My Recent Research

For my Communication Studies Research class I have decided to do my research paper on what motivates professors to go to work. Since I have only done the literature review I cannot testify to how hard it is doing a full research paper, but I can say the literature review was no piece of cake. A literature review aims at reviewing “the critical points of current knowledge and or methodological approaches on a particular topic.” I was surprised to find a lot of studies suggesting that appreciation is a main motivator for a professor. Although, it does makes sense because most of my professors tell me they do not have a good salary. After finding a number of articles on appreciation being a main motivator I began wondering what other questions can I argue through previous studies. Research can be exciting if you are doing it on something you are interested in. I think doing research on targeted audiences would be an interesting topic. Even doing a study on commercials and who they target would be fascinating (to me at least). I am nervous about the method part of this paper…but hopefully I get the hang of it once my class goes over that section. I know there are all kinds of methods to gain data, like surveying (which I’ve been known to do in my spare time) and interviews. With knowledge about how research is conducted it gives you an understanding about how credible the data is. (Very useful I think!)