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Grant Unit Day 2: Research

Dr. Will Kurlinkus
University of Oklahoma
+ What types of research does
your grant need?
How do you prove you’re well-researched?
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Pre-Existing Research
n 3 basic grant research goals:
1. Prove this is a problem.
2. Prove you’re not doing what n In this project you will refer to
someone else has already (quote, paraphrase, and cite)
done.
at least 3 sources in your
3. Prove you know what you’re
talking about and that your statement of need.
solution is feasible.

n Who else has done research on

a similar problem?
n In this project you will also
n What are the pros and cons of respond to and/or incorporate
this other research? at least 3 other
solutions/methods from other
n What are you contributing scholars. Who else is doing this?
uniquely?
How have you learned from their
n What research on best practices successes and failures
are you drawing from in you
solution?
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Point, Evidence, Analysis

n Point: Elderly people are dying because they don’t head

tornado warnings.

n Evidence: According to a study by Crenshaw and Wattes,

from 2010-2020 thirty-five Oklahomans over the age of 60
were severely injured or died in tornados because they
“didn’t paying attention to watches and warnings out of a
stated apprehension of miss-warnings because tornados
hadn’t come near their homes in the past.”

n Analysis: Though much tornado education typically has

occurred at the elementary and middle school levels (see
Hathaway and Perlopsi), Crenshaw and Watte’s study
illustrates a need for a more directed system of tornado
education for elderly citizens.
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1. Proof of Problem
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2. What are Other Researchers
Doing + How Do You Relate?
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3. How are You Applying Best
Practices in Your Solution?
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Less Good Example
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Searching for Sources
1. Make a list of your research questions.
n What are the details of this problem? Who else has addressed this
problem? What is your solution? How does it relate to other people’s
solutions? What are best practices for solutions like yours? Why solve it
this way and not that?

2. Perform a basic Google search to find statistics and numbers that

prove your problem.
n Use a basic Google news search to find the most recent info on the topic.

3. Find other researchers who are already addressing your problem:

n Use Google Scholar: Forward and Backward chain.

4. Other Search tips

n Search through people already awarded money by your granting
institution or other granting institutions that specialize in your problem.
n Search for organizations that specialize in your problem.
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Quoting, Paraphrasing, and
Summarizing
n Quoting: Using the authors actual words in quotation marks.
n Use three ellipses … to indicate removed language in a sentence.
n Use four ellipses .... To indcate that you took away more than one sentence.
n Use brackets [to indicate you’ve added your own words to the quote]
n All numbers and statistics should be cited. You don’t need quotation marks unless you
borrow words but you always need to show your reader where the numbers came from.

n Summarizing: Putting the main ideas in your own words, reducing long passages to
shorter ones. Still involves referring to the drawn upon text.
n Both quotes and summaries need to introduce who did the research (name, occupation,
affiliation, year).

n Intro and Outro: Quotes should never stand alone, always use your own words to
introduce them. But also use your own words to describe what they mean after you give
the quote. That is, give an outro.

n To punctuate quotes correctly you usually introduce them with a comma (if what comes
before the quote is an incomplete sentence) or colon (if both the quote and introducing
sentence are complete). Remember that at the end of your quote your punctuation
should usually come before the closing quote. Always use double quotes.
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Sample Quote Styles
n Quote (notice the intro punctuation): If, as Buchanan (2001) and DiSalvo et al. (2012) observe, design is
fundamentally rhetorical because “all products—digital and analog, tangible and intangible—are vivid arguments
about how we should lead our lives,” then nostalgic designs are arguments about how users should relate to the past
(Buchanan, p. 194).

n Quote using colon: Responding to such cultural observations, nostalgia research has become scientific again,
focusing on the emotion’s homeostatic function. That is, as Wildschut, Sedikides, Arndt, and Routledge (2006) have
tested, when life changing events happen (from getting a divorce to being fired) people look back to known times
and positive identities therein: “Those in the nostalgia condition reported less attachment anxiety and avoidance,
higher self-esteem, and more positive affect. . . . when people encounter self-threats, rather than countering directly
the specific threat, they have the option of eliminating its effects by affirming essential, positive aspects of the self”
(p. 989).

n Summary: Like so much social media, On This Day trades in what Sedikides calls “anticipatory nostalgia,” thinking of
events in the now as an opportunity to build nostalgic-to-be memories.

n Quote: From social media memories to confederate Civil War memorials, I call this conflict over nostalgia a nostalgic
contact zone, after post-colonial theorist Mary Louise Pratt’s (1991) “contact zones,” “social spaces where cultures
meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as
colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out in many parts of the world today” (p. 34). Practiced
nostalgic designers learn from the inevitable clashes, layers, and unequal powers present in such spaces.

n Summary: In this light, though features like On This Day may have a slightly insidious weight, they also further what
Nora (2002) calls the “democratization of history.” For so long historical work lay in the hands of an elite group of
historians who decided what was worth recording and what was not to the exclusion of minority cultures and
memories. In the 20th century, with the rise of memory studies, and now in the 21st, with the rise of social media,
everyone is a historian.

n Stand Alone Quote: Cultural theorist Harmut Rosa (2015) argues that such a desire for interactive craft experiences is
compounded by modern “social acceleration.” “As late as 1964, the American magazine Life, warned of an imminent
massive overflow of free time in modern society,” Rosa describes, but “the ‘tempo of life’ has increased, and with it
stress, hecticness. . . . We don’t have any time although we’ve gained far more than we needed before” (p. xxxv).