Students' Research Process

In spite of teachers' misgivings and students' complaints, the research paper remains one of the most common assignments in undergraduate college writing programs across the country. In addition, much of the writing that students are expected to produce in courses across the curriculum requires them to locate and use research material.

Most writing teachers would agree that successful writers must be able to gather, interpret, integrate, and acknowledge material from a variety of sources, but many teachers are disappointed in their students' responses to research paper assignments and disillusioned about their abilities to teach students these critical processes. Surprisingly, in spite of the important role that research plays in academic writing, researchers have only begun to examine how students approach the process of researching a topic for writing (Stotsky, 1990).

In two valuable exploratory studies, Kuhlthau (1983, 1988) used questionnaires, interviews, and journals to examine how advanced high school and college students defined and directed their own searches for information to be used in writing. She found that these students moved through a series of six overlapping stages during the search process, which included developing a personal need for the search, selecting a topic, exploring available sources, developing a focus for the paper, collecting relevant material, and preparing the material for presentation. Most important, students moved through these stages before they actually began writing drafts of their papers. This means that a large portion of the critical work required to produce a research paper often takes place during the search process, rather than during the custom essay writing process.

Research reveals that there is a considerable difference between the way many students view the process of research and the way most college instructors and researchers view it. Schwegler and Shamoon (1982) interviewed college students about why they wrote research papers and why they thought teachers assigned them. They found that generally students believe that research writing assignments are intended to test their ability to locate and reproduce information for a teacher who knows more about their topics than they do and who will base their grades on the quantity of information presented and the correctness of documentation. In contrast, they found that teachers believe that the aim of research is to "test a theory, to follow up on previous research, or to explore a problem posed by other research or by events" (p. 819). Perhaps most significant, Schwegler and Shamoon found that "college instructors view the research paper as a means to accomplish one of the primary goals of college instruction: to get students to think in the same critical, analytical, inquiring mode as instructors do -- like a literary critic, a sociologist, an art historian, or a chemist" (p. 821). The differences between the students' and teachers' views are striking. Students define the research process as an exercise in information-gathering while teachers see it as a way to extend their knowledge through critical inquiry and analysis.

The differences between these contrasting goals for research writing are even more striking when we examine how students and more experienced academic writers actually go about locating and evaluating sources to be used in writing. The majority of the freshmen set out on a fact-finding mission, using "topic-driven" techniques that would allow them to find and assemble information on their topic as quickly as possible. For example, students evaluated possible sources by determining how easily information could be extracted. One student explained her technique for determining this: "Skim the index for your topic; if information is spread out [sprinkled over several distant pages], then reject that book because you would have to read too much . . . you should try to find sources that have pockets or chunks of information that can be read and summarized easily" (Nelson & Hayes, 1988, p. 5). In contrast, the more advanced writers approached their research very differently. They described their initial purpose for conducting research in various ways: "to make a case; to argue for a position; to find a provocative or new approach" (Nelson & Hayes, 1988, p. 3). These goals led to "issue-driven" search strategies that allowed students to zero in on issues and to evaluate the relevance and validity of possible sources. For example, three of the advanced students reported that they skimmed periodical indexes, such as The New York Times index, in order to get an overview of the major issues surrounding their topic, and they used this information to help them find an "angle" or issue to explore. Unlike the "topic-driven" freshmen, these more advanced students evaluated prospective sources rhetorically, asking "Who wrote this, when, and for what purpose?" They chose sources based on their relevance and reliability, not on how easily material could be extracted and reproduced. What emerges from these studies are very different views of the goals and strategies involved in researching a topic for writing. It appears that some students may interpret the goals of research-based writing in very limited terms and that these limited task interpretations may lead them to choose truncated paths when they are searching for material to be used in writing.

But why do students define and approach their research assignments so differently? There are several possible explanations worth considering. First, perhaps the more experienced writers have particular knowledge about using library resources that the less experienced students lack. The "topic-driven" search strategies may be the inevitable outcome when students don't have the knowledge needed to conduct a thorough search of the library's resources. Other studies of students' search processes suggest that this may be part of the problem. An early study of nearly fifty college freshmen at Bucknell University reported that "the conception of research on the part of many [students] appeared to be limited and unsophisticated -- often involving little more than finding a book and checking it out of the library" (Reed, 1974, p. 20). Based on her extensive study of the search processes of advanced English high school seniors, Kuhlthau (1985) has suggested that some students may need to "learn to make a comprehensive search of all sources . . . and to extend their search beyond being satisfied with a few books located through the card catalogue" (p. 39). While college freshmen may need to learn how to take advantage of the range of resources available in university libraries, it seems that unless the limited goals that students bring to the research process in the first place are changed, they may continue to be satisfied with a few easily located sources. If their primary goal is to assemble and reproduce what others have written on a topic as efficiently as possible, then long, involved searches are unnecessary. Perhaps this is why students who have attended library tours and received in-depth library skills instruction continue to disappoint their teachers. Such knowledge is largely useless if students are on a fact-finding mission with the sole goal of locating sources with easily plundered pockets of information.

When teachers merely assigned a topic and a due date for papers, students were more likely to procrastinate until the last minute and to rely on shortcuts and "topic-driven" search strategies. However, when teachers provided real purposes for conducting research -- for example, by asking students to give oral reports before their papers were due in order to share what they had learned with their uninformed classmates -students took a more critical and time-consuming, "high-investment" approach to their research assignments. The range and quality of the writing contexts students are exposed to may be key factors in aiding their development as academic writers (Nelson & Hayes, 1988). If students work in writing situations that actively encourage them to share and interpret research material rather than expecting them to regurgitate it, they may learn to rely on the same "issue-driven" strategies and goals observed in the more experienced academic writers.