Category: TED Talks

OWL Primary Research

Primary research includes interviews, surveys, observations, and analysis. Interviews are a question and answer type of thing. They provide lots of information from people. This method is useful when you need to get an opinion from a small group of people. Surveys are more of just a questioning form, but its a great method if you need to get information from a large group. Observations are more note-taking about whats going on in the world. This method provided information about certain topics like: people, events and locations. The last method is analysis, this takes a special skill for collecting data and organization. One trick is finding patterns and trends.  For my research assignment I plan on using two of these methods: Observations, and Analysis. when I’m doing a project I like to plan things out and research thing. So I feel like the observations method will be easy because I’m grat at taking notes, and putting them into broder ideas. Then I will use the analysis method because you cannot do a research project without collecting data or having it in an orginazed fashion.


What do you think a primary research is?

 When I think of a primary research, I think of books, newspaper articles, magazines and journals. A primary research is actually defined as “any type of research that you go out and collect yourself. Examples include surveys, interviews, observations, and ethnographic research.” There are other information sources such as secondary and tertiary sources. A secondary source is a source that describes or analyzes primary sources. Secondary sources include reference materials such as dictionaries, textbooks and articles. Tertiary sources “organize and locate secondary and primary sources.” In a tertiary source, “organizing” it means you are summarizing and citing the work you are using. 

 

My TED talk is about energy drinks and our health. Not many people know the affects of energy drinks so my main focus is to educate them on energy drinks and their health. I don’t usually drink energy drinks but I know many people that do. When making a TED talk I need to think about the four types of primary research that can be used. The four types are interviews, surveys, observations and analysis. The easiest types of primary research that I can use are surveys and observations. By taking a survey, I will be able to see how many students drink energy drinks. I can also come up with other questions to put on the survey so I can have more information about this TED talk. Another type of research that can be used is observation. I will observe some of my friends and how they react after drink an energy drink. I will also observe another set of friends who got plenty of sleep the night before and will not be drinking an energy drink. With this, I will be able to compare the two groups and analyze the data. As a result, I hope to change the minds of my friends about drinking energy drinks. 


Primary Research

MT

There are different types of sources that can be used when conducting research: primary sources, secondary sources, and tertiary sources. Primary sources are original sources. Primary sources include surveys, interviews, field work, poems, diaries, autobiographies, etc. They can also be research results gathered from doing an experiment and published as journal articles. While primary sources are original sources, secondary sources are sources that describe, analyze, or interpret primary sources. Secondary sources include dictionaries, textbooks, biographies, and books and articles that talk about researches work. The last type of source is a tertiary source which provides overall information of topics. Some examples of tertiary sources are abstracts, bibliographies, directories, manuals, guidebooks, etc.

All three sources can be used when creating a research paper, but for my first in this research paper I’m going to start by first finding primary sources. The type of primary sources I would like to use in my research is field work/job shadow, interviews, and journal articles. My research topic is whether music therapy is able to treat various types of health conditions such as cancer, Alzheimer’s, and autism. If I am able to job shadow a music therapist, I can see first-hand what a music therapy session looks like and what type of things are done. For the interviews, I can interview the music therapist that works with the clients. Because the music therapist works with the clients, they are able to see the changes and progress that the clients have made since first working with them. The journal articles will provide me with scientific information like what music does for the brain and inform me about the types of research that was done on health and music therapy.


Find Your Why

Here is a small personal activity I’d like you to try on your own after having watched Simon Sinek’s TED Talk. You do not need to share your results.

1. Listen to an excerpt (minutes 16-26) from this podcast with Simon Sinek and radio host Koren Motekaitis.

2. After you have listened to the excerpt, I’d like you to replicate the activity by looking back on your life’s work thus far. What is your “resume“?

  • Identify favorite activities, service projects, creative projects, courses, or similar that you have engaged in during your adult years.
  • Get specific: identify a particular moment, person, or product that you recall with a deep feeling.
  • Tell the story of that feeling.

3. Identify an early childhood memory that stirs up strong emotions or visuals in your mind. Again, be specific and locate the memory in space and time. Tell the story of that feeling.

4. Perhaps you need to generate more examples of your core values. If that’s the case, pull together stories that you like to share with important people in your life, or perhaps with people you have just met and are connecting to. The key (in all of these steps) is to focus on the STORY aspects of these experiences.

5. Try to find a pattern in your stories. What are the common threads?

Have you found your WHY? Remember that the key is to focus on your emotional, visceral, and intangible experiences. You may need to do more than what is listed here, but this is a start.