Of course, even a sound methodology is of little use if the data being analyzed is not good. Good data depends on the nature of the question. What kind of data is appropriate to test the question? What kind of data is available? How much data was collected/tested? Was it enough?

The findings section is usually the part that gets all the attention. If not the findings, the conclusions will be the source of any headlines about the paper.

As a bit of a “research junkie”, I often find the final section of a good paper, future research, to be my favorite. I guess I enjoy the anticipation of more good things to come. I occasionally will make a game of trying to come up with other angles the authors didn’t.

With that basic structure in mind, Yeske advocates that we tackle the papers with the following eight questions in mind. You will notice that they align nicely with the structure I just outlined.

  1. What is the problem or question?

  2. How was the problem/question conceptualized?

  3. What are the key findings from prior research?

  4. What methodology was used to test the question?

  5. What were the results of the testing?

  6. Were the results compelling?

  7. What are the practical applications of the results?

  8. Will this change the way we practice and if so, how?

Research does not have to be directly applicable to the practice of financial planning to be important and of value but those last two questions are at the heart of my interest in research and fostering productive partnerships between the academic and practitioner communities.

Even if some research is impractical to apply in practice, I find the act of reading the papers more effectively and critically has helped me with clients. I have had several conversations with clients about how they can use these basic reading issues to learn to intake news in a healthier manner.

The emotion of this election has made the condition more acute but at any given moment a client can be exposed to something in some media that gets them riled up. 

For example, there is a fair chance one of your clients has cited an article showing that the S&P 500 does better with a certain combination of parties in the White House and Congress or that the market averages X in election years or Y when the party of the president doesn’t change or Z when it does.