CREATIVE WRITING: Understanding Research

Research is what you do when you find yourself in a situation where you need outside information to solve a problem or accomplish a goal. It involves:

	Looking inward understand your situation define your goals describe the question(s) you need to address.
	Looking outward listen to the ideas and perspectives of others engage in conversations relevant to your questions.
	Making sense how has the encounter with other ideas changed you?
	Communicating find some way to share what you have learned

Before coming to University of Redlands, you may have learned about research as something related to school assignments, in which you cite authoritative, scholarly sources in a formal paper or presentation while complying with a style guide such as MLA or APA. This is one important situation in which you'll engage in research as a student.

However, this understanding of research as applying outside information to address a problem also relates to situations in everyday life, such as:

• Learning how to help care for a family member with health issues
• Deciding how to vote on ballot measures in an election
• Solving a problem with a team of coworkers

The time you spend honing your research skills as a student will repay you many times over after you graduate!

I am encouraging you to think of research as open-ended, driven by your interest in a problem and the availability of relevant information, rather than solely limited to certain kinds of academic assignments. This is especially meaningful when you're taking arts classes where most of your assignments are about creating or interpreting art.

Works of art carry interpretive meaning for artists and audiences; they are shaped by agreed-upon conventions such as form and genre; and they are often inspired by real-world places, events, people and details. Arts research explores each of these aspects.

What might research look like in these situations?

• Creating a nonrepresentational painting for an art class
• Revising a short story with richer details in a creative writing class
• Composing music for an unfamiliar instrument in a music class
• Designing the set for an upcoming production in a theatre class

Research skills are relevant to creativity in all of the arts. They help you find inspiration, engage with larger traditions and concepts, and ultimately produce better, more informed work.

Research is a process with several stages. As you move through the research process, you can expect to see changes in three areas or dimensions of learning:

	Affective What you feel
	Behavioral What you know how to do
	Cognitive What you know about your research topic or problem

Several factors influence how you experience the research process, including the amount of time you devote, what you are studying, what kind of question you're posing, and how you approach learning new things. Growing as a researcher is about deepening your understanding of yourself and the world, and becoming more flexible in the strategies that you can apply to address your research questions.

Below are images of several ways that librarians have depicted the research process.

What does your research process look like?

The other tabs on this guide will help you get started searching or browsing for information in the library, link you to recommended databases for research in this subject area, and help you learn how and why to cite sources according to formal style guides.

Finding information and citing sources are just two pieces of the overall research process. To see the overall big picture and go into more detail about skills useful at different stages of the research process, see my open educational resource, Introduction to Library Research in the Arts.

Visit this open educational resource to learn more about research.

For more on "looking inward" see the chapter Developing Your Topic

For more on "looking outward" see the chapters Finding Information and Evaluating Sources

For more on "making sense" and "communicating" see the chapter Using Information Ethically

Project Information Literacy, a nonprofit research institute, found that college graduates most commonly needed information to learn life skills such as how to manage money, make household repairs, or advance in their career. Check out this infographic summarizing their findings:

University of Redlands participated in the study. Here's what the study found out about University of Redlands graduates:

Credit: Allison Carr, CSU San Marcos

Credit: Paige Mann, University of Redlands

Research "is like a cycle or spiral in which your ideas evolve by repeatedly searching, reading and creating information."

Credit: Sanjeet Mann, University of Redlands