A Brief Overview of Situated Research
Step 1: Choose a Site and Theme
Step 2: Create a Research Question
Step 3: Perform Research
Step 4: Communicate Results

A Brief Overview of Situated Research in ENVS

Situated research is the method used by the Environmental Studies Program to focus student research into tangible, relevant inquiry by means of specific research areas. Instead of simply focusing on a topic (e.g. water) or a process (e.g. desertification), situated research examines a range of phenomena, practices, and perspectives as they act on a particular location over multiple temporal and spatial scales. The Environmental Studies Program organizes research in this way to create:

• A concrete context for students to grasp interdisciplinary connections;
• A means to build, store, and share research resources (GIS data, photos, journal articles, etc.);
• A connection to real-world, practical problems; and
• A means for students working in different spatial and temporal locations to compare their work.

For the ENVS student, then, the big question becomes: How do I first situate my ideas so I can then undertake my groundbreaking research? This tutorial is intended to be a step-by-step guide for helping ENVS students situate and formulate their question(s), perform the necessary research, and effectively communicate and share the results.

Step 1: Choose a Site and Theme

The Lewis & Clark Environmental Studies Program supports ten different research sites: four local/regional sites (which include areas around the Portland area and Oregon in general) and six international sites (which are tied to the overseas programs hosted by Lewis and Clark College). There are many avenues to each of these research sites: a student may find herself assigned a specific research site as part of a course project, working on independent research in conjunction with overseas study, or choosing a site most relevant to her senior project. Visit the Situated Research Sites page to find out more about each specific site.

The Environmental Studies Program has assembled specific themes associated with each research site as a means to help spur and focus student research ideas. Think of themes as site-specific "bundles" of resources for individuals and groups to use as a starting point. Though it is certainly possible to dive right into research for a particular site, it often helps to have a general topic that serves as a reference point for gathering relevant bibliographic information, website references, data, and so forth. In addition, each theme presents starter questions to help researchers think about why each theme topic matters. Each theme has been designed to frame site-specific issues that differentiate it from other sites. You'll find these themes on each Situated Research Sites page.

New themes can be developed by ENVS. If you have an idea for a theme, send your ideas to envs@lclark.edu. Guidelines for starting new research themes are available, too.

Step 2: Create a Research Question

Each broad research theme can support a wide range of research investigations. It's now up to the student or research team to formulate a suitable question that will guide the research. Being clear about the question is 90 percent of the battle when it comes to doing good research! In undertaking a program of situated/interdisciplinary research, the challenge is to come up with a question that is both a) coherent enough to afford a clear research directive and b) plural enough to afford the engagement of multidisciplinary theories and tools.

Here are a few rules-of-thumb for formulating your situated research question.

• A good research question:
• Builds on, and potentially contributes to, existing knowledge
• Is an appropriate scale: not too big, not too small
• Is inherently interesting, and arouses curiosity within yourself and others
• Is mindful of its dependencies on other questions

• The research question may be of four types, in increasing order of complexity:
• Descriptive ("what is going on?")
• Explanatory ("why is it happening?")
• Evaluative ("is this a problem or not?")
• Instrumental ("what can be done?")

There's something more that's special about a situated research question when compared to a research question posed in a discipline like biology or economics. By focusing on connections between a wide range of processes and perspectives related to a specific issue in a particular place, the situated research question will be interdisciplinary in scope. That is, answering the question should ideally involve the three realms of nature (physical/life/behavioral sciences), social relations (social sciences), and meaning (humanities); see Sack (1990) for further discussion. Of course, no situated research question will blend these three realms together equally, but every situated research question should be mindful of their potential relevance. The Environmental Studies Program Research Resources Delicious page is an excellent place for students to explore resources and start defining their resource question. This Delicious database is the main repository of resources relevant to ENVS research sites. Students can search or browse for documents, websites, images, GIS data, contacts, and scholarly articles. Here is more information on why ENVS uses Delicious and how to use it.

As you define your question, you may wish to do one or more of the following:

• Use a blog to publicly yet informally discuss your research, to communicate within an interest community about helpful (or unhelpful) resources they have found, as well as an informal way to discuss and collaborate regarding different aspects of their research. You can upload documents, viewable Quicktime clips, and links to web-based photo galleries such as Flickr and Picasa. 
• You may also benefit from creating a concept map to visually summarize your theme and where your research question fits in. ENVS hosts Lewis and Clark College's CMap Server. Finished concept maps (authored using CMap Tools) can be uploaded and viewed as a live webpage, which can then be linked to in Delicious or the research blog.
• Finally, as you are moving toward finalizing your question, create a new record in the ENVS Research Projects Database (Moodle login required): this is where you'll formally document your work so others can find it. Research projects can include proposals, projects that are currently in progress, and completed projects; associated documents, websites, and images can be uploaded there as well.

Step 3: Perform Research

Given the above, one can see that answering a situated research question is inherently interdisciplinary. Situated research includes theories and methods taken from disciplines found throughout the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. For instance, a team consisting of a sociologist, a biologist, and an historian will strive to link its fields of expertise, or a student working on a project in political ecology will look for the intersection of cultural ecology and political economy.

As an individual performs research, she may gather and analyze both primary data (i.e., original) and secondary data (i.e., already gathered/analyzed/published). In addition to empirical data, conceptual work of relevance to the question will also be gathered and incorporated. An important aspect to interdisciplinary research is that the process of choosing appropriate data and analyzing it varies widely from field to field. Therefore, the methodological mix will vary from project to project, student to student.

You will continue to blog, expand/modify your Cmap, and edit your research project record during this phase; see step two above for help on these items. You may also find GIS to be a useful tool, as GIS provides a way for us to visualize and overlay different processes occurring in a particular location.

Step 4: Communicate Results

Given the interdisciplinary nature of situated research in the 21st century, options for communicating and sharing results are myriad. Some of these may be in the traditional manner; for example, a written paper, a poster (hints on producing posters here), or PowerPoint presentation. Others may be less traditional, such as a concept map. But, so long as the outcome is available online, it can be shared with others and stored in our Delicious database so it can be readily found.

Minimally, you'll want to finalize your Research Project Record as the formal documentation of your research. Additionally, a final version of your Cmap, resources uploaded via your research site blog, or other products will help you communicate results to others.

As one special way of communicating results, Lewis & Clark College's Watzek Library hosts a Google Earth network link to which researchers can upload maps created using ArcMap. Google Earth presents a powerful tool for sharing spatial information across the globe. You'll find a useful how-to sheet on how to upload your finished Google Earth file to LC's server here.

Sack, Robert D. 1990. The realm of meaning: The inadequacy of human-nature theory and the view of mass consumption. In The Earth as transformed by human action: Global and regional changes in the biosphere over the past 300 years, edited by B. L. Turner, II, W. C. Clark, R. W. Kates, J. F. Richards, J. T. Mathews and W. B. Meyer, 659-671. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


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