From Inquiry to Academic Writing A Practical Guide, 3rd edition

314 CHAPTER 11 | OTHER METHOdS Of InquIRy: InTERvIEwS And fOCuS GROuPS

of information so that they can make their own judgments about what

to believe or not believe. In fact, this is the argument we make above in

studying inequities in education. Relying on a single source of data will

inevitably limit your field of vision. Multiple sources of information add

complexity and texture to your analysis, conveying to readers the thor-

oughness of your approach.

Why Do original research?

We can think of four reasons (all of which overlap to some extent) why you

might do original research for a writing class.

To increase your ability to read critically. When you do original research,

you learn, at a basic and pragmatic level, how the studies you consult in

a researched argument come into being. You’re on the ground floor of

knowledge making.

As a critical reader, you know it’s important to ask questions like these:

What is the source of the author’s claim? Why should I believe the author?

What is the source of the author’s authority? What are the possible coun-

terarguments? When you are doing original research, you are in the posi-

tion of that author, with a real stake in establishing your own authority.

By coming to understand what it takes to establish your own authority,

you are in a better position to evaluate how effectively other researchers

establish theirs.

Let’s say your research question concerns gender differences in math

education. You might read a study that asserts that girls and young women

are being shortchanged in math classes, impeding their ability to go into

math-related fields. You would want to ask about the nature of the data

used to support this claim. If the author of the study states that 56 percent

of the female students interviewed said they were discouraged from going

into math-related fields, you might wonder where the figure of 56 percent

came from. How many girls and young women were interviewed? How

was this sample selected? What were the students asked? Questions like

these inform your own use of interviews and focus groups.

To increase your own research skills. Doing original research broadens

your own range of research methods. By developing a repertoire of re-

search methods, you will be better able to explore questions that may be

too complex to answer by examining texts alone. One scholar put it this

way: “I couldn’t see what a text was doing without looking at the worlds

in which these texts served as significant activities.”* After all, it is one

thing to read a research report and understand its purpose, its intended

*C. Bazerman, Shaping Written Knowledge: The Genre and Activity of the Scientific

Article in Science (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988), p. 4.

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