Research ideas often emerge in situations where people are trying to solve a practical problem, such as those who work in your institution’s offices of dining services, buildings and grounds, campus safety, or housing. For example, offices connected to student life are interested in the amount of money spent to maintain the facilities that students use. Investigations of graffiti, litter, breakage, and other concerns may produce useful and meaningful research projects. People who work in these offices are important sources of information (and ideas).
Figure 2.2 Sources: The Student Sphere
Basic research: Research that focuses on testing fundamental theories or principles, with the goal of generalization.
Applied research: Research designed to answer practical questions; typically contrasted with basic research.
One distinction made in types of research is whether the research is basic or applied. In basic research, the aim is to test fundamental principles or theories, with an expectation that the knowledge would be generalizable beyond a particular set of circumstances. The goal is to add to the base of scientific knowledge, without an expectation that a practical problem will be solved en route. In applied research, the focus is on solving a particular real-world problem (e.g., reducing graffiti in residence halls), with a particular set of conditions or circumstances. The scope may be relatively narrow. However, even when the research is applied, it can still be framed in the context of a theory. For example, applied research on residence hall design may be framed in the context of theories of crowding.
Finally, simply observing what goes on around you can produce good ideas for research. Some investigators find it helpful to carry a small notebook (or use a smartphone) to jot down ideas that occur to them in the course of daily life, whether it is the length of time it takes you to find a specific product when the grocery store changes its organization of products by aisle or the clientele of a particular bar or restaurant and its associated ambiance. A particular restaurant in town went out of business within a year of opening, and some patrons attributed this closure to the negative reviews of the restaurant’s service posted on Yelp.com. Investigating people’s belief in the validity of such reviews (and whether they had ever written a review themselves) and more broadly in the validity of information on social media might make an interesting research project. What these examples indicate is that ideas for research surround us. Many very good research projects come from observations of daily life.
Ideas: Academia and Media
Before starting a course in research methods, students may have taken one or two introductory survey courses and possibly one or two more advanced content courses (i.e., courses that focus on a defined domain within a particular discipline). If students are majoring in psychology, such content courses might be in personality, social, or health psychology. In human development, these courses might focus on individual differences or social development. In sociology, possibilities might be courses dealing with sex, gender, and society; social movements; or ethic and race relations. A colleague of mine teaches a course called “Race, Ethnicity, and Baseball in the US,” which includes the role of baseball in the assimilation of immigrants. Courses are a great source of ideas, from the topics covered and theories presented to the research approaches used.
Theses, Research Groups, and Departmental Publications
Other possibilities for research ideas include past honors theses or even masters’ theses in your department. Unpublished honors theses and published research are similar in that they typically include a section dealing with limitations of the study or directions for future research. These theses are also a useful source of measures and scales (see Chapter 5) because such projects typically require that appendices include all items in the measures, which is not common in published research.
Your department may have research groups run by professors. Attending these groups is beneficial—in particular, hearing about other people’s research and the suggestions made to improve it. Because being part of such a group reflects initiative, this experience is useful in graduate school applications. Research experience is highly valued in evaluating candidates for graduate school. Aside from graduate study, potential employers are impressed by this initiative as well; it may set you apart.
Conferences and Undergraduate Journals
At conferences, many poster presentations (see also Chapter 13) are from students or the collaborative work of students and professors. Abstracts from the local, regional, national, or international association meetings in a discipline (e.g., psychology, neuroscience, sociology, environmental design, and anthropology) provide sources of ideas for research. As an example, Figure 2.3 is a photograph of an installation of posters for a session at an environmental psychology conference, the XV Congreso Internacional de Psicologia Ambiental – PSICAMB 2019, held at the Unversidad de La Laguna in Tenerife, Spain.
During poster sessions, a condensed version of the research paper is posted on a bulletin board of some sort. Student researchers stand near their posters, ready to answer questions from conference attendees.
Guidelines for how to create a successful poster are discussed in Chapter 13. Even if you do not attend such conferences, your professors can share the online program with you as a way to search the presentation topics. Many conferences are moving away from distributing a paper program (as a result of sustainability and other cost concerns), and online programs are easily searchable.
In addition, many colleges and universities publish journals of undergraduate student work (see http://www.cur.org/), and some national journals publish student work (e.g., American Journal of Undergraduate Research). Psi Chi, the International Honor Society in Psychology, also publishes a journal of psychological research. Not only do these publications provide resources for generating a research idea, but they also serve as possible publication outlets for completed student projects.
Figure 2.3 Poster Presentation Example
Photo © Ann Devlin, courtesy of Boris Jemeric
Media
The media are excellent sources of ideas, from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal to The National Enquirer and TMZ.com. In all likelihood, you will access media from a variety of platforms. One drawback to some online news sources is what is called the digital paywall, which limits Internet users’ access to the publication without a paid subscription. For that reason, accessing these publications through your library’s databases (the institution pays the subscription) is recommended.
Digital paywall: Limits Internet users’ access to the publication without a paid subscription.
In 2014, a survey of how Americans get their news reported that most Americans had consulted four different platforms for news in the previous week and that