You may have different motivations for wanting to conduct research into Interpreting. You may be a practising interpreter who is looking for answers to improve your practice and is considering enrolling in a research degree. You may be a research student already or an Interpreting educator who is about to embark on a research project. You may be an educator who teaches research methods or supervises research students. If you fall in any of the above categories, we can identify with you. We are both interpreters, we have both conducted our doctoral research into Interpreting in search of answers to our practical questions and we are also Interpreting educators, researchers and supervisors of research students. As such, we understand that ‘research’ may seem daunting and that without proper guidance, new researchers can find themselves lost in a maze of different terminologies, methodologies, ideologies and approaches that will discourage them and may lead them to quit. We hope to demystify the research process by providing you with an accessible step-by-step guide to conducting research in Interpreting. 1.2 What is research? If you have completed the first exercise at the beginning of this chapter, you would have reflected on this question and written down an answer. See if your answer matches what you are about to read in this section. Research is searching for new knowledge in a systematic, organized way. Dörnyei describes it as ‘disciplined inquiry’ (2007, p. 15; Sarangi 2005). It is finding answers to questions by collecting evidence from different sources that will support a logical conclusion. So, first of all, you need to know what it is that you want to find out, what the aims of your project are and what the problem your project will address is. This is where you will problematize a topic of interest to you. Problematizing means identifying an issue that can be addressed by research. In order to do this, you will need to clearly state the aims of your project and then formulate those aims into answerable research questions. You also need to know why you are conducting this research. There needs to be a valid justification for your research beyond simply stating that it is a topic that interests you. You need to justify your research by showing its merit and significance. In order to do this, you must read what has been written on the topic that you want to research and demonstrate that there is a gap in the knowledge that you intend to fill in some measure. The results of your research need to be of use to other researchers and/or to the community, depending on whether it is basic or applied research. The next step is to decide how you will answer your research question in order to address your aims by choosing an appropriate methodology. Your methodology can strictly follow a specific paradigm, such as quantitative or qualitative, or it can be less rigid and use mixed methods. The methodology will include the type of data that will be collected and the methods for collecting and analysing such data. Once the data have been analysed, you will draw conclusions that will lead to answers to your initial question/s. In sum, with any research plan or proposal, you need to answer three pivotal questions: What? Why? and How? However, this is not where your search for knowledge should end, as the answer to one question will lead to more questions for further research, and so the process will begin again. This process is often referred to as the ‘research cycle’ (Hall 2002).
