Using the Literature to Formulate your Research Question
Students interested in becoming social scientists often assume that total mastery of the relevant literature is necessary before proceeding with the initial stage of formulating a research question. Knowledge of the literature on a particular topic is certainly helpful, but it is important to keep in mind that it does not automatically lead to the formulation of a question worth answering. Most research questions are formulated and reformulated several times, as the researcher takes into consideration an increasingly wider range of issues (see Bem, 1987).
Knowledge of theory, research design, and statistics is implicated in the very act of framing a question. Researchers thus inevitably draw on literature that is not specifically "on the topic." A willingness to acquire a broad and rich background in theory and to learn the strengths and weaknesses of various research designs, data collection methods, and approaches to data analysis are prerequisites for carrying out sophisticated scholarly work.
How should one make use of the literature? And how does one go from knowledge of a literature to using the literature to develop an interesting thesis? "Science and humanistic scholarship are," writes Becker (1986) in his book on social science writing, "cumulative enterprises. None of us invent it all from scratch when we sit down to write. We depend on our predecessors. We couldn't do our work if we didn't use their methods, results, and ideas. Few people would be interested in our results if we didn't indicate some relationship between them and what others have said and done before us" (p. 140).
The title of Becker's (1986) chapter on using existing literature is "Terrorized by the Literature," in which Becker makes the point that it is one thing to know the literature and another to use it effectively to create an argument. Scholars who want to be heard "must say something new while connecting what they say to what's already been said, and this must be done in such a way that people understand the point" (Becker, p. 141). Becker suggests that creating a compelling scientific argument involves reframing what is already known and then using this frame to create something new. What a woodworker does in using existing materials is likened by Becker to what a social scientist does in using the literature to create an argument:
Imagine you are doing a woodworking project, perhaps making a table. Fortunately, you needn't make all the parts yourself. Some are standard sizes and shapes - lengths of two by four, for instance - available at any lumberyard. Some have already been designed and made by other people - drawer pulls and turned legs. All you have to do is fit them into the places you left for them, knowing they were available. You want to make an argument instead of a table. You have created some of the argument yourself, perhaps on the basis of new data or information you have collected. But you needn't invent the whole thing. Other people have worked on your problems or problems related to it, and have made some of the pieces you need. You just have to fit them in where they belong. Like the woodworker, you leave space, when you make your portion of the argument, for the other parts you know you can get. You do that, that is, if you know that they are there to use. And that's one good reason to know the literature: so that you will know the pieces are available and not waste time doing what has already been done (pp. 141 - 142).
The analogy is incomplete, however, in that woodworkers are more often than not interested in replicating someone else's design, whereas scientists are generally concerned with adapting an old blueprint, or creating a new one and seeing how well it works in practice. Unfortunately for prospective social scientists looking for a way to learn their craft, there are no blueprints for creativity.
Perhaps all research areas can be likened to a treasure hunt. Gutman (1989) uses the treasure hunt metaphor to describe how historians uncover new data:
That is how a great historian finds the documents that illuminate an important question in a new way. Once all the objects are collected, however, the game changes. He or she then needs to make some sense of the collection, by figuring out which ones go with which, and what each combination means. Victory in this game goes to the person with the imagination and the memory best suited to making connections (p. 128).
The PAIR Project can be seen as containing a wide range of "items" that have not been connected with one another, or to put it differently, "given meaning by being placed in context." We might know, for instance, that a particular couples divides household work along traditional gender lines, with the husbands having "his" set of tasks and the wife "hers." We might also know that within this particular sample couples vary considerably in regard to how they divide tasks. These facts become interesting when we begin to explore how they relate to other facts about the particular couple or why couples might differ in regard to division of labor. The task of the social scientist is to discover previously unknown connections and to make sense of them. Knowledge of the previous empirical literature helps in this task because it gives us a lead as to where to look for connections. Such literature suggests which items ought to be connected to one another, under what conditions, and in what way. Thus, for example, several studies have compared happily and unhappily married couples and shown the extent to which spouses express "negative affect" differentiates the two groups (Bradbury & Fincham, 1987). Theoretical writings propose that particular items ought to be related to others in specific ways and offer reasons for the proposed interconnections. Social learning theories, for instance, focus attention on the affective consequences of behavior (Jacobson & Margolin, 1979), whereas compatibility theories bring attention to the possible role that various similarities and differences in background, values, attitudes, and personality might have as causes of both negative affect and dissatisfaction (Levinger & Rands, 1985).
