The Trick to Knowing When You’re Done With Research
The ‘Saturation Theory’ helps me figure out when to stop researching and start writing
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I’m a long-form journalist, so I’ll spend many weeks — typically months — working on a big magazine feature. One of the trickiest things is figuring out: When am I done with research?
When do I know a subject well enough to write about it?
In my early years of journalism, this was devilishly hard to deduce. The tech/science subjects I covered were diverse and complex — microchip lithography, computational linguistics, the mysteries of managing startups, trends in digital art, marine biology. It felt like drinking from a firehose every time I tried to orient myself on a new subject.
I had trouble telling when I knew enough to write.
So I’d keep on doing more and more and more research — reading more academic papers, interviewing more experts. Eventually, I’d drift toward writing, sometimes just because the clock was ticking and I’d piss off an editor if I didn’t get a draft in soon.
Noticing a pattern
But years into my magazine-writing career, I began to notice a useful pattern.
When I was beginning research into a fresh subject for the first time, everything about it would — initially — be new. Every time I heard a piece of jargon or learned the name of a major thinker in the field, it was something I’d never heard before. I’d be frantically scribbling down everything. I’d interview experts and they’d mention books or journal papers I should read, or other experts I should speak with, and I’d be nodding eagerly: Yep, gotta read that; yep, gotta talk to that person. I’d feel barely afloat.
But at some point, weeks or months into my research, the rate at which I’d be encountering new things would slow down. I’d interview an expert, and they’d mention a few white papers I should read; and I’d realize, huh, I’ve already read those. Or they’d suggest a major thinker I should interview, and I’d already have talked to them.
To be clear, I certainly hadn’t become an expert in this new field! I’d only been at it for a few weeks or months.
But I’d reached a crucial point: I now knew the lay of the land.
This feeling became my benchmark — the moment I could put down the phone and finally start writing. It was when I started hearing the same ideas and people and publications mentioned over and over.
When you’re no longer hearing new information
I once described this process to a psychologist, and he brightened up with recognition.
“Oh yeah!” he said. “That’s a well-known phenomenon in social science research. It’s called ‘saturation.’”
“Saturation” is when a social scientist is doing qualitative research, the type of work where they’re interviewing people to get their views on, and experiences of, a subject matter. When the scientist gets to the point where they’re no longer hearing new ideas or perspectives from their interviewees, le voila: They’ve reached saturation.
As the social scientist Michael Grady describes it, saturation is the moment when…
New data tend to be redundant of data already collected. In interviews, when the researcher begins to hear the same comments again and again, data saturation is being reached… It is then time to stop collecting information and to start analysing what has been collected.
I loved this idea. It was intriguing to hear that this vague protocol I’d stumbled upon, all by myself, was a thing in scholarly research!
It’s a useful idea, too. You can try it out yourself.
If you’re researching a subject — because, say, you plan to write an article or a blog post, or to do a presentation, or simply to grasp a subject well enough to guide a major decision in your life — you can try to detect: Have I reached saturation?
If you’ve been diligently researching for a while, and you’re no longer encountering new concepts, you might be there.
Saturation is not an exact science
Now, some caveats.
Detecting whether you’ve reached saturation is an inexact science, obviously. It’s subjective: You have to assess your own state of knowledge. There are no external calipers you can use. Social scientists, indeed, still argue over how to define saturation and how to know if you’ve reached it.
And we all know blowhards who think they’re experts on a subject but are in reality utterly ignorant of it, and incurious to boot. They’ve Dunning-Krugered themselves into believing they’re masters, and they’ll bloviate ignorantly at length. (Or, alternately, they may believe mastery is pointless because hey, all expertise is bullshit and everything is a confidence game, so just wing it bruh; which we could perhaps dub the “Fyre Festival Effect.”)
I feel like I suffer from the opposite. When I’m researching a new subject, I’m prone to feel I’ve never reached saturation. If I decide I’ve done enough research to begin writing, the moment I’m at my keyboard I get a stab of panic: Wait, do I really know what I’m talking about? Maybe I should interview one more expert! Or read another book! Because the truth is — as all genuine experts know — the complexities of any given field are enormous. There’s always more to learn!
But the type of “saturation” I’m describing isn’t about becoming a deep expert in a subject. Even if you spend a few months doing serious research into a new subject, you’re only going to — at best — amass the strong grasp of a layperson. You’re not going to reach the insight a serious professional has for their field, or a devoted long-term hobbyist has for theirs.
But when you’re writing for a general audience? You rarely need that level of extreme expertise (though if you have it, that’s awesome). You’re looking for enough understanding to write something that’s usefully informed. That’s when the feeling of saturation is a useful guide.
(Edit: One other caveat, which perceptive folks on Twitter pointed out: Saturation will help you grasp the consensus of a field, the stuff about which most experts in a domain agree. But if you want to grasp the dissenting views, too? You’ve got to actively look for those, and ask about them; it’s a separate process.)
Be of good faith
To be clear, this only works if you’re doing it in good faith, and have a healthy skepticism of how much you’ve learned.
But if you are working in good faith? The next time you’re researching a subject — and wondering when you’ve done enough — give it a try. Pay attention to the rate at which you’re learning novel information, and see if you’ve reached saturation.
Moar writing advice
Well, hi there everyone who made it this far!
If you liked this post, it’s part of a series I’ve been creating — “writing advice from 25 years of magazine journalism.” I’ve written two previous installments so far:
- If you feel like you’ve got “writer’s block,” it might be something different: “Reporter’s block.”
- If you’re having trouble rewriting a piece, try this trick: Harness the “novelty effect” by switching to a different word processor.
Clive Thompson is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, a columnist for Wired and Smithsonian magazines, and a regular contributor to Mother Jones. He’s the author of Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World, and Smarter Than You Think: How Technology is Changing our Minds for the Better. He’s @pomeranian99 on Twitter and Instagram.