The Research Process

Planning and managing the research process

• Construct a research plan in order to stay on track, organize findings, allocate tasks, and track progress.
• Identify problems and information needs
• What is your objective or goal in researching a company or organization? It can be helpful to list all of the questions you want to answer, and note which ones are most important to you
• Determine your deadline, and work backwards to determine how and in what order you will proceed in your research.
• Some basic steps:
  • Identify the type of company or organization (public/private, nonprofit, government agency)
  • Locate or construct a basic company/org profile
  • Research key figures (board members, CEOs, donors) Identify labor, legal, safety violations and analyze patterns
  • Understand industry context (competitors, norms, regulations)
• Types of information
  • Organizational structure and finance data (SEC filings, articles of incorporation [for private companies], IRS Form 990s [for nonprofits])
  • Company/organizational history (company websites, business databases)
  • Legal and legislative (legal databases, PACER, THOMAS, NCSL)
  • Regulatory compliance (DOL, OSHA, NLRB)
  • Lobbying/political donations (FEC, OpenSecrets.org); also consider front groups
  • News and analysis (industry news, investigative journalism, press releases, research reports)
• With this info, construct a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis. You can locate SWOTs in databases such as Business Insights, but they will be from an industry or business perspective.

Tip: When estimating your research timeline and project plan, build in time for both searching and analyzing information. When searching and reading, track your efforts in a shared research log in Google Docs so you are not duplicating efforts.

What can you get free? What are the different levels of access?

• Lots of data is freely available online if the company is publicly-traded
• There's not necessarily much if the company is privately-held

What's not free, but still accessible?

• Sometimes you'll need to go somewhere else (e.g. to a library) - not everything can be accessed online from home.
• You may want to consult reference books, for example, such as Hoover's Handbook of American Business, which includes historical financial data
• News articles and other useful information may be in subscription databases such as ReferenceUSA and ABI/INFORM Research, which may be available from home with your library account information or maybe only on-site at your library