New Year’s Research
Posted by Atnre on January 3, 2008
In my last Sunday School class of 2007, I challenged the students to establish GIGs for 2008– God-Inspired Goals. These GIGs take the “wish list” out of New Year’s resolutions and replace it with divine direction. God is concerned with every aspect of our lives and will gladly focus us for the new year. But what do we do after we’ve established our 2008 GIGs?
We do our RESEARCH. When God leads us, my pastor recently said, “Don’t question if you can do it–question how you can do it.” So as a “professional student” (as some affectionately call me) and former researcher at consulting companies like the Gallup Organization and Hay Group, I decided to put together a post on conducting “New Year’s Research” for your ministry and personal life.
RESEARCH QUESTION: What are you looking for?
Whenever I engaged in academic research, my advisers could slice through my creative confusion with one phrase–”What’s your research question?” After I came up with an answer to this question I was then able to focus my attention on the information that was most relevant to my needs. You could do a Dora the Explorer type of research, but you are likely to waste a lot of time and get completely thrown off track. If you start with a specific question (eg. how to have more efficient choir rehearsals) or focus you will be more effective in your research.
LITERATURE REVIEW: What has already been found?
Most academic research contains a literature review. So that you don’t reinvent the wheel or spin your wheels, it will be very helpful for you to review the material related to your GIGs. You may not be able to purchase and read all of the books/articles immediately but a good start is to compile a reading list. Go to a local Christian bookstore or a regular bookstore (or their website) and browse through the material relevant to your ministry and your GIGs for the new year. Write down the name of the book, the author, and the price for each of the books and add them to your library as time goes on. You can do the same for DVDs and CDs as well.
METHODOLOGY: How are you going to find what you’re looking for?
Treasure Hunt
Good information is a treasure. That’s one of the reasons why I advocate engaging your ministry team or a friend in the research process. It is a great team-building endeavor. Encourage your team to look for information that can advance your ministry. Do it in a way where there is excitement in the research and information exchange process. Create a suggestion box, ask for their input, acknowledge people who find and share information, break them off into teams in search for information on particular topics, etc.
Subscribe to Blogs, Journals, Listserves:
We spend so much time looking for information. How about letting information look for us? During your research, find blogs (eg. Next Level Worship blog), journals (eg. International Journal of Music Education), and listservs (eg. Ruach listserv) that are relevant to your GIGs and subscribe to them. This will ensure that updates are sent to your inbox and that you stay abreast of new information and insights.
CONCLUSION: What have you found?
Retain or RE-Search
You cannot afford not to hoard. Unless you were just overjoyed about the research process, and wouldn’t mind doing it all over again–you’ll need to retain the information you found. You can use “Add to Favorites” to bookmark important websites, save PDF docs of relevant articles into a folder (”2008 Research” perhaps), print documents and use the old file cabinet system, etc. Just be sure to compile all of your findings in a central place.
Share Findings
Share the information with others. Perhaps prepare a short write up of your major findings. Much of the information you find relevant to your GIGs and your ministry will be relevant in other ministries. It is also possible that the questions you asked will promote passion for inquiry in others.
End is the Beginning
Academic research often includes “Opportunities for additional research” in the concluding section. As ironic as it sounds, the conclusion to your research is just the beginning. If done well, you should now have more questions, more desire for answers, and thus more motivation for research. You couldn’t possibly have learned everything you need to know within a few weeks of research. It is at this point of your research activity that you fully realize this.
Do you have any interesting research strategies you can share? I completely forgot to mention the almighty GOOGLE so feel free to do so!
Jesus, Accountant « P.R.U.N.I.N.G. said
[...] Like the prodigal son, if you know what you have and do not know what it is worth, you will likely waste it. You can waste it proactively—deplete it completely or misuse it—or you can waste it passively by not using it at all. I’ll laugh at myself for a moment to illustrate this point. After a lecture given by a business person that I admire (Dr. Randal Pinkett), I had the opportunity to speak with him briefly. I asked him for some advice about one of my business ventures and he replied, “I really don’t know much about that line of business.” Of course he didn’t! Fortunately, I had a few more minutes with him and was able to seek information from him in an area where he would be most valuable to me. But this blunder was a result of disorganization and lack of research. [...]
Mark Doebler said
Hi again! Just thought I’d let you know I linked to this post over on my blog. I thought it fit nicely with an earlier post I had made. Hope you get a little extra traffic. It’s good information for my readers.