ABSTRACT
This unit discusses the larger process of building knowledge through research. It describes the various ways that knowledge can be acquired, including not only research but reliance on expertise, tenacity and intuition, and explains the superiority of research for answering important questions. The material differentiates key goals of research, including application, exploration, description and explanation. The discussion of the value of research includes a careful acknowledgement of the critical role played by triangulation and replication, and the biases that might limit the publication of such material and distort meta analyses. An additional section provides a thorough description of the parts of a research article, offering criteria for identifying scholarly research and tips for effectively reading it, along with a definition of types of articles other than traditional research publications.
