This is one phase of what is usually meant by academic research. Questioning The second phase of the research project involves the posing of questions and proposing of hypotheses based on the reading not simply of secondary material but on the study of the primary sources which you will by this time see as forming the basis of your project. What you study, and the questions you ask of those materials, will be entirely the result of your own observations, hunches, questions, ideas, hypotheses and it is this combination of questioning, comparing, reading, thinking, discussing which constitutes research. Arguing The third phase of the research process occurs as you begin to construct an argument through which the questions and hypotheses raised can be explained, drawing on the textual or other sources as evidence. This argument is eventually shaped into a written document, the thesis, which makes available to the academic community your position and reasons for it.
Research is thus almost entirely self-generated.
Because it involves the forging of an original idea through the asking, and attempting to answer, questions which are of the supreme importance to you, it cannot be merely a follow-up of suggestions put by a supervisor or by one s colleagues. It involves your constant, and active intellectual engagement with, and questioning of, material. But the hammering out of a thesis or argument is your work alone, and, by its nature, the process cannot be otherwise. The examination of the thesis is a test by others, with an already established reputation for research in your field, of the plausibility of your argument.