6 Essential Technology Tools for Researchers
The rise of machinery allowed almost all kinds of industries to carry out different innovations in various fields. There were times a researcher would spend days, even months, in the library, studying countless books and taking notes. Those times are gone. Research has also significantly benefited from several technological revelations. In this article, we will look at some of them:
1. Search Engines
A search engine could be the single most essential piece of technology a researcher can use. With machines like Google, Yandex, Yahoo, you can get millions of results just by typing any topic you are interested in. A tool offered by Google called Google Scholar provides books, articles, and various other literature pieces from professional societies, academic publishers, universities, and other websites.
2. Cloud Storage Services
These tools are used for file synchronization and sharing in education, science, and research. It lets you share images, documents, videos, and other content types anywhere and is worth your attention if you work with data. Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud, and Amazon Drive are a few examples you can use as part of your research project.
3. Survey Collection Tools
Surveys are useful in demonstrating the characteristics of a population. No other analysis tool can provide this broad ability, which can help you conclude and make significant decisions. Surveys are a great way to give feedback on any topic you want to research on. You can use online surveys in some quantitative research projects: get criticism on your products, measure your employee satisfaction, determine market trends, etc. Survey Monkey, Google Forms, and Typeform are just some of these tools.
4. Video-sharing Websites
These sites are a great way to collect data, especially for qualitative inquiry. This research method uses interviews as a source of information, and you can find millions of talks on the web related to almost any topic you might be interested in.
5. Transcription Tools
There is another tool that is very useful for research. After recording the interview, you will need the transcript of the audio (video) file. Automatic transcription software is a tool that works with speech recognition technology. You can convert your file into text in a matter of time. Having a book for the whole interview can help you easily categorize the information available. You can search for the transcript with any keyword. Voicedocs offers a cloud-based, safe, fast transcription service that supports docs, .srt, text, and JSON file extensions.
6. Social Media for Researchers
Even though you can use social media like Facebook and Instagram for research, only websites are dedicated to this specific purpose. ResearchGate is probably the biggest one, with around 17 million users as of 2020. Alternatively, you can use LinkedIn, Academia.edu, or Mendeley.