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Crafting a research plan, part one: Defining your problem
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When most people start their genealogy research, they approach it from all sides, simultaneously searching for all of their known ancestors, jumping around with no real direction and only vague goals of “doing genealogy.” The first few generations are relatively small—just two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents—but the further back one goes, the more unmanageable this approach becomes. It is much better to build correct research habits at the beginning.
Most experienced researchers will agree that it is best to choose one line upon which to focus first. As you learn more about this line and its associates, your familiarity with them will serve as a strong research asset. You might choose any line you wish to begin. Many genealogists choose their surname line, through their father, but other options might be to choose a maternal line, such as your mother’s mother’s mother, or the line of a beloved grandparent, or a line associated with an interesting oral tradition.
Once you have decided upon a line of focus, your next step will be to record the information that you already know about the particular line, being sure to cite every source, even if that source is simply oral tradition, passed down from your grandmother. Remember that no source, even your grandmother, is inherently infallible, but should be evaluated both on its own merits and through corroboration with other sources.
Now start with yourself, and make sure that you have your own life documented, with your birth certificate, marriage certificate, baptismal record, and any other records that represent your life. Move on to your parents, and do the same. Follow the line you have chosen to the set of grandparents in that line. Whenever you first encounter a fact that you do not know, you will define the problem and craft a research plan to find your answer.
For example, perhaps your grandfather passed away before you were born, and your grandmother passed a few years before you decided to research your family history. None of the surviving members of the family can remember the names of your grandfather’s parents. If this is the case, your first research problem might be stated as, “Who was [your grandfather]’s father?”
Other examples of research problems might entail finding a date of birth, a maiden name, or the date of death for an uncle who left town. It could even be along the lines of, “Where did [your ancestor] live in 1910?” Some research problems will be relatively simple and straightforward; others will be somewhat complex. But the key to crafting an effective research plan is to first define your problem as specifically as possible. In other words, you must first know the question before you can answer it. Incorporating this simple step into your genealogical process will make you a more effective researcher, especially as you move further back in time, and the unknown facts outnumber the known facts.
This article has been posted on November 6, in response to the NaBloPoMo challenge of posting one article every day throughout the month of November.
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