The social nature of academic research

The social process starts with your Literature review, where you establish the relationship of your study to work that has already been done in the area. You need to clarify whether your research is intended to:

• replicate previous research, but in a different context or with a different population
• extend that research, exploring a significant new variable
• challenge previous work, with a view to challenging its knowledge claims (you need to be prepared to criticize work you consider to be problematic in some way)

It is important not only that you differentiate between these three distinct functions, but that you distinguish between your study’s

• intellectual purpose, defined in terms of your problem
• social purpose within the academic community, which includes building on and crediting other work