Overview

What is research, really? Students have been indoctrinated into thinking of research as an exercise performed in a school setting. What does the research you do in a school have to do with the work you will do in your job?

In a nutshell, research is asking questions and needing to find the answers. Research rewards the curious with insight and the persistent with bankable data. More school projects need to recognize research as being closer kin to detective work, especially as the Internet becomes more of a source to mine for essential clues.

Research in the workplace is essential in an information age. It becomes the art of discernment, of being able to sort through a lot of unnecessary details to find the crucial piece of information. In technical projects, a plane could crash due to faulty tailfin specifications; a nuclear reactor could contaminate workers with broken radiation detectors.

The researching skills you learn and practice will continue to be important in the workplace. Whether deciding which office telephone system best suits your company's needs or where to locate the next branch office, the best decisions come about as a result of careful, thorough, and balanced research.

Workplace research, however, has different goals than the type of research you do for a school essay. Your research will usually be in the form of a written report, often with a recommendation. If your recommendation is accepted, it will have both immediate and long-range consequences. How much will the new phone system cost us now? Does it meet our immediate needs? How much will it cost us over the course of five years? Will it meet our projected needs over that time period? If the long-term needs are not also met, people will remember who made the initial recommendation.