| Part One
Let's say that you have gone through the first steps and have found several articles that look like this:
![GEN499 Week 2 Discussion 1 1]()
You have one good source of information that looks pertinent to your topic or interest. The document has been saved and is in a secure location on your hard drive or thumb drive. It has been printed off, read through, underlined, highlighted, and all of the information (including visual aids) noted and extracted. You have squeezed every drop of juice that you can out of this one orange. Great!
So what's the next step? You know that only a single source is inadequate. A single source could be biased one way or another. The article could be have been written under terms of a grant that would lead the researcher to skew the information to favor the corporation giving the grant funds to the researcher. The researcher might have a particular religious, cultural, social, political, or scholarly prejudice that would bias the results.
Verification & Corroboration.
Verification: At this point, it is up to you, as the researcher, to verify the qualifications of the individual writing the original article. You need to know whether the individual is an accepted authority figure in the field. Normally, if the original article is peer-reviewed in an academic, medical, scientific, professional, or scholarly journal, you can rely upon their process to have verified the expert standing of the author. Those journals have all of their articles reviewed by a panel (or two) of people with acknowledged and respected expertise in the field of research covered by the paper.
If, on the other hand, the article does not come from a peer-reviewed journal, it is incumbent upon you to do the background digging that the review panel at the journal would have done: who is the author? what are his/her qualifications? what is the funding source for the study? what are the possibilities of bias or prejudice by the author (does this person have an axe or three to grind?)? This is one of the reasons why college students and professional researchers stick to peer-reviewed journals. Background checks can get very involved and take a very long time.
Corroboration: As noted above, a single source of information is rarely sufficient. The results of the research may not be accurate, correct, true, or thoroughly represent the current state of affairs. It is possible that the researcher may have investigated a single set of data points that would not truly reflect the results of an in-depth, multi-data set, or longitudinal (across time or many instances) study. Therefore, it is up to you, as the researcher, to be sure that the data presented in the study have been duplicated by other researchers in the same field or that the data comes from sources that have duplicated the research of others. You need to corroborate the evidence against multiple sources.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh! How are you going to do that?
I'm glad you asked.
Part Two.
Let's go back to the Online Library and scroll down to Academic Search Elite. That will open up the EBSCOHOST search engine.
![GEN499 Week 2 Discussion 1 2]()
and choose your search terms. Remember to look for peer reviewed journal articles within the last five years. I'm going to look for articles with titles that include Australopithecus afarensis (just for grins and giggles).
The search terms are entered into the top left slots. I will then select "full text" (because I want the full article, not just the abstract), "Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals" and enter the "Published Date From" as 2004 and 2011. In the lowest right corner I will also select "PDF Full Text" so I can have a full copy to save, print, etc. Then click on "Search" at the upper part of the screen.
That search should bring up twenty-plus articles. Click on the first article. That will open the abstract page with "PDF Full Text" as a selection on the left-hand edge. Click on the PDF Full link. That will bring up a screen that should look something like this:
![GEN499 Week 2 Discussion 1 3]()
Scroll all the way to the end of the article and find the list of references. This particular article contains thirty-six (36) references. In your article that you research, the next step would be for you to review the authors and titles of these references. Browse through them to find materials that might be relevant to your particular interest. In this particular article that I called up, the reference list contains many articles by Leakey and Clarke. Due to the numbers of references with those names, I would suspect that these two individuals are leading authorities in this field of study.
![GEN499 Week 2 Discussion 1 4]()
So you go through the list of references and find three or four articles that look interesting. Go back to the original search page and enter the author's name or the title of an article. Call up that article, go to the reference list and look for auspicious authors and/or titles. Do that five or six times and should wind up with a list of several articles that contain relevant information that you can cross-check for accuracy and dependability.
See how easy that is? You have now verified the accuracy of information or found information that will dismiss the original information as untrustworthy. That is the research process in a nutshell.
Part Three. For Your Own, Personal Benefit.
Choose a topic, any topic, but a topic that you think you are really, really interested in and have a desire to know more about. Go back to the EBSCOHOST search page and make the proper selections (peer reviewed, etc.). Browse the list of articles and find one that looks particularly interesting. Pull up that article. If the article turns out to be interesting, read through it and go to the list of references. Look through the list of references for a title that looks particularly interesting. Go through that same process again and again and again.
After you have searched six or ten times, look at the final article, the title, the author, the content, and the list of references. You will have found the subject that most truly interests you in the world of knowledge and information. You will now know what you really want to know.
This is only the start.
This is a very basic introduction to the research process. At some universities you can actually take a "for real" course in research methods particular to that field of study. There are business research courses, science research courses, humanities research courses, and the textbooks and materials relevant to that particular field of study. Look through the university catalog of courses and see if there is a research course for your field of study or a general research methods course.
Do please let me know what you find about your special interests that you found through the process and let me know whether or not you find a research methods course.
If there are any questions, please follow up with me.
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| Hello class, Welcome to week two! The main focus this week should be determining the topic for your paper that is due in Week 5. Please go to that assignment and read through it. There is a list of topics that you must choose from. The reason being is that you are going to be graded on your introduction, how well you state your argument (thesis statement), how well you present an objection to your argument, how well you reply to the objection based on your stated argument and how you bring it all to a conclusion. If you choose your topic based on your ability to meet the criteria for writing an argumentative essay, then you should be good to go. So, as you research for a topic, look for what arguments are available on the subject and what counter-arguments are available. In other words, you need to be able to present a pro and con on your topic. Please watch this video to get a good idea about what is expected from your paper. If you have any questions, contact me through Ask Your Instructor or the Email tab at the top of page on the right. Please watch this video https://youtu.be/tAmgEa1B1vI
Reference: DeLaplante, K. (2009, November 22). How to write a good argumentative essay: Logical structure [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAmgEa1B1vI
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Week 2 Basic Introduction to Research
