5. Research Methods, Research Justice, and Research Questions

You are likely aware that much of what is done in colleges and universities entails research. Your faculty conduct research in their fields. You will conduct research in your courses, in your labs, and elsewhere. But what do we really mean by “research”? Who does it and what counts?

In the past, academic research may have been described to you as a practice that centers on reading and summarizing other people’s points of view. While that may be adequate at a high school level, we will move beyond that in this course. In this module, we want you to see that academic research grows out of the same instincts that you use all the time when you want more information about a topic. And, while academic research can often serve to keep people out (the research might be behind a paywall or center the experiences of the researchers rather than those of the participants), we want your research process to be an inclusive one—one where there is space for your approaches and insights.

What Are We Doing in This Module?

In this module, we support the early stages of the research process by providing some frameworks you can use to consider how scholars perform research and what your existing identity as a researcher is. We help move you toward questions that will guide your research process.

How Will We Do It?

This module begins with an overview of research methods, followed by a description of how these methods have historically perpetuated power imbalances. It concludes by offering some ideas for generating research questions, prompting you to think about the questions, strategies, and potential limitations that are most relevant to the research you are planning.

Why Does It Matter?

A complex understanding of research methods helps you to be a more effective, empowered, ethical researcher and consumer of research. The concept of research justice, in particular, is instrumental to critically engaging with research practices and activating your own community knowledges as academic resources.

Module Goal and Learning Outcomes

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

• Identify different research methods and means of collecting data
• Discuss research justice as a framework for analyzing how systems of privilege and oppression shape academic research and the production of knowledge
• Develop a research question and consider the implications of using different methods to investigate that question