Research as Conversation

Research in academic settings is not just about gathering information, discovering facts, or creating theories. It is also about situating new ideas within the bigger picture of existing knowledge. Cutting-edge research in any field only makes sense when presented in context with other, established ideas. In academic research, we call the relationship between new and old ideas, or between contending ideas, a conversation.

For example, Albert Einstein’s 1905 theory of relativity revises and expands Isaac Newton’s 1687 publication on the law of universal gravitation. Although Einstein rejected and disproved certain theories from his predecessor–so much so that in his personal memoirs, Einstein apologizes to Newton–his work relies on Newton’s foundational knowledge and the context it provides to his readers. While these two men lived in different centuries and could never have directly engaged in a discussion with each other, their work is intricately connected. Just as we learn from Einstein as he revises Newton, we also learn more about Newton’s work from Einstein’s commentary.

This connection is what we mean when we say that research is a conversation. When research is published it becomes public knowledge, and all sorts of individuals can read and make use of it. Although authors may never know one another personally and may not directly address their work to each other, they still engage with each other’s ideas as if in a conversation through their writing and publication.

Thinking about research as a conversation is especially important in the humanities, where research material can include other people’s opinions and arguments as well as traditional facts and figures. Presenting evidence from another person’s argument out of its original context can confuse readers at best, or be considered manipulative at worst. As we research a topic, we must therefore learn to identify the larger question or problem that other researchers of this topic are trying to address; additionally, we must also learn where our work fits into this conversation. For example, ask: what are we contributing to the larger question being asked or issue being debated? Who do we agree or disagree with? Also, and perhaps most importantly, where (and who) are we getting our information from?

This chapter is designed to help you answer these important positioning questions as you prepare your ideas for writing. Knowing how to find good sources, categorize them appropriately, and figure out how your work fits into the larger picture presented by these sources is a vital component of modern day research writing both in and outside of the classroom.

Assessing Credibility

As a researcher, you must take responsibility for the sources of information you cite and use. An argument that relies on bad sources will be weak, unconvincing, and may even contribute to the harmful spread of misinformation. Unfortunately, not every source you find will be a trustworthy source of information. The internet has fundamentally changed how information is produced and accessed, and publication today is as easy as starting a personal blog, website, or social media account and making one’s ideas available to a large audience. Some personal websites can be good sources of information, and some may not be. Similarly, some professional newspapers or magazines might seem reliable but have significant bias or other issues that make us question the information or perspective their authors provide. Responsible research requires the researcher to make an informed decision about whether or not to trust the information provided by the sources they have found.

We use the term credibility to refer to how trustworthy we determine a source of information to be. However, determining the credibility of a source is not as simple as answering a yes/no question. There are many factors that can contribute to, or take away from, a source’s credibility. The best way to evaluate a source is to first take a look at several criteria for measuring credibility, then assess the strengths and weaknesses of the source based on those criteria, and finally, decide from there if the source is worth keeping overall.

Remember, a research paper is only as credible as its sources of information, so it is important to use a robust checklist to ensure you are using high-quality evidence. Here are some criteria you should consider:

• Currency – the timeliness of the information
• Relevance – the usefulness of the information for your needs
• Authority – the source of the information
• Accuracy – the reliability/correctness of the information
• Purpose – why the information exists
• Perspective – the point of view the information is presented through

A modified version of Molly Beestrum’s popular CRAP test, the criteria listed above are designed to thoroughly interrogate whether or not a source should be trusted and referred to in the pursuit of your research. There are several questions you can use to help you decide if a source sufficiently fulfills each of the above criteria.

The chart provided below is a template that may help you as you research:

 

Remember, a source may still be credible enough to use even if it does not satisfactorily answer all of the questions on this chart. The questions here are meant to represent some of the considerations you might use to decide whether or not a source is worth engaging with or citing.

While certain criteria will likely remain important–for example, the authority and the accuracy of the information are vital criteria for most topics–some of the other criteria can be flexible depending on what you need to prioritize.

To give an example: let’s say you are starting a project researching the impact of a new respiratory drug on the lives of people with asthma. This project would therefore require substantial evidence both from scientific data as well as directly from people with asthma. Do they feel that their quality of life has improved? In what ways? You can only reliably get this information from the people involved in the study. The perspective of the provided information would therefore be vital to assessing the suitability of the source for your purposes. Who would want to read an article about life with asthma written by someone who either doesn’t have asthma themselves or who doesn’t include any insight from those that do?

Categorizing Sources

During the course of your research project you will encounter several types of sources. Knowing what kind of source you have will help you determine its credibility and what it can contribute to your research project. The sections below will help you identify some of the most common types of sources out there.

Primary, Secondary, Tertiary

We often categorize sources based on the degree of separation they have to the topic. There are three main degrees that we focus on–primary, secondary, and tertiary.

Primary sources are original documents, data, images, videos, etc. that provide firsthand accounts of an event or time in history.

These documents provide you, the researcher, with the opportunity to perform your own analysis of the event based on this firsthand evidence.

Examples of primary sources include:

• Diary entries or Autobiographies
• Newspaper articles or news segments reporting on the incident
• Reports on research data
• Government records
• Photographs/Artwork
• Speeches/Interviews
• Livestreams/Social media “stories”

Secondary sources provide a secondhand account of an event or research results. These documents offer an analysis, clarification, or interpretation of a primary source.

These documents provide you, the researcher, with the opportunity to identify the larger ideas or issues being discussed about the primary topic and determine where your argument fits into that bigger picture (i.e., the conversation).

Examples of secondary sources include:

• Biographies
• Reviews
• Journal articles
• Position/Viewpoint articles
• Reaction videos

Tertiary sources summarize information from primary and/or secondary sources. They often present information about a topic in a condensed format and therefore usually do not present new claims or arguments.

These sources provide you, the researcher, with foundational knowledge about a topic. Additionally, they tend to cite multiple other sources that you can independently seek out and read for elaboration. While the information they offer is too limited to be used for direct citation or quotation, tertiary sources can be a great resource to help guide your research if you find yourself getting stuck.

Examples of tertiary sources include:

• Encyclopedias
• Manuals
• Digests
• Textbooks
• Annotated Bibliographies (just like Project 2!)

Popular v. Scholarly

In addition to categorizing sources into primary, secondary, and tertiary, you can also divide sources between whether they are popular or scholarly. When it comes to distinguishing between the two, the main areas of distinction are in terms of authority, audience, and venue of publication.

A popular source is something written or produced by someone who isn’t necessarily an expert in the field. The audience for these sources is usually part of the general public, and they have a wide range of venues of publication from newspapers, magazines, blogs, social media sites, etc. Popular sources are not necessarily fact-checked or otherwise regulated, so it is important to assess the credibility of a popular source before using it in your research.

A scholarly source is something written or produced by someone who is an expert in the field and whose audience is typically other experts. The venue of publication is usually a university printing press or an academic journal. Typically speaking, scholarly sources are held to a high standard before publication and are therefore very credible sources of information.

When a scholarly article is published in a journal, it undergoes a process called peer review. In E105 and E115 you will engage in classroom peer review. You will exchange drafts with a classmate to review each other’s work as part of a thorough and productive writing process. This form of peer review is a vital component of developing strong writing skills and habits; however, when it comes to research, calling something a “peer reviewed source” has a very specific meaning. An article can only be considered a peer-reviewed source if it was submitted to a journal or press that had it formally reviewed by experts and approved for publication.

In this process, the editor of the journal will send the article to other experts in the field to review it for accuracy and relevance. The reviewers submit their assessments of the article, and the editor of the journal can choose to publish the article, have the author revise and resubmit it, or reject the article for publication. This process is so rigorous that we categorize sources based on whether or not they have undergone formal expert peer review, so you may find that scholarly sources are sometimes referred to simply as “peer-reviewed sources.” Only academic journals and some university printing presses perform this kind of peer review.

Library Resources

Now that you have a better idea of what kind of sources you can anticipate encountering on your research journey, let’s talk a bit about resources that the library has to help you find these sources.

This link will take you directly to the LSUS Noel Memorial Library Webpage for reference: https://libguides.lsus.edu/

 

Right away you’ll see the general catalog search, called the “Pilot Search” on this webpage. This search bar will search most of the library’s databases and the library’s catalog of books at the same time to see if there is a match for your topic of interest. You’ll get books, magazines, journals, newspaper articles, and more from this search.

Databases

The LSUS library provides access to many databases. Databases are different from search engines like Google. A database is a curated archive of sources (usually articles, book chapters, or theses) that is often centered around a theme. For example, one database LSUS subscribes to is “Business Source Complete,” which hosts only articles in fields related to business topics like finance and accounting. If you are researching a topic for a business class, this may be an excellent resource since it will provide articles specific to your field without distractions from other fields or from other sources, like websites, that may be less credible.

Where a search engine will help you locate information hosted on various platforms across the internet, databases will provide information from their own curated archives. Search engines are a great starting point to help identify the scope of the conversation about the topic you are researching, while databases are useful for finding results that are specific to a certain topic, journal, or type of source (we have whole databases dedicated to newspaper articles, for example).

Keywords

As we discuss in Chapter 2, an important step to internet research is identifying the specific words or phrases that relate to your topic that various search algorithms will recognize. We call the words or phrases that a user types into a search bar keywords. While this may seem like a simple idea, the keywords you use can drastically change the content, quality, and types of sources a search engine or database provides.

 

The process of finding good keywords is like identifying the right hashtag–what are the specific words or phrases that authors, websites, or databases attach to the resources they publish in order to signal to search functions what these resources are about? Unlike hashtags, these linked terms are not usually made public, so it can take some trial and error to align your terminology with the terms used in the research conversation you are joining.

As you progress to more in-depth research, one way to make your keywords more precise is to use Boolean Operators. Boolean Operators are words and symbols that you can include in your search terms to narrow or expand the scope of your results. Common Boolean Operators include AND, OR, NOT, as well as parentheses and asterisks. To give an example, let’s say you have an upcoming trip and need pet care for your dog while you are away. So, you decide to research local pet sitters and kennels as options for your dog. If you include the following Boolean Operators, your results will change accordingly:

Confirmation Bias

When we perform research on a topic we are interested in, it can become tempting to only read articles that support our initial ideas or standpoint. However, we must be very careful to avoid this inclination, which is known as confirmation bias. Rather than performing well-rounded research that gives fair representation to multiple perspectives on an issue, those who commit confirmation bias tend to only read articles that support one side. This creates lopsided research that omits important information. Make sure that your Project 2 covers at least two perspectives on your topic to avoid falling into this common research trap.

Annotated Bibliographies

When you are working on a sustained research project, it quickly becomes difficult to remember where you encountered certain information. When you read ten or more articles on the same topic, lines often begin to blur. Did Article A mention the impact of gender on wages, or was it Article B? Which one has the graphic I liked? And where did I see that line about income disparity?

This kind of confusion about sources, although common, can have negative effects on your work–from having to re-read articles to potentially having to omit useful information because you can’t seem to track down the original source. In the very worst case scenario, it can lead to misattribution of ideas or other potential academic dishonesty concerns.

The best way to prevent this kind of information overwhelm is to organize your research in an annotated bibliography. An annotated bibliography is a genre of writing that consists of an alphabetized list of sources relevant to a research topic. Each entry in an annotated bibliography should:

• Include the full citation for the source (in the citation style specified by the prompt)
• Briefly describe the main ideas of the source
• Assess the credibility of the source, and
• Explain what this source contributes to the research project

There are lots of reasons why writing an annotated bibliography is a useful step in a research project. They help you organize your research, develop and strengthen your stance on a topic, and help you keep track of and credit the authors whose work you will draw on to support your ideas. If done well, they can also help reduce the repetition of labor in a research project–good annotations can reduce the number of times you need to re-read your articles as you work.

What makes for a good annotation? There are two main ways we can describe a source: through summary, and through paraphrase.

Summary restates the main ideas of a text in your own words. Summaries should not include any quotations, direct repetition, or copy/pasting from the source, but should have words or phrases of attribution (“according to the author…”). They also should not offer your opinions or interpretations of the content of the text. To the best of your ability, a summary should be a fair representation of the author’s work as they presented it.

A paraphrase also restates an author’s main ideas but unlike a summary, which works to demonstrate understanding, a paraphrase works to clarify the author’s main or most relevant points. Paraphrase, therefore, tends to get more specific than summary and may involve some synthesis of ideas. Synthesis occurs when you bring multiple ideas together to make a larger claim. In a paraphrase you might reorganize the author’s main ideas to demonstrate the main point of the article, or the most relevant point for your purposes, more clearly.

Paraphrase is a bit more advanced than summary, and also should not include any quotations, direct repetition, or copy/pasting from the source. Even so, because paraphrase uses the author’s ideas (even in your own words) it MUST have an in-text citation in a paper (other than an annotated bibliography).

Once you have a clear 3-4 sentence summary or paraphrase of the main ideas of the source, add in some information about why you think the source is credible, as well as where it fits into your research more broadly. Remember, we want to avoid confirmation bias, so specifying what side each article agrees with will help you get a better picture of how many sources you have read for each relevant perspective on the issue.

The Noel Memorial Library has several example annotations you can take a look at. Take note of not just the content but also the formatting.

Now you know the basics of sustainable research practices! In our next chapter, we’ll talk about integrating evidence from your research into your own writing.