Getting Started with Research Types
There are two main ways scientists gather information: primary research (collecting brand new data yourself) and secondary research (using data from other people's studies). Before diving into any investigation, you'll need a clear aim - basically the question you want to answer or the idea you want to test.
Once you've got your aim sorted, you can form a hypothesis - your educated guess about what will happen based on scientific knowledge. Think of it as your prediction before the experiment begins.
Surveys let you observe things that are already happening naturally, whilst experiments involve deliberately changing something to see what happens. There's also meta-analysis, where researchers combine data from loads of different studies to spot bigger patterns.
Quick Tip: Valid results are ones that actually help you achieve your aim - always check your method will give you the right type of data!
When it comes to data types, you'll work with quantitative data (numbers you can measure) or qualitative data (descriptions of what you observe). Qualitative data can be a bit tricky because it's easy to only notice what seems important to you, but filming experiments can help reduce this bias.
