Like Mary mentioned I too have had people ask me why I’m taking Research Methods, as I haven’t yet decided if I’m going to do a thesis, but I too have found that the concepts we have been studying are very helpful in evaluating other articles.

Last week I spent a good deal of time working on an annotated bibliography for Foundations of Library and Information Science. My sources were varied in methodology, so having this overview of different methodologies was extremely helpful in examining the relevance and strength of the papers. It allowed me to rule out papers that were not going to be helpful based on methodology flaws. Then when it came time to review the papers, I felt like I was able to say things more substantial due to my understanding of research methods.