Research as a job?

[ihugtrees]

I love to read, research, and write, but am not sure how to translate this into a career. Of course, when I Googled it, it kept bringing up 'Career research' instead of research AS a career! I was wondering if anyone has any info on an occupation that involves all of those things? What kind of degree could I get?

[Dar]

There are ton of careers that involve those things... pretty much all of academia, really, although often there's some teaching involved as well. I think you should get a degree in the kind of thing you enjoy researching - 18th century British love poetry? Aleut population genetics? The efficacy of different regimes of diabetes management?

[Ellien C]

Reference librarian - they look things up for people. Fact checker for a news organization - like a newpaper or a TV show or a radio show.

My company also belongs to two organizations that produce technical white papers. One is called Gartner research. (I think I have that right).

yep - here's their jobs page:

http://www.gartner.com/technology/careers/research.jsp

[Carita]

I'll add paralegal to the list...
http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos114.htm

The above is a good site for researching careers

[kcparker]

There are TONS of jobs that involve what you like doing.
Public Policy Analyst in any of a ton of different fields (healthcare reform, economics, social services, agriculture, you name it!)
Lobbyist
Freelance reporter
Lawyer or clerking for a judge
Science writer for an academic research institute

You could work for an NGO on developing and implementing programs.

My mom was a Foreign Service Officer, and she did a lot of research and writing about whatever issues she was assigned to in her various jobs - we lived in Turkey and she did mostly human rights reporting, going on fact-finding missions and talking with officers in the Turkish govt., then writing up what she learned and (with the other officers in-country) making policy recommendations.

I actually wouldn't recommend academia unless you want to go into the hard sciences, engineering, or health-related fields. If you are in the humanities, the job market is not great and there's a huge oversupply of people who studied Victorian poetry, medieval French social structures, or what have you.

My advice would be to consider what your values are and how you can manifest those in the world - don't just do something you 'like to do'; think about how can you take your talents and make the world more the way you'd like for it to be? Go to a career fair at a local college or research university, and look at fields you might not have thought initially would be fruitful ground. People who can even put together a grammatically correct sentence, much less write a coherent and sustained argument are in woefully short supply in ALL fields, so if you are a good researcher and writer, your skills are highly transferable to all sorts of jobs.

[FleurMS]

I also love to read, research and write. I have an undergraduate degree in English and business, and it is a co-op degree, so when I graduated I had two years of work experience. Following graduation, I worked as the editor of our university newspaper (I'd volunteered as a reporter for several years prior to this paying gig), then was a writer at a trade magazine for a few years. Then I got a job as a communications officer at a university.

Fast forward 15 years.. I spent 10 years at home with little kids, then went back to work again at a university, as a research officer. I now work in health research. My communications skills and English degree are valued highly. I use my journalism skills every day to research, write and edit pieces. We do a lot of community-based research, and I spend a lot of time writing up research results in plain language. I have also written a lot of grant applications.

My mother at one point tried to discourage me from getting an English degree (which she also has), because she thought it would limit me to teaching.. that is no longer the case. I am finishing up an interdisciplinary masters now, which cements my expertise in communications and knowledge transfer.

In my experience, there are lots of jobs working on research teams in academia. PhDs cannot do all the work themselves, and often have teams of researchers. Once academics become successful enough to have large projects, they cannot manage them solely with graduate students.

~ Fleur

[rcr]

I love doing research too, and I am a professor at an R1 unviersity, which means that I spend most of my time doing research and teaching is not as much of a focus. You could get a degree in whatever interests you and become a professor.