The Research Process Development

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Research Process
Search Strategies
Sources Evaluation
Conclusion
Reference

Introduction

Any kind of research is a complicated and time-consuming process. This is especially true if the researcher does not have a clearly defined topic at once and needs to broaden and narrow it in the course of the research. There are numerous important aspects that need to be taken into account when carrying out research. First of all, an initial research question has to be set. After this, the process of research as such takes place. The initial research question serves as a basis of the research only. One of its main contributions to the research process is that it can provide the researcher with one or more keywords to start with. After this, information may be collected from primary, secondary, and tertiary sources; in the course of this process and depending on the results, the researcher gets additional keywords that help to broaden and limit the topic of the research and eventually bring the researcher to the final research question. This is an approximate plan of how this research on Escherichia coli is going to be performed; thus, this report will carefully evaluate and articulate the information needed to develop the final research question, describe search strategies that have been implemented during the research, and eventually present a final research question that will be used for writing the research paper.

Research Process

To begin with, a research question that will be guiding the research needs to be formulated. Since the research, in general, is going to deal with E.coli, it seems the most relevant to explore this bacterium’s effect on the human organism. Therefore, the initial research question is: Which effect does E.coli have on the human organism? One of the thought processes used to arrive at this research question was a generalization. At the beginning of the research process, one definite fact about E.coli was that it was harmless for humans because it was identified as a bacterium that, as it was discovered in the course of the search process, is present in the human intestine (Gorbach, Bartlett, & Blacklow, 2004). Owing to generalization, the suggestion that E.coli may be harmful was not considered because something living in the human organism from the beginning of its formation can hardly do it any harm. Such a conclusion seemed to lead the research to a dead end because it presupposed that subsequent development of the topic was impossible. Nevertheless, this problem helped to re-focus the research; it was clear that the thought process needed to be changed to get to another aspect of the topic.

Another though process, critical thinking, made it possible to assume that, if E.coli is a bacterium than, like the majority of other bacteria, it can be harmful under certain circumstances. Thus, by means of drawing parallels between the already known types of bacteria, a guiding question for research arose: What are these circumstances? This significantly broadened the topic at this stage of research. The matter is that, at the beginning, it was assumed that E.coli as a non-harmful bacterium will be considered in terms of its properties, environment in which it lives, and, perhaps, even its therapeutic use. With this new information in mind, the scope of the future research was broadened; it was decided to not only explore the bacterium in terms of its characteristics, but to find out what exactly is responsible for the bacterium’s changing its properties and becoming alien for the organism in which it lives. Besides, this made the research process much easier because the information on harmfulness of E.coli is more abundant.

Furthermore, using modifications of the keywords (that will be discussed later), new data regarding the bacterium under consideration have been obtained. It was found out that E.coli has harmful and harmless strains. Harmful, or pathogenic, strains of E.coli are capable of causing different infections in the human organism (Barness & Barness, 2003). This is where another possibility to broaden the scope of the research arises. At this stage, it is possible to re-direct the research and explore different pathogenic strains of E.coli and different infections that they cause. For example, some of them cause local and systemic infections, such as diarrhea and the majority of other nosocomial infections (Handbook of Diseases, 2004). This possibility will be considered more attentively when the research paper as such will be written. So far, it is enough to explore the properties of E.coli, the circumstances under which it can become harmful, and how this can happen.

This is the next stage of the research where broadening of the topic takes place. If there are pathogenic strains of E.coli, then there should be a way they get into the human organism and cause infections in it. Since the overall topic is related to food, it is possible to suggest that certain strains of E.coli become harmful for the human organism when they get into blood owing to digestion process. This is where the research is slightly re-directed to the way in which E.coli may get into food and/or drinking water. The modification of the keyword (also discussed later) has revealed that E.coli, or, to be more exact, its particular pathogenic strain, E. coli 0157: 57 (Tadataka, Alpers, Kaplowitz et al, 2003), may cause food poisoning. This is a vast area for research. For instance, definite diseases connected with food poisoning may be identified, as well as the ways to treat these diseases may be researched. Thus, as it is known, colitis is one of the most widespread diseases that develop because of food poisoning (Roy, 2002). This is why it seems relevant to explore its connection with the presence of E.coli in food or drinking water (which narrows the research at this stage).

This all eventually led me to the final research question. Considering the information that I have obtained during this research process, I have formulated the following research question: When and how can E.coli be harmful for the human organism? This research question encompasses most of the aspects concerning the bacterium in question. It presupposes that general information about E.coli will be provided, its pathogenic and non-pathogenic strains will be discussed, the possibility of the bacterium’s pathogenic strains to get into human organism will be considered, and the effect of these strains on the human health will be evaluated. The research question that has been formulated is a pure research question. It does not deal with finding solutions to a definite problem; instead, the problem is critically evaluated and described in detail with various aspects of it being taken into consideration.

Search Strategies

Above all, it should be mentioned that a variety of keywords should be tried to achieve success in research. The following table (a screenshot made from a database) reflects the progress of my research process at one of the databases that I have used:

It can be seen what I have started with (mere introduction of the word ‘E.coli’ to get general information about the bacterium) and what direction my research took after this. For example, after discovering that E.coli is present in the intestines of the humans, I have arrived to a conclusion that this bacterium can be both harmful and harmless. From the first source I have found (Infectious Diseases) I have learnt that E.coli had pathogenic and non-pathogenic strains. This is why I have modified my keyword to ‘E.coli strains’ to verify this information and, further, to ‘E.coli pathogenic strains’ to be able to broaden the topic of the research. This allowed me to find out that pathogenic strains of E.coli can cause numerous infections, which resulted in another modification of the keyword into ‘E.coli infections’.

Since the results I have obtained with the use of this keyword were not numerous, I have used a synonymic keyword, ‘E.coli diseases,’ which turned far more results. The keyword was modified several times with the progress of the research and its further re-directions. I have used ‘E.coli in food’ to discover whether this bacterium can be present in it, as well as ‘E.coli in drinking water’ for the same reason. Further, I have remembered about colitis as one of the most widespread food poisoning consequences and used such combinations as ‘E.coli colitis’ and ‘E.coli food colitis’ to find out whether E.coli can cause colitis if the bacterium gets into the food (or drinking water). Finally, I used the keyword ‘E.coli diseases’ to discover which other diseases, apart from colitis, may be caused by this bacterium. This all testifies to the fact that I have used a variety of keywords, including synonyms, during the search of information. The keywords mentioned, however, present only a part of my research performed at a definite database. The keywords that I used with regular search engine (for general information) and other databases were also numerous and diverse, but my experience with this definite database reflects the progress of my research best of all.

With other databases and search engines, I used a variety of spellings to obtain more results. For instance, I usually started with entering the full name of the bacteria, ‘Escherichia coli’ and only then reduced it to ‘E.coli’; besides, when wishing to obtain information about E.coli strains, I entered ‘E.coli strains,’ ‘E.coli harmful strains,’ ‘E.coli strains causing infections,’ ‘E.coli pathogenic strains,’ etc, as well as I modified the keyword when researching the presence of E.coli in food through entering ‘E.coli food,’ ‘food poisoning E.coli,’ ‘food poisoning bacteria’, etc.

Moreover, my search of information was broken into multiple queries as I researched the topic gradually. For example, I chose a definite aspect of the problem and explored it; when the information obtained was sufficient, I moved to another aspect and, consequently, performed another query. I have also used several databases, though my search queries did not change much depending on the databases. They all have revealed approximately the same information and sometimes even the same sources. This is probably connected with the limited scope of the topic; besides, my research will be more of a descriptive this is why general data about the problem under consideration will hardly vary from database to database.

It is worth mentioning that I did not use Boolean operators (such as AND, OR, NOT) this is why their efficiency for my research process can not be discussed here. The matter is that my research had a definite direction (general direction): to explore E.coli bacterium and different issues related to it. I did not have to make any comparison or consider two issues that were alike this why Boolean operators were simply not applicable to my research this time.

Lastly, I also attempted to use subject headings, but they proved to be inefficient in my case, so I got back to variations with keywords. Usually, however, searching information with the use of subject headings is quite helpful for me because they allow retrieving only the most relevant information. They have a controlled vocabulary that allows limiting the search and accessing only those sources that have direct relation to the topic. In my case, subject headings were not helpful because I narrowed and broadened the search all the time and, thus, needed al the information, not the specific one, which had at least any relation to my topic. The database that I have used most of all was Ovid. The scope of this database is extremely wide; it has sources (books, journals, etc) on a number of topics, including biology, chemistry, medicine, nursing, environmental science, etc. The database is easy to operate and the sources that I have found there were the most relevant.

Sources Evaluation

Since I have reviewed a variety of sources in the course of my research, I needed to evaluate each of them to select the ones to use in the paper. The main criteria I turned attention to were:

Date of publication (I avoided consulting sources that were older than 2000);
Relevance to the topic (I paid attention to whether the whole source was about the problem I explored, or only a chapter of it);
The completeness of information (whether the source presented the information that I have looked for)

These criteria were used to reject a source (if the source did not correspond to any of them).

Sometimes, there were sources that seemed to say the same things. Choosing among them was rather difficult, but I usually gave preference to those that were more up-to-date. The main strategy I used to determine the quality of the sources was screening them for reliability (Booth, Colomb, & Williams, 2003). I have turned attention to the publishers, the authors’ use of other sources in their work, and, as already mentioned, the up-to-dateness of the source.

Conclusion

Therefore, this report has presented how exactly the research on a definite topic has been carried out. It has traced the development of the working research question into a final research question, presented the search strategies that have been used during the search of the information, and discussed how the sources that have been found during the research were evaluated. Finally, it has explained why certain strategies (such as the use of subject headings or Boolean operators) were not applied in this particular research process.

Reference

Barness, E.G. & Barness, L.A. (2003). Clinical Use of Pediatric Diagnostic Tests. Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

Booth, W.C., Colomb, G.G., & Williams, J.M. (2008). The craft of research. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Gorbach, S.L., Bartlett, J.G., & Blacklow, N.R. (2004). Infectious diseases. Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

Handbook of diseases. (2004). Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

Roy, F.H. (2002). Ocular Syndromes and Systemic Diseases. Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

Yamada, T., Alpers, D.H., Kaplowitz, N., Neil, L., Owyang, C., & Powell, D. (2003). Textbook of gastroenterology. Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

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