How To Improve Your Research Skills In 13 Simple Steps

Do not index

You’ve finally made it to college. Everything is exciting and new, and you’re eager to learn. But then you get your first assignment: a research paper. Suddenly, you’re overwhelmed. There’s so much to learn; you must start with something you know nothing about: research. Improving your research skills can make college assignments, like papers, less daunting. This guide will offer valuable insights on improving your research skills to help you write efficient papers, summaries, and articles with AI.

Unriddle's AI research assistant can help you improve your research skills and make writing assignments less daunting. This innovative tool can help you find relevant sources, organize your notes, and even create a detailed outline for your paper.

What Are Research Skills?

How To Improve Your Research Skills

Research skills are a set of abilities that allow individuals to find and gather reliable information and then evaluate the information to find answers to questions. Good research skills are essential in academic settings, as finding and critically evaluating relevant information can help you better understand a subject. These skills are also crucial in professional and personal settings.

When you graduate and are working professionally, you’ll often need to analyze data sets to identify issues and determine how to solve them. In personal contexts, you’ll always need to assess relevant information to make an informed decision. Whether deciding on a significant purchase, choosing a healthcare provider, or planning to invest, you must evaluate options to ensure better decision outcomes.

Types of Research Skills

How To Improve Your Research Skills

Quantitative Skills: Analyzing Numbers and Stats Like a Pro

Quantitative skills refer to the ability to work with numerical data and perform mathematical and statistical analyses to extract meaningful insights and draw conclusions. When you have quantitative skills, you can apply mathematical concepts and operations in research design and data analysis. You’ll also be proficient in using statistical methods to analyze data and interpreting numerical data to draw meaningful conclusions.

Analytical Skills: Breaking Down Data for Better Insights

Analytical skills refer to the ability to gather data, evaluate it, and draw sound conclusions. When you have analytical skills, you can systematically analyze information to reach a reasonable conclusion. Analytical skills are essential in problem-solving; they help you break down complex problems into more manageable components, think critically about the information, analyze root causes, and develop effective solutions.

Qualitative Skills: Mastering Non-Numerical Data

Qualitative skills are collecting, analyzing, and interpreting non-numerical data. With qualitative skills, you’ll be proficient in observation, interviewing, and collecting qualitative research data. You’ll also be able to analyze non-numerical data, such as documents and images, to identify themes, patterns, and meanings.

Unriddle allows you to read faster and write better. Quickly find info in documents, simplify complex topics, take notes, and write with the power of AI. Unriddle is trusted by thousands of researchers and students, from the classroom to the boardroom. Unriddle generates an AI assistant on top of any document so you can quickly find, summarize, and understand info.

Read Faster & Write Better With Unriddle

Unriddle AI understands the meaning behind your writing and automatically links you to relevant things you’ve read and written about. Highlight text and Unriddle AI will show you the most relevant sources from your library using AI.

Never lose a citation again. Generate text with AI autocomplete to improve and expand your writing, with suggestions based on the context of your work. Step into a collaborative workspace where everyone can contribute and chat with the same documents in real-time and much more!

Read faster & write better — try Unriddle for free today.

AI for Academic Research

Collaborative Research

Academic Research

Research Team

Research Process

Industry Research

Research Skills

Research Collaboration

Why Are Research Skills Important

How To Improve Your Research Skills

Get the Inside Scoop on Your Competitors

Research skills help you uncover valuable information about your competitors. Understanding their strengths and weaknesses can help you improve your business and gain market share.

Develop New Processes and Products

Research skills can help you improve processes and develop new products within your organization. You don’t have to work in a research role to make valuable contributions to your team. By researching better ways to perform your job, you can help your organization improve efficiency and boost bottom-line results.

Fostering Self-Improvement

People who enjoy and excel at research are never satisfied with the status quo. They’re always looking for ways to enhance their performance and improve organizational outcomes. These independent thinkers will help your business adapt to change and recover from setbacks.

Manage Customer Relationships

Research skills can help you better understand your customers and improve your relationships. The more you know about your customers, the better you can meet their needs. Researching their interests, preferences, and buying patterns will uncover valuable information that will help you make more informed decisions.

Save Money

Companies often need to make decisions that will help them reduce costs. Research skills can help you gather information on where to cut costs and how to do it with the least disruption. Someone with solid research skills can help your organization save money while keeping operations running smoothly.

Solve Problems

Research skills are critical when it comes to solving complex problems in the workplace. They can help you determine the root cause of an issue and find effective solutions. Research skills will help you gather the information you need to make informed decisions and develop a plan of action to solve the problem.

Determine Reliable Information

Not all information is trustworthy. Strong research skills can help you determine whether information is credible. When you encounter a problem at work, you probably don’t want to share information from the internet with your team until you can verify that it’s accurate. Research skills can help you get to the bottom of this and share reliable information with your colleagues.

How To Improve Your Research Skills In 13 Simple Steps

How To Improve Your Research Skills

1. Use Unriddle AI

Unriddle AI is a powerful tool that helps researchers improve their research skills. It helps you get through documents faster by generating an AI assistant on top of any document. You can quickly find, summarize, and understand info. Unriddle also allows you to take notes and write better with the power of AI. Unriddle is trusted by thousands of researchers and students, from the classroom to the boardroom.

Unriddle AI understands the meaning behind your writing and automatically links you to relevant things you’ve read and written about. Highlight text and Unriddle will show you the most relevant sources from your library using AI. Generate text with AI autocomplete to improve and expand your writing, with all suggestions based on the context of what you're working on. Step into a collaborative workspace where everyone can contribute and chat with the same documents in real-time and much more!

2. Begin with a General Overview

Researching can feel overwhelming, so it helps to start broad. It’s okay to begin with an internet search to orient yourself to a topic. While not consistently accurate, online resources like Google and Wikipedia are a great way to find basic information about a subject. They usually give an overview with a brief history and any key points.

3. Create a Research Strategy Document

Creating a research strategy document before diving into research provides clarity and saves time. The strategy is a roadmap highlighting how you want to tackle the research problem. Some of the constituents of the strategy document include:

Research goals

Research deadline

Rewriting the research problem in your own words. Then, translate the research problem into a research question. “HR managers are struggling to attract and keep top talent with top talent spending an average of 6 months in each role” is an example of a research problem, while “What strategies and techniques can HR managers adopt to attract better and retain top talents?” is an example of a research question.

Outline the significant outcomes the research must fulfill. For example, “The research must provide a nexus between company actions and top talent loyalty, in addition to providing actionable tips for HR managers.”

Identify the type of research you’re doing. There are three categories of research: basic vs applied, exploratory vs explanatory, and inductive vs deductive research. Findings from preliminary research. Quick preliminary research helps identify resources readily available in the public domain. This step can help identify a new angle to pursue your research from or drop if you reckon other researchers and authors have adequately dealt with the question, preventing you from wasting time on research that adds no additional value to the body of existing knowledge.

4. Learn to Identify Quality Research Sources

Not every source is reliable, so recognizing good sources is crucial. To determine a reliable source, use analytical skills and critical thinking to ask yourself: Does this source agree with other sources I have found? Is the author an expert in the field? Does the author’s point of view have a conflict of interest regarding this topic?

5. Understand the Research Process

The research process consists of six major stages: topic selection, literature evaluation, refining the research topic, relevant information gathering (could also include sampling and recruitment, depending on the topic or research focus), data analysis, and knitting everything together.

6. Verify Information with Multiple Sources

Many websites don’t evaluate their content for factual accuracy. Plenty of unreliable resources are out there, and even many are outright incorrect. The best way to combat this is to ensure that several sources can verify whatever you find in your research is accurate. Rather than going off one webpage, ensure that at least two other places say something similar.

7. Master Citation and Referencing

Any idea, words, data, images, infographic, or information you take from any source requires a reference. Without citations, you’re practically stealing someone else’s ideas and thoughts. Many schools have strict rules against plagiarism, including formal warnings, suspension, and other penalties.

Aside from helping you avoid plagiarism, citations also make your work more authoritative and persuasive. There are multiple referencing styles, including AMS (American Meteorological Society), APA (American Psychological Association), Chicago, Harvard, MHRA (Modern Humanities Research Association), OSCOLA (Oxford Standard for the Citation of Legal Authorities), and others.

8. Be Open to Surprising Answers

Good research is all about finding answers to your research questions—not necessarily as a way to verify what you already think I know. Solely looking for confirmation is a very limiting research strategy since it involves picking and choosing what information to collect. It prevents you from developing the most accurate understanding of the topic. When you conduct research, keep an open mind to learn as deeply as possible.

9. Develop Analytical Skills

Analytical skills are problem-solving skills that help you parse data and information to develop creative, rational solutions. These skills are essential to every step of the research process, especially in objectively analyzing the problem and the result of your experiments. Analytical skills require critical reasoning, understanding different concepts (including complex and abstract ones), explaining or articulating your thoughts, applying what you read to tackle problems, and much more.

10. Take Advantage of Library Resources

If you still have research questions, don’t worry—there are plenty of places to help you out, even if you’re not a student doing academic or course-related research. Many high school and university libraries offer resources for faculty members, students’ research, and the larger community. Be sure to check out library websites for research guides or access to specific databases.

11. Utilize Academic Support Services

Most universities offer programs to help students achieve academic success, including those geared towards conducting research and improving research skills. If you’re unaware of the academic support services on offer, ask. There’s no shame in asking for help. One of the best ways to identify the areas you need to work on is to ask your tutor for feedback and help. Typical academic support services include:

Writing guidance

Peer tutoring

After-school programs

Counseling

Academic monitoring

Experiential learning

12. Enhance Note-Taking Techniques

Note-taking is essential during research projects as it’s a vital tool for information synthesis. Note-taking helps you organize the points in the sources you’re reading. It also helps avoid being overwhelmed by the volume of resources you must review. Here are some tips to make note-taking fruitful:

1. Think Of Your Research Goals

Your research goals will determine what you prioritize during note-taking. There’s no point in extensive note-taking if the content doesn’t help you strengthen your arguments or answer your research question.

2. Use Headings, Subheadings, and Numbered Lists to Organize Key Ideas

This is similar to the information matrix we discussed above. However, this is more like a fleshed-out version. Use indenting and numbering to create idea hierarchies that distinguish significant points from minor ones.

3. Adopt One of the Many Note-Taking Methods

Examples of note-taking methods include the mapping method, the Cornell Method, the sentence method, and the outlining method.

4. Use Colors and Symbols

Create a color code to identify themes and crucial sections. You may underline important keywords or circle data points that buttress specific themes. These colors and symbols help simplify and visualize ideas.

5. Create Linkages Between Ideas

Highlight ideas or variables that have transparent relationships. The relationship can be causal or correlational. State what this relationship means for your research question.

6. Leave Space For Future Comments And Questions

Leave room to add more information, such as comments, questions, and reactions. As you read more, you’ll likely find new information that may challenge or buttress the ideas you found earlier.

13. Avoid Confirmation Bias

Searching for papers and studies that align with your position limits your research strategy. Seek studies and sources that challenge your assertion. This is a far more enriching prospect that adds depth to your research.

14 Best Tools You Need For Effective Research

How To Improve Your Research Skills

1. Unriddle AI: Write and Research Smarter

Unriddle AI helps researchers and students read faster and write better with the power of artificial intelligence. The platform generates an AI assistant on top of any document so you can quickly find, summarize, and understand information.

Unriddle AI understands the meaning behind your writing and automatically links you to relevant things you've read and written about in the past. Highlight text, and Unriddle AI will show you the most relevant sources from your library using AI. Step into a collaborative workspace where everyone can contribute and chat with the same documents in real-time and much more!

2. Bit AI: A Hub for Smart Document Collaboration

Bit AI is an AI program designed to help teams collaborate on documents, wikis, and knowledge bases. It goes beyond just text and images, allowing users to create interactive documents containing videos, cloud files, and audio. It works much like Google Drive, allowing for real-time collaboration on documents. Multiple people can work on documents simultaneously and chat with one another within the interface.

Pros

Built-In AI Writing Assistant

Multiple Use Cases

Collaboration Tools

Wide Range of Integrations

Cons

Limited Customizations

3. Semantic Scholar: Find Relevant Academic Research

Semantic Scholar is one of the top AI research tools, and computer science, biomedical science, and neuroscience students widely use it. It uses natural language processing to analyze academic papers and find relevant literature.

Besides, Semantic Scholar offers detailed overviews of research topics and can identify the most critical parts of a paper, making it a valuable AI tool for research.

Pros

Refine search results for greater efficiency and relevance.

Continuously improves the tool based on user feedback and provides a personalized user experience.

Cons

The summary has accuracy issues and AI-generated citations.

It only gives you access to the full text of some papers.

4. Scite: Understand Citation Context

Scite is one of the most popular AI-powered academic research tools. It improves any academic research in one go. Its natural language processing and machine learning help users do better research on scholarly articles and analyze citations.

Moreover, Scite allows researchers like you to assess the dependability of references in any particular context. It helps in evaluating the quality and impact of the research. It also provides better visualizations and metrics to understand the citation landscape of a particular paper or a topic. If you have missed out on using this tool, try it today.

Pros

Smart Citations

Citation Context

Citation Reports

Large Dataset

Cons

Not All Articles Cited Are Accessible

5. Google Scholar: The Go-To for Academic Research

Google Scholar is a beacon for academic research, offering a straightforward platform akin to its browser counterpart. It’s a treasure trove of recent articles, research papers, and scholarly literature, simplifying the quest for up-to-date information with easy-to-identify tags for quick access.

Pros

Use natural language searching to find academic and literature topics.

Allow your search for gray literature for systematic reviews.

Cons

The content you find will not be reviewed thoroughly, and there are concerns about source credibility.

Missed to show significant literature topics.

6. PDFGear Copilot: Navigate Your PDFs with AI

PDFgear Copilot is an AI-powered assistant that extracts and summarizes information in PDF documents. It utilizes OpenAI’s ChatGPT language model to help users locate important information in documents while conducting research. It lets you chat with a document, ask questions about its contents, and quickly summarize entire PDFs.

Pros

Interact With PDFs

ChatGPT Integration

Streamline PDF Workflows

Support for Multiple Languages

Cons

No Dark Mode

7. Consensus: Research Made Simple

Consensus is a research tool that gathers information from published material and peer-reviewed articles. It is helpful for those who want to understand scientific subjects thoroughly by scanning for trustworthy and accurate research articles. This tool is handy for students and researchers in STEM and business fields.

Pros

Natural language processing is used to analyze data and verify the source.

Generate a summary of research queries and help get information for the early research stage.

Cons

It is favored only for STEM and business fields, not the humanities and fine arts.

Not suitable for rigorous and reproducible research works.

8. Trinka: Write Academic Papers with Fewer Errors

It is one of the most commonly used AI tools for scholars and students. It helps with grammar and language correction for academic and technical writing. It has 3000+ grammar checks and tone and style enhancements, which help scholars write better theses and projects without errors.

Trinka helps you document scientific findings and allows you to use a more technical tone and style without any difficulty. Therefore, for academic research purposes, Trinka is the most promising tool, as it improves the documentation of research papers and white papers.

Pros

Save time in checking grammar while doing academic writing.

Let you check grammar and correct spelling and offer context suggestions based on your writing style.

Cons

The response time of the tool could be faster, which would cause a hindrance to quick feedback needs.

It may be challenging to understand the technical jargon.

9. Connected Papers: Visualize Research Paper Connections

Connected Papers is an innovative research tool that helps scientists and scholars efficiently explore relevant literature by providing a visual, similarity-based mapping of related academic papers. It uses circles to represent different papers.

The size of the circle corresponds to the frequency of citations by other researchers. Papers that closely resemble the original paper you provided are positioned closer together and connected by lines. The thickness of the line indicates the strength of the relationship between the documents. By following the connections between papers, you can use Connected Papers to explore new research areas within your field.

Pros

Similarity Graphs

Prior and Derivative Works

Multi-Origin Graphs

Save Papers and Graphs

Cons

Limited Citation View

Mendeley is a user-friendly AI tool for organizing, sharing, and citing your research papers properly in one place. It also helps you quickly organize your PDFs, create better bibliographies, and annotate documents.

Moreover, this tool enables researchers to collaborate on projects and discover relevant articles based on their interests. Mendeley’s powerful features and integration into academic workflows make it a practical tool. It helps streamline your management and enhance collaboration within the scholarly community.

Pros

Offer citation styles for journals and boost citation efficiency.

Organize and share references for collaborative research.

Cons

Do not make PDF annotations as expected.

Users commonly face server downtime and syncing errors.

11. Litmaps: Visualize Academic Literature

Litmaps is a literature mapping tool that helps researchers discover new and relevant research papers, visualize the relationships between papers, and share their research. It works by using connectedness theory, which allows researchers to quickly scan Litmap’s network of academic papers around the documents they know, discovering vital related papers they may not know about.

Litmaps can also generate reading lists and notify users when relevant new papers are published, making it easier to stay up-to-date on the latest research.

Pros

Search Academic Papers

Mind Mapping

Explore Research From Various Angles

Collaboration Features

Cons

Limited Free Plan

12. Scholarcy: Summarize Papers to Accelerate Research

Scholarly is an AI tool that improves academic research by automating the process of reading, summarizing, and extracting information. It can help you recognize figures, tables, and references in articles and grasp the main concepts.

Additionally, this tool has citation extraction features that allow users to organize and cite the sources used in the research. It also provides a literature review process, which enables users to save valuable time and effort.

Pros

Summarize the topics of research papers to save time and effort.

Offer links to the cited resources to access the research material.

Cons

The essay summary may need to be more precise, which may result in plagiarism.

The AI-generated summary will only cover some of the critical points of the research paper.

13. Jenni: Your AI Academic Writing Assistant

The following AI tool for research on our list is Jenni. It’s an AI-powered writing assistant designed to help students and researchers with academic writing tasks. It uses machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) to provide content suggestions, writing feedback, and research assistance. It’s beneficial for writing essays, research papers, literature reviews, and more. Jenni can also help with citations and references and check for plagiarism.

Pros

AskJenni

Use an AI research assistant who can help answer research questions and provide document-related clarifications.

Citation and Reference Assistance

Jenni can properly format citations and references in styles like APA, MLA, and Chicago.

AI Commands

Jenni can perform tasks like paraphrasing, rewriting, and simplifying existing text

AI Autocompletion

Jenni can suggest and complete sentences to help you write faster

Cons

Limited Content Types

Compared to other AI writing tools like Copy.ai and Jasper, Jenni.ai only offers a limited number of content types, such as blogs, essays, emails, and free-flow writing

14. Knewton: Personalized Learning for Research

Using artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms, Knewton allows users to deliver personalized educational content. You can tailor the tool for educational content according to individual needs and learning styles. This is a one-stop and easy-to-use tool in the academic learning phase.

Knewton also allows users to analyze student performance data, strengths, weaknesses, and progress. By leveraging AI's benefits, Knewton seeks to improve engagement, making it one of the best online learning platforms.

Pros

Provide you with a personalized learning experience with the help of adaptive learning.

Offer student interaction to keep cheating at bay by offering different questions to each student.

Cons

The problems in the tool are generic and need to align with the curriculum.

Offer feedback and flexible assessment options that impact students’ learning.

How to Organize Research Papers

How to Read Academic Papers

AI Tools for Academic Research

Research Tips

Research Collaboration Software

Academic Collaboration

Traditional Research

Research Collaborations

Research Lab Management

Best Apps for Grad Students

Complete Step-by-Step Guide On How To Use Unriddle's AI Research Tool

Here is a step-by-step guide on how to use Unriddle. I’ve also copied it below :)

From here, it's pretty simple.

Unriddle helps you read, write and learn faster.

Interact with documents via AI so you can quickly find and understand info.

Then start writing in a new Note and Unriddle will show you relevant content from your library as you type.

Get started by uploading a document.

Or read on for the full rundown.

Interact with documents

When you upload a document, Unriddle generates an AI assistant on top of this data.

Click 'New' in the right sidebar and then select 'Upload' to get started.

Use this assistant to answer specific questions about the text, summarize content and simplify jargon.

The trick is to be super clear about what you want.

If you're summarizing a research paper, for example, instead of saying “Summarize” or “Summarize this research paper”, say something like “Explain this research paper to me in simple terms. What method did the researchers use? What did they find? Why does it matter?”.

The second prompt will produce a much better overview of the paper because we're giving the AI more hints about what we want.

Automatic relations

Unriddle grasps the context behind each Note and Document in your library and automatically links them based on meaning.

Let's say you have a collection of nuclear physics papers in your library.

When you start writing a note about The Manhattan Project, simply mentioning "The Manhattan Project" will prompt Unriddle to find the connection between this note and the nuclear physics papers.

Even if you didn't explicitly mention the research papers, Unriddle's knowledge of Oppenheimer, his work, and the significant relevance of these papers means it understands the connection and automatically links them together.

In short, Unriddle shows you relevant content from your library at the exact moment you need it, even if you haven't explicitly mentioned it.

Citing your sources

Writing is hard when you have a ton of sources to track.

So we made it easy.

Highlight some text, click ‘Cite’ and you’ll see items from your library that contain information related to the selection of text you just highlighted as determined by our AI.

When you select an item Unriddle inserts a link into highlighted text that, when clicked, takes you to the referenced item.

Writing with AI

Click ‘New’ in the sidebar and hit ‘Note’ to open up a new note.

Here you’ll find all the text formatting options you’re used to and more.

Type ‘++’ to generate text based on the context of what’s already written.

Highlight text and click ‘Ask AI’ to open up the AI menu where you’ll find options to improve, expand, summarize and explain.

You can type custom prompts too!

Finally, you can open any note in a pane on the right side of the screen while interacting with documents. Just click the orange pencil icon at the top of the chat window.

Adjust the model, temperature and response length in the Setting sidebar.

Click the cog icon in the top right corner of the screen and look for "Chat Settings".

These apply across all documents but you can easily flip between them regardless of settings at the time of upload.

Model: the machine learning model used to generate responses.

Temperature: the amount of creative license you give to the AI.

Max length: the maximum number of words generated in a response.

Got feedback or questions? Send us an email and we'll get back to you within a day.

— Naveed

How Can A Research Study Improve

How To Improve Your Research Skills

Focus Your Research Goals

When starting a research project, you need to establish clear goals. Without clear goals, research can drift into unrelated areas, diluting the quality and usefulness of your findings. Focus on developing specific research questions and objectives to guide your work.

Broaden Your Data Sources

Social and economic factors can significantly impact research outcomes. Expanding your study to include these determinants will enhance your findings and provide a more comprehensive understanding of the research topic. For instance, if your research focuses on health outcomes, consider incorporating data on social risk factors such as community engagement and crime rates to improve your study.

Refine Your Methodological Approaches

There are often several ways to assess research outcomes. Taking the time to understand different approaches can help you select the most appropriate method for your study. For example, if your research involves health outcomes, you may want to compare Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALY) and Years of Life Lost (YLL) as measures of mortality and morbidity.

Each approach captures different dimensions of health outcomes. Depending on your research focus, one may be more appropriate. In addition, both measures can be used together to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the health outcomes under study.

Expand Future Research Directions

Research studies often raise new questions that can be explored in future projects. By identifying these potential avenues for research, you can ensure that subsequent studies build on existing knowledge to further the field.

Read Faster & Write Better With Unriddle for Free Today

Research is not just about finding the right sources. It’s also about reading, note-taking, and writing. Unriddle AI helps with every aspect of the research process so you can improve your research skills. This AI tool allows you to read faster, write better, and take notes like a pro. The best part? It does all this directly on top of your research documents.

Read faster & write better — try Unriddle for free today.