Research and Methodology

Dr. William’s lecture on Research and Methodology was one in which the concepts discussed were already familiar to me. I already knew that in order to do research there has to be a purpose for doing it. The main purposes are to solve a problem and to gain knowledge. Specifically during this lecture I was looking to gain more insight into how we were suppose to create a research question based on the prompt we were given. The prompt stated "In what ways is knowledge generated by various fields of study used to develop solutions to human social problems and challenges? Each group will explore a different social problem or challenge." When given the prompt I was confused as to what was being asked. I felt like the prompt had to deal more with our specific fields than anything else. I knew that we had to have sources and research and all that, but I still didn’t know what our question should be centered on. Even when doing the project I did not feel that it fit the criteria for the prompt, but according to our advisor we were on the right track. What we chose to research was the effectiveness of HBCU’s on the success of African Americans. We made sure we covered all the parts as far as getting visual data, primary data, and secondary data. We made sure that we had a problem that could actually be used as a full on research study and made sure that it was a study that can be replicated.