Driscoll

Kaylee Lang, Megan Pugh, and Kyle Buehrer
Summary
This article is primarily about researching and how to research correctly. In first year writing courses there are three topics in research that Dricoll focuses on; observations, interviews and surveys. The author breaks down each piece and describes the incorrect and correct way to write each part. Dricoll also writes about two college students researching different topics. She also breaks down the interview process and how to successfully interview someone of your research topic. 

#2. Driscoll explains briefly ethical guidelines to follow when conducting any type of research. The three points she made were “voluntary participation, confidentiality and anonymity, and researcher bias”. These three items are strong basic starting points but you could also take into consideration the interviewee’s feelings. You may embarrass them in your project or portray them in a way they would not like to be seen. Or perhaps you could reveal personal information about them such as what they look like, where they live, or who they associate themselves with. In our own research, we could particularly use the confidentiality and anonymity suggestion. When we interview, we would not want to give anyone’s name away if they did not give their consent; which goes along with the first main point, voluntary participation, because the participant should know what they are participating in.

#3. There are many issues that could be researched on campus using primary research.  One of these is the sleeping habits of students.  In college, many students do not have good sleeping habits.  Because of this it would be interesting to have students fill out a survey asking them how often they sleep and for how long they do.  Another question that could be asked to students in an interview is if they think that the armed robbery near campus was handled correctly.  This issue could be studied by interviewing several students to get their opinions on the situation.

Opinions
After we all read this article we all agreed that this article will be very helpful to our upcoming discourse community project. It's basically a step by step instruction manual to successfully create the perfect research project. We also liked that she gave examples of what not to do as well so that we do not make that same mistake. It's important to portray this community without being offensive and we believe this article will help us stray from making that mistake.