9
Research: Fact-Finding Missions

Learning Objectives

By the end of this chapter, you should be able to:

• List seven potential sources of information for business writers.

• Cite four rules for asking questions to get information.

• Give examples of three kinds of questions and explain their usefulness.

• Name two major categories and one subcategory of resources for business research available online.

• Identify five major kinds of reference material available at libraries.

Before you can write, you must have something to say. Chapters 1 and 2 addressed some of the preparations for writing; this chapter will consider how you gather information that goes into your message.

For much of your business writing, the information you need is already in your head or at hand because you’re writing about something you do every day. You’ve talked to people about the subject, read about it, and analyzed it. But even with familiar topics, you may need to gather, or at least verify, some information before you write.

To find out if sales last April were $250,000 or $275,000, you pull up the monthly sales report in your files. To verify that HipPops rather than Shi-Bops did well against competitors in the Columbus test market, you ask your assistant. To refresh your memory about who was opposed to expanding the brand nationally, you check the minutes of a recent meeting. All this information is more or less at your fingertips, but these convenient sources are not always enough. Sometimes you need facts or analyses that are not in your files, that your staff does not recall, or that your office has not yet compiled. Where do you turn?

Let’s begin by looking at likely sources for the sort of information you’ll need. There are at least seven potential sources:

1. Your firsthand experience

2. Witnesses or participants

3. Authorities in the field

4. Published sources (e.g., books, magazines, newspapers, newsletters, government reports)

5. Studies, surveys, and other original research

6. Unpublished documents, both internal and external

7. Online resources (e.g., databases, journals, indexes, Web sites)

INTERVIEWING FOR INFORMATION

The first three of these sources are people, and the information others can provide often is in their heads rather than on paper. The best way to get information from them is to ask questions, that is, to interview them. An interview doesn’t have to be a formal question-and-answer session, tape-recorded and transcribed. It can be as simple as calling someone on the phone and saying, “What can you tell me about the demand for hula hoops in East Fadville?” No matter how an interview is structured, however, its success—that is, how productive it is for you—depends on the questions you ask.

Good questions enable you to filter out everything but the information you’re looking for and to think critically about what you find. They allow you to test for accuracy, rethink assumptions, dig deeply, and follow the implications of facts and ideas. Good questions help you turn raw information into enlightenment, and in this world of information glut, that’s an achievement.

Information from interviews has the advantage of being up-to-date material that is tailored to your needs in a way that written sources aren’t. However, it brings a greater chance of misunderstanding and inaccuracy. When you get your facts from a conversation, you can’t go back to confirm them as easily as you can in books or articles. That’s why it’s important to make notes as you go along and then take time at the end of an interview to clarify any ambiguity and ensure accuracy. This means confirming even basic details, such as the correct spelling of names and technical terms. This is necessary even if you tape the interview.

The Right Questions

When we talk about asking questions in interviews, we’re talking about good questions, those that efficiently elicit the information you’re looking for. It will save you and your source time if you prepare your questions ahead of time. If you have several questions, it’s a good idea to write them down and organize them logically. That will make it easier for the person you’re interviewing to follow the flow of the interview and easier for you to follow your notes afterward.

On occasion, you may set out on a fishing expedition. You need to know about a topic, but you haven’t adequately narrowed your focus yet, or you’re not sure the person you’ve contacted is the right resource. Nevertheless, as any angler will attest, fishing requires some preparation. Plan your approach, perhaps by asking yourself questions that help you zero in on what you want to know. After all, your success depends on the cooperation of the person you’re interviewing, so you want to make the process as accommodating and efficient as you can.

To get the right information, the questions you ask are often less important than how you ask them. Exhibit 9–1 summarizes the rules of effective questioning.

The first two rules are self-explanatory and based on common courtesy and common sense. If you want information, it’s counterproductive to make speeches or ask rhetorical questions, which are really statements with a question mark stuck on the end. If someone were to ask, “How can you support the new organizational design when you know it will interfere with our work and add an extra layer of bumbling bureaucracy?” would you feel that the questioner was really interested in your answer?

Open-Ended Questions

Open-ended questions often begin with the journalist’s words: what, why, and how. Such questions invite longer responses than questions requiring a simple yes or no. Open-ended questions allow your source to clarify, elaborate, and go into detail. They also encourage both the interviewee and the questioner to examine underlying or implied values, assumptions, and attitudes. Here are some examples of open-ended questions:

Why do you support the proposed merger?

How can we get the community to work with us on our housing project?

What is the significance for us of the new FTC rules?

Of course, sometimes all you want is a simple yes or no or a finite bit of information, which is what you get when you ask questions such as, “Is the agenda done?” or “What time do we leave?” These queries don’t require an essay in response, and it would be a waste of time to provoke one. However, a string of such questions begins to sound like you’re playing a game of 20 questions; worse, they make the questioner seem uncertain or too eager to control what’s said. When you’re interviewing for information, rely primarily on focused, open-ended questions.

Indirect Questions

You may find that a question you ask, one that you think is clear and pointed, fails to get a useful or specific enough answer. You may get annoyed with your answerer, but that won’t get you closer to the information you need. It’s more productive to try another kind of question. Phrasing a question indirectly is one option, especially if you’re asking about a sensitive subject. The indirect question can be more tactful and, as it is usually open-ended, it invites a more detailed response than a direct question.

An example of an indirect question is, If I were to propose Dan for the new position, how do you think your office would respond? Compare that with the direct version—Will you back me if I proposed Dan for the new position?—and the benefits of the indirect question, at least in certain situations, are apparent. If the indirect question doesn’t get a good answer, you can always rephrase it more directly.

Feedback Questions

The feedback question clarifies, confirms, cuts through ambiguity, and promotes understanding. It is used most effectively to clarify a foggy response. A feedback question reiterates the answerer’s words and often aims for simple confirmation, as in, You said we move on Monday?

But let’s look at how a feedback question works when it’s open-ended. Imagine that you’re checking with your boss before you write a memo about next month’s work schedule. She looks over some figures and says, “This overtime has gotten out of hand. We’d be better off not calling workers in on Saturdays.” You could try a feedback question to get her to clarify whether she’s just noting that costs could be cut by stopping overtime or if she wants you to eliminate overtime from the schedule. A question such as, Do you want me to tell the workers there’s no more overtime on weekends? would clarify both the issue and her answer.

The feedback question doesn’t have to be an exact restatement of what was said. In the preceding example, your boss seems to say weekend overtime must stop. She implies that it will stop, but she doesn’t say that directly. So, to eliminate misunderstanding, you feed what she said back to her, but you treat the implication as a stated fact. Then she has to respond directly with, “Yes, I want you to say there’s no more overtime on weekends,” or “Maybe there’s an alternative,” or “No, that’s not what I meant.”

Practice selecting the right kind of question in Exercise 9–1.

Exercise 9-1: Kinds of Questions

INSTRUCTIONS: Determine which kind of question is most appropriate in the following situations. Choose among yes-no, open-ended, indirect, and feedback questions. Answers are at the end of the chapter.

1. You’re interviewing your CEO, who is about to retire, about the company’s earliest years.

2. Your boss says, “See if Carolyn can meet us for lunch at 1:30 tomorrow night.”

3. You’d like to get internships for your twin nephews this summer, but you’re not sure how your boss will respond.

4. You want to know if your assistant has sent out the request for proposals.

5. You need to learn how to scan an oversized chart into your computer.

RESEARCHING

Our second group of sources includes written materials found either in print or online. Some written sources—reference books, handbooks, periodicals, internal memos, reports—will be available in your office or home. Others will require a visit to the library or the Web. We’ll look first at finding material online and then discuss locating printed material at the library.

Using the Internet

When it comes to information online, about the only statement that is certain to be true for the foreseeable future is that more and more material is becoming available. So by the time you read this, some of what we have to say will be out-of-date. According to an estimate in Science magazine, the Web contained approximately 320 million pages in 1998, and only about half of them were indexed by the biggest search engine (Bray, 1999). That’s an awful lot of information, raw data, opinions, and misinformation, so the most valuable skill to acquire is learning how to sort through and use what you need. Let’s begin by reviewing what the Internet is and noting some of the vocabulary that has grown from it.

In the late 1960s, the U.S. Department of Defense built on the work of an MIT professor to experiment with creating a network of computers with no central point. From this research came a protocol for linking computers known as TCP/IP, which is the basis for the Internet. As universities, then businesses, and finally individuals throughout the world began connecting to this system, the Internet emerged in the form—or formlessness—we know today.

The World Wide Web—most often called just “the Web”—is the part of the Internet that includes text, pictures, animation, sound, and video. The information found here is organized into Web pages; a collection of pages from the same person or organization is a Web site. Each site has its own address, called a URL (Uniform Resource Locator), which tells the computer where to find what you’re looking for. A typical URL looks like this:

http://hostname.com.thispage.html

Http stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol, and because all addresses include it, the http: 11 can be left out. (Your browser will supply it for you.) The next section of the URL is the name of the host, or the machine from which the Web site originates. This will include suffixes such as com for businesses, gov for government entities, org for nonprofit organizations, and edu for educational institutions. The URL ends with the name of the individual Web page you’re calling up.

Web sites can be anything from a list of someone’s likes and dislikes, along with a picture of his cat, to a government document, to an archive of obscure films. How do you navigate such a vast and unruly universe?

You begin by using software called a Web browser, which allows you to “surf or explore the Web. You can also take advantage of software programs known as search engines that take the words or phrases you give them to track down pages with those words. Once you get to a site, you can connect to related sites by clicking on links— text, images, or icons that are often a different color and nearly always underlined. Browsers allow you to save the sites you visit often for easy retrieval; these are known as bookmarks or favorites, depending on which browser you use.

Unfortunately, all of this sounds more efficient than it is. Anyone who has searched for something on the Web knows that you can waste a lot of time and still come up empty-handed. This will no doubt improve, but for the time being, the suggestions in Exhibit 9–2 will help you navigate the Web.

Resources Online

The Web is an increasingly valuable research tool, but its rapid growth is not without drawbacks. The Internet is a wonderfully democratic medium: Anyone can post anything online, and therein lies the problem. How do you know what is accurate or true? That’s a question philosophers, scholars, journalists, teachers, and others grapple with regularly, and the answer in this case is that there is no guarantee. We tend to trust material that has gone through an editing or review process—periodicals, books, news broadcasts—because scholarly and journalistic standards demand a degree of verification. Material posted online with no review may indeed be more accurate, but it is up to us to verify it.

So the first rule of research online is to check the source carefully. Learn the qualifications of the author or whoever hosts the site, and note the date of the posting. Just because it flashes from the computer screen doesn’t mean it’s current. Then determine if the author has documented her sources, provided sufficient and specific evidence to support her points, and offered a balanced argument or report. If you find a bias in the writing or a piece of information that differs from anything you’ve come across elsewhere, try to find other articles to back it up or to balance it. This goes back to the criteria for good evidence found in Chapter 2; you’ll recall that good evidence addresses the range of available opinions. These criteria apply no matter what the medium.

Bring a healthy skepticism to images too, because with technology, pictures can be made to lie. Details can be erased, two photos taken at different times or places can be merged to look like one, and the origin of photos can be distorted. All of these techniques mislead the viewer.

Finally, be wary of anecdotal evidence, which is particularly prevalent online. The stories of one person or ten people may be compelling, but they are probably not sufficient as a basis for general conclusions. This kind of evidence can be useful for the insights it provides, but it is seldom proof of much beyond an individual experience.

Even with all those caveats, online research can be fruitful for businesspeople. You will find useful material there in the form of directories, journals, databases, and indexes, which are a subcategory of databases. Directories range from listings of corporations or manufacturers, to biographies of CEOs, to names and addresses of newsletters, to telephone directories (never underestimate the utility of the phone book as a research tool). These are often broken down by geography or by the size, type, or age of businesses. There are even directories of directories to help you find what you’re looking for.

Databases include indexes, abstracts, full-text articles, statistics, government regulations, business profiles, legal information ... you name it! This is a rapidly growing area of the Web, as more and more information is organized and made available, sometimes for a hefty fee. Fortunately, many databases are available at public libraries at no charge.

One of the best business-related databases is LEXIS-NEXIS, a full-text resource, which includes articles from major (and some regional) American newspapers, company financial information, company news, and federal and state case law. Other useful business databases are Bus_Industry Information, which draws on a range of business publications; Disclosure, which provides financial information on U.S. businesses; and Worldscope, which does the same for companies worldwide.

Your library will have a list of the databases available there, most likely organized by subject. Look under Business, or ask a librarian for guidance. If you want to know more about databases, check Scout Report, a free electronic newsletter that reports on them.

Of particular use to researchers are indexes, which list articles in newspapers and magazines and chapters in books. Listings may be by subject only, or by author, title, and subject. Indexes are sometimes accompanied by abstracts, which provide a brief summary of the articles listed. Since titles don’t always tell what an article is about, abstracts provide a useful filter.

Until recently, indexes pointed you to print or microfilm copies of periodicals, but now all major newspapers, some regional and weekly newspapers, and many magazines display their current issues online. There is also a small but increasing number of electronic journals, that is, magazines that exist only online. Some Web sites for periodicals allow you access to their archives, which contain articles from previous months and years. There is often a charge for back articles, however, and few of these archives go back farther than a decade, so historical research will probably require a visit to the library.

The Library

Libraries are wonderful institutions whose wealth and accessibility we often take for granted. So, even as we turn more and more to the Internet for information, libraries aren’t becoming obsolete quite yet. Businesspeople will find three kinds of libraries particularly useful: company libraries, public libraries, and university libraries.

Company libraries specialize in the books, periodicals, and databases that are of greatest value to that particular industry. If your company is large enough to have its own library, become familiar with it. Talk to the librarian, who specializes in gathering the information you want and suggesting additional resources.

Public libraries specialize in more general reading matter but carry major reference sources, including those that focus on business topics. Public libraries are unlikely to have the depth of material on a particular industry that a company library has, but the larger ones may have special collections of business material or even a separate business branch.

Academic libraries at colleges or universities usually have more extensive collections of specialized research materials than do public libraries. Many, especially those at government-sponsored schools, are open to the public, though you may have to get a user’s permit and use the materials within the building, or get a password to use a resource online.

Reference Librarians

No matter which kind of library you use, its best resources are likely to be its librarians. They are trained to answer questions, guide library users to specific sources of information, and help users explore the library’s holdings. In the bibliography at the end of this course, you will find a list of useful resources. But neither this book, nor any other, can tell you about all the reference materials available. Librarians can be particularly helpful here: Their job isn’t to do research for you, but they can direct you to the tools you need to do the job.

Reference librarians at public libraries and some academic libraries are available to answer straightforward, factual questions by telephone or in person. Here are examples of questions easily answered by a library reference department:

How has the inflation rate varied over the past five years?

When did the first public telephone system begin operating? Where?

What is the party breakdown of the Texas legislature?

Who invented the cellular phone? Who holds the patent?

Detective at Work

Setting off on a research project can be like entering a good detective story, only you get to be the sleuth, and one of your best sources of clues will be the library. Here, you look for leads and follow them. Some are dead ends, others guide you to new clues, and a few get you results. Like a detective, you must have a logical approach, a search strategy, to find the information you need. To observe such a strategy in action, let’s consider an extended example. Following the steps in the research process, we’ll also review the major kinds of library resources. Your librarian can suggest others for your own research.

Suppose you work in the human resources department of a small but growing company that offers support to the restaurant industry. Your boss has just returned from a meeting with her boss—the head of the company—who read a newspaper article saying that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is considering new ergonomic standards in the workplace. So far, this seems to apply mostly to industrial jobs, not offices like yours, but the head wants to know what the future holds and also what is necessary to ensure a good safety record. Your boss asks you to investigate the topic. Where do you start?

General Reference Books

You know that ergonomics has to do with the design of jobs and equipment, but you check the dictionary to hone your definition. There you find that the word is singular, despite the final s, and that the purpose of such design is to maximize productivity and reduce discomfort. The definition also helps by giving you the synonyms, biotechnology, human engineering, and human factors engineering, which may be useful as additional search terms.

If you wanted general information and basic facts about ergonomics, you would check other reference works, some available on CD-ROM. Others are kept in the reference section of the library, where you would find myriad reference books on open shelves, including the following:

• Business dictionaries, which define terms used in business, finance, and law

• Handbooks, which are single-volume publications that cover topics of importance to people working in specific areas

• Trade directories, which give information about specific business operations, products, and services

• Business encyclopedias, which provide facts and overviews of topics but are not the best sources for in-depth analyses

• Manuals from business services, which offer detailed information about specific companies

Atlases, almanacs, biographical listings, and bibliographies may also be useful to you in answering a specific question, locating a person, or finding other published sources to consult. Two unusual reference works that list when events happened and put them in their historical context are Facts on File, which summarizes news stories week-by-week and is compiled by year, and Timetables of History, a horizontal timeline, which presents major events in seven categories, year-by-year since 5000 BC.

After a little research, it becomes apparent to you that the science of ergonomics has been around long enough to have a sizable body of material written about it. That means you’ll be able to draw on books for background and perspective as well as on periodicals and databases for more current information. Whenever possible, you will want to go to primary sources, that is, documents that provide firsthand information. As a rule, they are better than secondary sources, which use information drawn from primary sources, though secondary sources may go into greater depth and have the benefit of hindsight. In this case, your primary sources would include studies done by designers or engineers, and government documents.

Government Documents

The federal government collects and disseminates information on an astonishingly broad range of topics. In addition, it creates a great number of documents, for example, reports, legislation, and regulations in proposal stage, as well as final, adopted form. Current government documents are available online, usually through the branch of government or agency that produced them. Three extensive databases help you find resources within the government:

• Congressional Universe, which includes information on all aspects of Congressional work, including the Congressional Record, Federal Register, and Code of Federal Regulations

• GPO Access, which covers federal regulatory agencies

• FedWorld, a comprehensive site maintained by the National Technical Information Service

Congress has its own Web site where it posts legislative information; it is called Thomas, after Thomas Jefferson.

Business research often entails tracking down accurate and current statistics, and here too the federal government is a good resource. The Census Bureau publishes the Statistical Abstract of the United States in print and online. Other more focused reports include Current Population Reports, Census of Housing, Census of Agriculture, and Census of Transportation. You’ll find a wealth of statistical information in the databases Statistical Universe and Fed-Stats.

Older documents may require a visit to the library. The Government Printing Office (GPO) operates the Federal Depository Library System, where government documents are available. Federal Government Depository Libraries usually are located at universities but may be housed in public, government, or law libraries. Most states have one or two such libraries that participate in interlibrary loan programs to get you publications not available at your local library. This may take time, however.

To find out just what the proposed OSHA regulations about ergonomics say, you would go to OSHA’s Web site at http://OSHA.gov. You would search the site using ergonomics as your keyword and find a list of available publications, including facts sheets, reports, and links to relevant publications at other government agencies. This is a good start, but your boss has asked you to look more broadly than the minimum requirement. You think a book might help put the issue in perspective.

Books

For a list of all books published in the United States, you can search the Library of Congress Web catalog online (http://lcweb.loc.gov/catalog). This is useful in letting you know what books exist if you want to buy them or ask your library to locate a specific one for you. (Most libraries are part of a consortium of libraries and can get books that are not in their holdings through an interlibrary loan program.) It’s more efficient, though, to go directly to the list of your library’s holdings. This listing used to be found in card catalogs; now nearly all libraries use computerized databases. Systems vary, but most are menu driven (sequential instructions appear on the screen), and most search for books by name, author, subject, or keyword.

In your search, you use ergonomics as your subject and find a book titled The Occupational Ergonomics Handbook, by Waldemar Karwowski and William A. Marras. The listing tells you that the book is available on your library’s shelves and that this latest edition was published in 1999. Though the date is current, it takes time to publish books, so they will be less useful for finding the latest information than for providing background, context, and analysis.

Library holdings are organized to make them easy to locate. If the stacks, or shelves, are open to the public, you retrieve the books and periodicals you want. If the stacks are closed, you fill out a request form and someone gets the books for you. If you can’t find something that is supposed to be in the library, consult the librarian. If a book you want is checked out, you can request to be notified when it is returned.

To find a book on the shelves, you must understand the Library of Congress (LC) classification system, which most large public libraries and college libraries use to organize their nonfiction books. The LC system divides all nonfiction books into 20 subject categories, which are then subdivided by adding a second letter and number. Books are arranged on the shelves alphabetically and then numerically within each category; the LC number is written on the spine.

An LC number contains three or four lines: the first line is one or two letters indicating the LC classification; the second line is the number of the LC subcategory; the third line is the first letter of the author’s last name, along with another number that points you to the book’s exact location on the shelf; and the fourth line, which is optional, is the date of publication. For The Occupational Ergonomics Handbook, the book you found in your library’s database, the LC number looks like this:

TA

166

.O258

1999

Unfortunately, when you find this book and look over its table of contents and a couple of chapters, you see that it is more technical than you need. As you browse the neighboring books, which you know are in the same or a similar category because they share an LC number, you realize that they all focus on engineering and design details, not the management and human resource issues you’re researching. That sends you on to databases of the periodicals you can find at the library.

Periodicals

Periodicals include newspapers (excellent primary sources, but limited because of any topic’s short-lived status as news); magazines (weeklies or monthlies with diverse readerships); journals (usually quarterlies and aimed at a specialized audience); and newsletters (published at various intervals, usually very focused both in subject and perspective).

To find articles in periodicals, you use indexes and abstracts, such as those mentioned above. Libraries usually have lists of the indexes and abstracts they own, along with the periodicals to which they subscribe. Periodicals may be listed alphabetically or categorized by subject, such as Social Science or Business and Economics.

You can also use a search engine, which will list anything available online—including articles in periodicals—that includes the keywords you use. This proves to be a mixed blessing, because when you search for information on AltaVista, using the keyword ergonomics, you get 341,610 responses. You narrow the search by adding OSHA to your search term, which makes the list more manageable—a mere 168 Web pages to peruse. You can scroll through this list quickly, narrow your search farther, or try a different search term.

Let’s say that your search eventually reveals five recent magazine and newspaper articles that seem relevant. The first two articles sound as though they might provide general information about the topic. The third seems particularly good because it focuses on ergonomic issues in offices/The fourth appears to discuss legal cases, which should be relevant, and the last sounds like a serious analysis of OSHA’s regulatory mechanism. Only the last of these is available online and only as an abstract, so you need to find the periodicals containing the others at the library.

Periodicals are kept separately from books. The most recent issues usually are arranged alphabetically on open shelves; back issues are either bound and stored elsewhere or available on microfilm or microfiche. Check the library’s list of periodicals to see if the ones you want are available.

No matter what your topic, there is probably a periodical that focuses on it. Highly specialized publications are usually available only at large, academic libraries or company libraries, but your library may be able to get you a copy of an article or borrow a publication through an interlibrary loan. It is also possible to order a copy of some articles for a fee through clearinghouses, such as UnCover, a hybrid online fax retrieval service.

Exhibit 9–3 summarizes our research trip through the library.

This may seem like a lot of information about finding information, but it falls into place once you begin your research. Libraries are organized to aid information retrieval, librarians are there to help, and the Internet is becoming easier to navigate. Exercise 9-2 sends you out into the research world to practice using various information resources to answer research questions.

Exercise 9-2: Where in the World Is . . .

INSTRUCTIONS: Go online or to the library and see which available resources will give you useful, accurate, and plentiful information to answer the following research questions. There is no single correct answer here—the point of the exercise is the engage you in the research process—but we note some types of resources at the end of the chapter.

1. What percentage of business travelers worldwide are women? How has this changed in the last ten years?

2. How has NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Act) affected U.S. trade with Mexico?

3. Compare the U.S. productivity rate, the measure of economic output per hour of work, for the most recent year to five years ago.

4. What was the operating gain or loss for your state’s major health insurers for the most recent quarter?

5. What federal laws concern an employer’s right to monitor employees’ e-mail?

6. When did the stock market first break 2000?

USING SOURCES

Once you have gathered your sources, begin to read, take notes, and sort out what you find useful. Periodicals and reference works seldom circulate, so come prepared to work at the library, bringing whatever writing implement you prefer—a laptop, or pen and paper, notebook, or index cards—and coins for the copier and microfilm machines.

It is inefficient to read everything you come across in depth. Instead, start by skimming the material you’ve collected to evaluate its usefulness and relevance.

Do this by scanning introductions, summaries, headings, tables of contents, and indexes. Then read the sources you’ve selected more carefully, looking for main points, supporting facts, interesting concepts, and credibility. Once again, keep in mind the criteria of good evidence found in Chapter 2, and make sure your research is fair and sufficient (i.e., you don’t stop with the first resource you come across).

This is the stage at which you will want to take notes. Make sure they are accurate and include bibliographic information for all your sources, including those online. This is important so that you can credit your resources. (Copyright, which we’ll address in Chapter 10, applies to online publications too.) It will also help you recheck information, if questions arise later on. It’s more efficient to jot down your sources as you take notes than to make a second trip to the library or a Web site. Also, as you take notes, differentiate direct quotations from your paraphrases to avoid confusion about whose words you’re using when it comes time to write. Refer to Chapter 8 if you need to review how to use and punctuate quoted material.

In this phase of our imaginary research trip, after you read several articles on ergonomics regulations, you should begin to note patterns and relationships—statistics cited repeatedly, for instance, or a connection between an increased number of certain workplace injuries and a demand for clearer rules. You will also be able to see which of your questions are going unanswered or which aspects of your subject are inadequately addressed, so you can focus additional research on the weakest areas of your analysis. In any research project, it may not be possible to find everything you’re looking for and fill every gap, but once you have the bulk of your material, you can start to organize it as discussed in Chapter 2. Then the writing process begins.

Research is basically a matter of asking the right questions and tracking down good sources of information to provide the answers. The point of doing research is to fill the gaps in your knowledge about a topic of interest. Your resources may be people, whom you interview for information. When you interview, make your questions short, to the point, and open-ended whenever possible. Ask one question at a time, listen to the answer, and be flexible in the kinds of questions you ask.

For written sources, you will need to use the Internet or visit a library, where you will find reference librarians ready to help you track down the information you need. At the library, you can draw on books, periodicals, general reference works, government documents, and a plethora of online databases. Once you’ve located the right resources and gathered your information by taking accurate and well-documented notes, you are ready to begin the first steps in your writing process.

ANSWERS TO EXERCISES

Exercise 9-1

1. open-ended

2. feedback

3. indirect

4. yes-no

5. open-ended

Exercise 9-2

Possible resources:

1. travel industry newsletter, business database

2. book, periodicals from Mexico or U.S. border states

3. U.S. Commerce Department document or Web site, business periodical

4. local or regional newspaper, health or insurance industry newsletter

5. Congressional Web site, compendium of federal laws in government documents

6. newspaper archive, Facts on File