Working on a beautiful Sunday and thinking about how to do good research.
Writing my sociology paper synthesizing the research on Latinos in higher education is pushing my thinking about the quality of research. I’ve learned that it can be quite easy to do a so-so study and package it with reputable research and get it published in any of the multitude of journals out there. As I write my class paper, I keep wanting to systematically review the methods of the studies I’m reading, since it doesn’t feel right to just toss in citations from studies of such varying quality. Yet the purpose of the paper is not to assess the quality of the research, but rather to find out what people are saying about the topic.
I realize how easy it is to make whichever argument you want, and why it’s hard to definitively “prove” anything. It takes high levels of knowledge about statistics and research methods to have even an inckling of whether a study is well-done and trust-worthy, and few lay people have this. I’m barely getting it myself and I’m finishing my first year of a doctoral program!
Today I spent the entire day working on my paper. Yesterday as well. Thank god for coffee and coffee shops, as they fueled the writing in the flagging hot Sunday afternoon hours. It was over 85 degrees in San Francisco today! Juanjo and I just took a walk up around Dolores Park, and it was still warm out. Couples were everywhere, the park still full of people enjoying the warm weather. Tomorrow is supposed to be even hotter.
Back to the paper for now. Looking forward to wearing a skirt and sandles tomorrow, and enjoying the warm summer weather, despite knowing I’m going to be exhausted!