Describe your experience or experiences with research as a subject. How do you feel about research? Do you see any benefits and/or downsides in using research in social work practice? What are your fears and concerns, if any? How do you think this will impact upon your motivations and work for this course?
Hmm..research.
I don’t really mind it, if it’s something I am interested in learning. I do find it tedious, but also very necessary to inform myself and others about certain findings. I’ve always told myself that I enjoy writing research papers, but that was before I had to write a literature review for my first graduate course. It was overwhelming. There was a lack of guidance from my professor and so I kind of gave up while writing it because I had no idea what I was doing right and what I was doing wrong. So now, no, research papers, literature reviews, etc., are not my favorite realm any longer.
Research is obviously very important to any field of subject. In order to be master’s of our trade, we need to keep reading challenging information and keep on learning new things. As discussed in class, we’re changing all the time and we need to keep up with it. Research is a great way to keep learning new things, new trends and finding out what works and what doesn’t. I actually am looking forward to finding out new statistics every time I do a research paper because there’s almost always at least one bit of information that shocks me. I just hate the dang process.
If I’m doing to be honest, the only real fear or concern I have for our literature review and research proposal paper is really just finding the information that I need to have an all-inclusive lit review & proposal paper. I know it’s going to be time consuming and I, personally, know I will be less likely to look at articles that disprove my proposal because it will be more work for me. But I’m in a master’s program, so what else should I expect?
Justyna Wolek 