Research Starts with a Thesis Statement

Research is the process of exploring new information about a topic. It is asking question and finding out about it from all kinds of sources and perspectives. Wierszewski makes a clear statement on her belief that research is not meant to prove an already formed opinion. Research is a process of discovery. Often times students are taught that we must ask a question, form an opinion, or thesis, and prove that opinion immediately. However sometimes there’s not always just a simple answer. Wierszewski states “the messiness of research requires us to be flexible, often modifying our approaches along the way.” She believes that researchers must research an entire idea, rather than a thesis, and then come to a conclusion on the researchers true feelings towards a topic. For example, if someone knew nothing about politics, and wanted to vote in the next presidential election, they shouldn’t automatically choose a candidate and find research about that person in order to back up their opinion. Rather, they should find information from both candidates and afterwards, when they have a good understanding of them, they can choose who they want to vote for. People do research in order to find information about the world. Without realizing, people are always researching, because if they didn’t, they’d know nothing outside of what school has taught us. Research is imperative to have a better understanding of the world around us and make us aware of our surroundings. Researchers use different methods based on how they were taught and what they think is best for them. Different research methods includes experiments, surveys, interviews, case studies, and finding information from databases. I have done research using many of these methods through scientific research for science classes, but also general research papers for english classes. One thing that is confusing to me about research is that sometimes there’s not just one simple answer. People have different beliefs and values and that could base their opinions beforehand, so it can be hard to understand what exactly constitutes good research.