Research needs personal interest

Picking a research topic will go from a blockade to a stepping stone in the research project process if students look for potential topics everywhere and outline often.

After students narrow down their fields of choice, many questions may still float in their minds in regards to their subject, which can lengthen the project drastically.

Communication professor Randal Chase said because professors use different methods for how students will execute research projects, students need to outline the proper path to assure they don't repeat steps.

"When you move to your Capstone all it amounts to is building on your pilot study," Chase said. "In a Capstone you would be required to make a couple hundred observations, but for a pilot only 20 or 30."

Many students may begin making these observations and realize they are not fond of their subject, said Lyle Pack, lecturer and adviser in Dixie State's biology department. If students continue to work on a project they are not passionate about they will become lazy and make simple mistakes.

"Good research is often tedious," Pack said. "It either is highly repetitive or it takes a lot of time, whatever you pick is something you must be highly interested in."

Ideally students would be able to figure out whether their topic interests them long before they have begun a pilot study, Pack said.

Pack said: "One of the things I advise students to do when they are telling me they want to go into a field is to look at the catalog and class descriptions for the major you are pursuing to make sure there are classes you want to take. If you look through the catalog and there aren't classes you want to take then maybe you don't want to pursue [the field]."

Traditionally students pursue thinking of a topic for their project when they begin taking the classes in which the research is necessary.

Don Hinton, dean of Dixie State's school of arts and letters, said the most exceptional research projects he has witnessed were when students have planned even years ahead, judging by assignments and projects they have enjoyed in previous classes.

Students can find the basis of a research project by doing something as simple as asking a question in a class no one knows the answer to. After this you can ask professors whether you can narrow the topic anymore and if your point of view is in the right place, Hinton said.

Deciding on a final project can be done by a trial and error basis, eliminating things you have found don't work, and pondering new ways to look at things that do happen to work, Chase said.