7.21 Key Takeaways
A Final Note
In the workplace, research is a messy process. It’s okay if you encounter some stumbling blocks, if your research doesn’t tell you what you want to hear, or if you initially struggle to find sources. To get a sense of just how frustrating research can be, check out this episode of the podcast Reply All, which follows a journalist trying to figure out why a woman in New Jersey is getting strange calls to her office phone number. It’s a great example of formulating a specific research question, then using multiple methods to answer it.
Key Takeaways
- Having a clear research question will save you time. You may have to do some background research before you find your actual research question.
- If you can’t find sources on your topic, try the divide and conquer approach.
- To determine how useful a source is, you can evaluate it according to the CRAAP test. When evaluating online sources, it’s especially important to determine whether the person has the authority to speak on the topic and whether the ideas have been supported with evidence.
- When you research, you’ll need to build on the ideas of others. Citation is a way to give credit to the people whose ideas influenced you.
- When it comes to citation, you have two tools: in-text citation (which go at the end of the sentence where the source was referenced) and references (a longer citation at the end of the work that helps the reader locate the source). In the workplace, you may also use footnotes and links.
- If the ideas of the source are important, you will quote and either paraphrase or summarize the source. This involves changing the language of the source so that it matches your document. Don’t simply swap out a few words, but restate the author’s point so that it matches the tone of your document. Put an in-text citation at the end of the sentence.
- Citation practices can be tricky in the age of the Internet, so you can use citation generators as long as you check to make sure they’re correct.
- Sources add to the ethos of your argument by providing knowledge and perspectives that you don’t have.
- An argument usually has a thesis (what you’re claiming), evidence, reasoning (how the evidence connects to the claim), acknowledgement (what someone who doesn’t agree with you would say) and response (how you’d refute that).
- When you summarize sources, you restate their point. When you synthesize, you combine multiple ideas to turn them into something new.
Attribution
“Chapter 9: Key Takeaways“, “Chapter 10a: Key Takeaways“, and “Chapter 10b: Key Takeaways” from Business Writing For Everyone by Arley Cruthers are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
