, but because formal citations are neither necessary nor even expected by the audience.

FORMAL SECONDARY RESEARCH

Formal secondary research, in business, is best for ensuring that company resources are used appropriately and can be supported by all stakeholders. In other words, formal secondary research is a necessary part of a business’s due diligence ( i.e. “reasonable steps taken by a person in order to satisfy a legal requirement, especially in buying or selling something,” according to Oxford Dictionary).

Attribution

This chapter is an adaptation of 3.1: Choosing a Research Methodology  by John Corr; Grant Coleman; Betti Sheldrick; and Scott Bunyan and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted. You can download this book free at Essential Communication Skills: Mohawk College Copyright © 2022.