6:35 PM

Free Genealogy Help: Genealogy Goals

Are you looking for free genealogy help to improve your genealogy skills?

This is one of my "mini-posts" to help you get some quick answers and then find what will really help you.

This post is for people with questions about defining a genealogy goal or asking a genealogy "research question."
If this post doesn't help, you can find the list of all posts in this series, here.

One reason this topic needs to be discussed is there's a bit of a difference between a "genealogy goal" and a "genealogy research question." We tend to use them interchangeably and often we bring in non-genealogy inferences that end up causing a problem.

The specific situation I'm thinking about is...

Research Planning

To create a research plan you need a "goal." I've put that in quotes because this is where we run into a problem.

You actually need to ask a narrow "research question,*" not set a goal. How often in your non-genealogical life have you had to craft a "research question?" Unless you are in a research-field of study or career, probably never.

It's quite common to need to set a goal in everyday life.

So, it's easy to remember that your research plan needs a "goal."

You absolutely can not create a research plan without something like a goal (call it a goal, focus, or research question—it's all the same required function in a research plan).

*I prefer to say you need to test a hypothesis rather than ask a research question. This post isn't going to go into that difference. But if you've learned "test a hypothesis" from me or someone else, that is my preferred terminology. in this mini-post, the difference in a hypothesis and question won't matter.

Focus for Genealogy

I've talked about genealogy goals more for this blog than when I created "goals" for research plans for myself and clients.

Why do you care?

There is a place for both goals and research questions in genealogy.

I've discovered the secret to genealogical success, no matter the specifics, is focus. If you're working with DNA, you need focus. If you need to do traditional research, you need focus. If you need to learn about genealogy, you need focus.

Goals and research questions are all about focus.

To keep this mini-post shorter, I'm going to describe the difference between when you'd use a "goal" versus a "research question" and then send you to different posts about the "how-to" for each of those since you may not need one or the other.

Goal Setting for Genealogists

Here's how I break this down.

Goals are like a New Year's Resolution. They can be broader or narrower but they are an end destination, not how you'll get there.

A goal (or resolution) would be "lose weight" You then have to add constraints and break it down to achieve it but the goal is losing weight. You don't care if you achieve all the necessary steps if you don't achieve the goal (theoretically, obviously achieving the steps might have advantages but go with me).

So a genealogy goal could be "find the father of _____" or "discover my Mayflower ancestors."

These are acceptable as goals, but too broad to be research questions. They don't help us focus a research plan. They help us focus our "genealogy," as in the work we do for many ancestors.

Right there, that helps you remember your genealogy goal can't be the focus for your research plan.

We have this big thing (all our genealogy work). We pick focuses to actually do something. There are lots of variations of this. We could focus on using a subscription we are currently paying for. Then we focus on the name we plug into that subscription (you can never work on all your genealogy, you always have a focus, even if it changes every few minutes). But there are also better goals (better options to focus on).

You focus on what you'll do this week. That's a goal you've set for the week. There's today's work on a specific line, another smaller goal. We eventually focus on a research plan.

Obviously the smaller things are already a focused part of the bigger thing. That means you can't use the same goal to focus your genealogy and a research plan. The goal got you down to a research plan, now you need to narrow your focus further.

Think of this like a series of funnels. You don't go straight from "genealogy" (all of it) to "research plan." You narrow your goal many times.

There's no set number of sub-goals you work through before you're ready to create a research question. That's what adds to the confusion of goal vs. research question. I think it's easier to think that there are multiple levels between genealogy and research plan. Don't try and quantify this because it differs for any number of reasons. Just remember and accept that you start by doing genealogy and somehow you finally focus on a project where you're ready to create multiple research plans (you will work on only one plan for this project at a time, and rarely does it take just one plan).

Creating Genealogy Research Questions

Instead of focusing on your "goal," you need to craft a narrow research question to focus your research plan.

A major problem is people think a research plan is for achieving a goal, as in a goal like "lose weight" I'll use the weight-loss analogy since that's something we can all imagine (even if you haven't attempted it).

You need to apply constraints to achieve a goal (you may be familiar with constraints, a popular mnemonic is SMART goals). An example constraints are measureable and time-bound (the M and T in SMART). "I'm going to lose 10 lbs. by June 4th." Once you decide on all the constraints, you break your goal down into the activities you have to do to achieve this well-defined goal.

"I'll walk for 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week," "I'll stop drinking soda," and so on.

You need constraints and activities for a resolution-style goal. These are not like your research plan. Your research plan is equivalent to "I'll walk for 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week."

Did you get that? A research plan is equivalent to a plan for one activity you do to achieve your resolution-style goal. Research plans are tiny.

Think about this with the walking activity. You don't just do this. You have to take that one activity and figure out when in your day you'll do it. You may have issues like child care or elder care to address. What will you wear? I can tell you walking most days a week will quickly identify shoes that aren't supportive enough. And what if it rains everyday for three months? You don't just start walking and achieve your goal.

Not addressing the needed constraints, identifying activities, and then making those activities fit our reality are why resolutions fail. Not breaking a genealogy project down in similar ways is why you stay stuck on it.

Luckily, for a research plan, I've found once you master asking a narrow research question, the plan usually creates itself. It's much easier than a resolution-style goal once you learn how to do it.

Recap

A research plan is not your plan to achieve a genealogy goal.

It takes multiple research plans to achieve a genealogy goal and usually that goal is actually a sub-goal. You are narrowing your focus from genealogy down to something very specific you can work on and then you start creating research plans. We sometimes call the focus of a research plan a goal but it's clearer to use a different word or phrase like research question or my preference, hypothesis.

We need both goals and research questions and we'll need multiple of both for success in genealogy.

As an analogy, we have genealogy goals that are like New Year's resolutions ("lose weight"). A plan for a resolution-style goal might be "walk 5-days a week for 30 minutes and give up soda." This is not the equivalent of a research plan, though. A research plan is narrower (it would be a plan for how we'll achieve that walking, and it would take several plans for a step that big).

This post didn't go into more details, use the links below for that. Instead, you now know that genealogy goals are broader and you should have sub-goals, maybe many of them. Eventually your goal is specific enough to start creating research plans. It'll take many research plans to achieve that specific sub-goal. Each research plan also needs a focus (the research question or hypothesis).