 Critical Concepts in Academic Research Defining Research According to author and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose. We've all conducted research in some form to learn about a topic or to make an argument. People often lean on research to convince others that something is true. But what do they really mean when they say, trust me, I researched this? If you search for information online, have you done research? What if you have a conversation with experts, run an experiment, listen to an album, observe people's behavior, read a book, analyze a data set, which of these activities count as research? Any of them can, depending on the questions you're trying to answer, because research can mean so many different things. The problem is that sometimes people use the word research to convince others that something is true without actually defining what kind of research they're using to back up their conclusions. After all, when you're trying to make informed decisions in your life, the key is understanding how different types of research are useful in different ways. Since there is no single universal definition of research, let's look at a few things to consider whenever you encounter that word. One way to categorize research is on a spectrum from informal to formal. You may also hear people refer to formal research as big R research, in contrast to informal or little R research. For example, if you're trying to choose a restaurant for a special occasion, you might conduct informal research by running a few searches online, comparing reviews or asking friends for recommendations. You can still map this activity to a basic research cycle, asking a question gathering evidence and reaching a conclusion, but your process will be much faster and less well documented than a formal research project. In a more formal process, this cycle becomes much more detailed and might look like this. Identify a question or problem to investigate, learn about what others have already explored, design a method to gather, evaluate and analyze evidence, collect and analyze your findings, and share your conclusions in some form, like a presentation, a painting, a building model, or a piece of writing. Keep in mind, in any type of research, these steps don't always happen in order. Research can be messy. Even the most formal research process may not look the way we expect it to, because there are so many ways to see and understand the world. Depending on your community, profession or field of study, different research activities will be more or less valuable. The challenge is matching the right type of research process to your specific needs. This can be difficult since all research is interconnected and ongoing. No single research process can fill every need or answer every question, but defining different types of research can help us focus our curiosity to ensure that we are poking and prying at the world with a purpose and a plan.