Tips for Organized Research Methods

If your research is something you are excited about, you are probably going to put more time into reading, observing, and experimenting than anything else. Writing the research in one document may end up feeling like the “red tape” of the whole process. However, if you organize it correctly, putting the final project together can be a smooth process. Make sure you have the right tools to start off with. You should have access to scholarly journals and archives, archival pens, and research notebooks. You will need to use these tools before you conduct your research, so now is a great time to set them up correctly.

You need to validate the reason for your research, so a section of your notebook should be reserved for the references and bibliography that will demonstrate the need for your project. Document this information and all other information with archival pens in order to avoid losing important information, now or later. Reserve this notebook for your references alone.

In a separate notebook you should document the progress of the research. This will be where you keep your observations and any personal notes along the way. The details of your subjects should be listed in another notebook so as to avoid bias. Any coding you use to mask the details for safety reasons should be kept in a different notebook, as well, so that at least two of these have to be used together to understand your entire project. By dividing your information and using professional research tools, you are not only organized enough to be able to easily put the entire picture together when you are done, but you are also preventing others from being able to easily put it together.