Of course, you might be looking at information because you have a hunch or a half-formed idea in your mind - or even out of sheer curiosity. Such intuitive research can be very valuable.

Research, like any other types of thinking, can be thought of as having two stages:

• First-stage thinking: exploration, discovery;
• Second-stage thinking: collating, sifting, organising to support the idea.

In practice, research has a habit of being iterative. In looking purposefully for evidence, you may find something else that sends you exploring new regions of ideas you may not even have thought of before. They might contain even better evidence to support your ideas. And, of course, you might find evidence that will actually change the shape of your ideas.