Inquiry

Have you ever been scrolling through your social media of choice, and come across a video response to another post? And this poster is BIG MAD, but you don’t know what the original post was about. What happens next?

Sometimes, you don’t care, and you scroll past it. But sometimes… the tea is too hot, and you decide “I just have to know more.” So, you visit the previous post to find out what is happening so you can be caught up on all the drama. THAT is inquiry in its most basic form. You have asked a question about a situation and have sought an answer.

Inquiry is the act of asking for information. We do this every day. When we ask that hottie in the dining hall for their number. When we text our besties if they have plans for the weekend. In fact, I’m sure you’ve asked Google to define a word for you at least once during the reading of this book.

I can’t tell you how often to inquire about things. I can only tell you this: Question everything. You have a magnificent little computer in your pocket that has access to all the information you could want. Ask the questions (also: be information literate. But that’s another chapter. For now, just ask the questions.).

Remember: Inquiry should be systematic and methodical.

Research as Inquiry

Inquiry is another word for curiosity or questioning. Maybe a better title for this concept is “Research as Curiosity,” because it more accurately captures the way our human brains work.

When you think to yourself, “How old is Beyonce?” and you google it to find out her age, that’s research! You had a question (how old is Beyonce?), you applied a search strategy (googling “Beyonce age”) and you found an answer to the question. That’s it!

But it’s not all research can be. Even after your research question is answered, you may still have questions, so you go back to the inquiry step again and ask another question about your topic.

Sometimes we’re never really done even though we’ve answered the initial question and maybe even written an entire project on the topic. If it’s a topic you’re interested in, you will keep asking and answering questions repeatedly.

In this example, your questions lead you to answers which lead you to more questions and to more answers. Humans are naturally curious; we have an instinct to learn things and that drives us to ask questions. It’s all “Research as Inquiry.”

Synthesis

Ok. So you’ve got research. Congrats. Now what?

Now you need to write about it. But you can’t just report blandly on what you’ve learned. Nor can you just copy and paste their ideas into your own writing (plagiarism anyone?). You’ve got to synthesize others’ ideas into your own words. Let’s look at an example of synthesis.

I have decided that now that I have grown-up money, I’m going to be frivolous. I run out and buy a Lego replica of the Eiffel tower. It’s enormous, it’s got 10 thousand pieces. So I go through the steps:

1. I open the manual and figure out what I need to do.
2. I separate out my pieces and organize them by size/ color/ shape/ etc.
3. I decide which part I am going to start working on, grab those pieces and start to build.

THAT’S synthesis! 

1. You create your research question (How do I build this tower?)
2. You gather your research sources (Lego bricks) and organize them by theme/ idea/ outcomes ect.
3. You decide which part you want to start writing, grab those quotations/ sources and start writing

“But how do I know what themes go together?” You can do this a number of ways:

You can do this by using a research matrix. This is a series of grids in which you put your research question at the top corner, your articles across the top, and the topics you want to talk about down the side.

Synthesis v. Summary

It is tempting to think there isn’t a difference between summarizing a topic and synthesizing but a tree would beg to differ.

Summary – a statement that covers the main points of something

Synthesis – combining different ideas to form a theory or system.

Summary is like telling a friend about what happens in a movie. You explain some of the plot points, but you don’t give away the ending. You don’t spoil the twists. You simply give the ‘movie trailer’ explanation of the movie.

Synthesis is like you and a friend trying to figure out what the end scene credits in the latest Marvel movie mean. You talk about where the scene took place, who was there, what it means. You might discuss what that character does in the comic books to try and figure out HOW that scene is going to be used in the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Summary is just giving the main points of a topic. It’s telling me what you just read. Synthesis is taking what you just read, tearing it apart and then using those pieces to create a new idea on the topic you just read about.

Most of the time, unless explicitly instructed, your professors don’t want a summary of what you’ve read but a synthesis. They don’t want to hear what the other writer says, they want to hear what YOU think about what the other writer says and more-they want to hear what it means.

Critique 

A critique is a formal evaluation of an article. At some point, you may be asked to critique a research article. You might think “but, I’m not an expert in the field!” That’s ok! Critique isn’t someone giving their personal approval on a piece of research, nor is it a chance for a writer to tear up another writer’s work, but it is part of the scholarly conversation in which we are taking someone’s idea and trying to help deepen the understanding of the work.

TAMU has a great resource on this topic:

TAMU Writing Center – Critiques 

Remember: Critique is meant to help us contextualize the information for others, and to provide a new set of eyes to the research to ensure that only the best information is being released to the public.

 How to write a good research question

Writing a good research question is very different than just asking a question. Remember earlier when the research question posed was about social media and mental health, and that spawned several new questions? Your research question needs to be specific enough that it doesn’t create all those questions, but vague enough that you don’t find TOO narrow a topic.

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Academic Writing Skills Copyright © 2021 by Patricia Williamson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

Warn, M. “Synthesizing research using a matrix.” Youtube.com. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlDl-OGbSbA