What's the evidence? |
What should technical communicators investigate/research?
Our quarterly "What's the evidence?" column in TechCommWire attempts to look for evidence (not just opinions) to help technical communicators manage the daily conundrums we face in our profession. We want to locate and describe the evidence basis for so many of the received assumptions of best practice in tech comm.
It's a constant challenge to find evidence on matters of interest to practicing TCs – a point confirmed in a recent STC article Reflections on Research: Examining Practitioner Perspectives on the State of Research in Technical Communication (Kirk St.Amant, Louisiana Tech University and Lisa Meloncon, University of Cincinnati).
We want to explore the idea of crowd-funding research into burning questions. Is the tech community interested in contributing financially to studies into practical aspects of tech comm best practice?