Researching Your Subject

Welcome back, everyone! I hope you’re having an amazing week! Today I am going to be sharing with you about conducting research when writing technical documents. In the field of nutrition, there are always new diets being discovered. We must conduct and analyze research that will prove theories about these new ways of eating.

There are two main types of research that we will be discussing today:

1)    Primary research

2)    Secondary research

In primary research, we discover and create information and data ourselves. In secondary research, we find information (whether it’s from nutritional academic journals, or other research previously conducted experiments) that help us better understand the topic we are researching.

Choosing Appropriate Research Methods

There are many different types of research methods that are used in the nutrition field daily. As dietitians, if we were researching how the keto diet does not help our patients lose weight in a healthy manner, we might search through previous academic journals that show experiments about the keto diet and its long-term effects on people. On the other hand, if we were gathering information about the increasing rates of obesity, we might interview patients that qualify as obese and learn about what their eating and exercising habits are like, and also their genetic history to learn more.

Conducting Secondary Research

In secondary research, we aim to acquire information that has already been documented. A few examples of where we can find accurate secondary research include library catalogs, online databases, newspaper and periodical indexes, abstract services, web search engines, and reference works. As dietitians, we can use online databases to retrieve information in the dietetics department. At my school, I know we have an entire database section on nutrition and dietetics, which has been super helpful when I have needed to research information to support an essay that I was writing about the DASH diet. Since I was writing an essay, I knew that searching through online databases was the best resource for me. In order to choose the right research source, you must analyze the subject and topic you are researching and go from there.

Evaluating the Information

After having researched our information, we must make sure that the content is:

1)    Accurate

2)    Unbiased

3)    Comprehensive

4)    Appropriately technical

5)    Current

6)    Clear

Suppose we are acquiring research about how cow’s milk is essential in the human diet. Personally, being borderline vegan, I obviously disagree with this statement, even if there is research behind it, because of the torture that these, and most other animals go through. However, as a dietitian, I cannot let my biased opinion stand in the way of research, even if I do not agree with what I am telling my patient.

Conducting Primary Research

Although secondary research is more popular, conducting primary research and experimenting on your own can help uncover new information.

One way to conduct primary research is to experiment. Suppose as dietitians we are testing the effects of sugar on sleep patterns. The four phases we must follow during this experiment are:

1)    Establishing a hypothesis

2)    Testing the hypothesis

3)    Analyzing the data

4)    Reporting the data

Most of us have been following these steps in the scientific method our whole life, and now we will be applying them as dietitians in any sort of experiment we may participate in.

Another way to conduct primary research is to interview. If we were to interview a doctor who works with morbidly obese patients, we must ask ourselves three questions:

1)    What questions do we want to be answered? (In this case, what is the cause of this obesity?)

2)    Who could provide this information? (In this case, are we interviewing a doctor that is knowledgeable about the field of nutrition?)

3)    Is this person willing to be interviewed? (In this case, maybe the Dr. has a busy schedule and can refer us to someone else?)

Overall, it is important to understand the different ways to research and what types of research should be used based on the information you are seeking to collect data about. When you can do that, you will effectively research your subject and gather the data that is necessary to meet the common goal in your occupation, whatever that may be.

Have a great rest of your night all. Chat soon!

Sincerely,

#sharingwithshar