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Academic Research Poster in a Bold Colorful Style

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Introduction

Learning Objectives

identify the relationship between a potential source and the writing task

identify strategies for evaluating the rhetorical context (author, purpose, audience) of a source

identify strategies for evaluating the authority, reliability, and effectiveness of a source (the C.R.A.A.P. method)

identify strategies for comparison and synthesis between multiple sources

Good researchers and writers examine their sources critically and actively. They do not just compile and summarize these research sources in their writing, but use them to create their own ideas, theories, and, ultimately, their own, new understanding of the topic they are researching. Such an approach means not taking the information and opinions that the sources contain at face value and for granted, but to investigate, test, and even doubt every claim, every example, every story, and every conclusion.

In this section you'll learn about analyzing sources and how to utilize the C.R.A.A.P test to verify that your source is useful and relevant.

Evaluating Sources

You will need to evaluate each source you consider using by asking two questions:

Is this source trustworthy?

Is this source suitable?

Not every suitable source is trustworthy, and not every trustworthy source is suitable.

Determining Suitability

Your task as a researcher is to determine the appropriateness of the information your source contains, for your particular research project. It is a simple question, really: will this source help me answer the research questions that I am posing in my project? Will it help me learn as much as I can about my topic? Will it help me write an interesting, convincing essay for my readers?

Determining Trustworthiness

Click through the slideshow to read about techniques for analyzing sources and differentiating between popular and scholarly sources.

Tools for Evaluating Sources

Need a good way to evaluate a source? Take a look at its "craap"!

The C.R.A.A.P. method is a way to determine the validity and relevance of a source. C.R.A.A.P. stands for

C: Currency. When was the information published?

R: Relevance. How relevant to your goals is the information?

A: Authority. How well does the author of the information know the information?

A: Accuracy. How reliable is the information?

P: Purpose. Why does this information exist in this way?

If the source you're looking at is fairly current, relevant, and accurate, it's probably a good source to use. Depending on the aim of your paper, you'll be looking for an authority and purpose that are unbiased and informative.

Using Sources in Your Paper

Within the pages of your research essay, it is important to properly reference and cite your sources to avoid plagiarism and to give credit for original ideas.

There are three main ways to put a source to use in your essay: you can quote it, you can summarize it, and you can paraphrase it.

Quoting

Direct quotations are words and phrases that are taken directly from another source, and then used word-for-word in your paper. If you incorporate a direct quotation from another author's text, you must put that quotation or phrase in quotation marks to indicate that it is not your language.

When writing direct quotations, you can use the source author's name in the same sentence as the quotation to introduce the quoted text and to indicate the source in which you found the text. You should then include the page number or other relevant information in parentheses at the end of the phrase (the exact format will depend on the formatting style of your essay).

Summarizing

Summarizing involves condensing the main idea of a source into a much shorter overview. A summary outlines a source's most important points and general position. When summarizing a source, it is still necessary to use a citation to give credit to the original author. You must reference the author or source in the appropriate citation method at the end of the summary.

Paraphrasing

When paraphrasing, you may put any part of a source (such as a phrase, sentence, paragraph, or chapter) into your own words. You may find that the original source uses language that is more clear, concise, or specific than your own language, in which case you should use a direct quotation, putting quotation marks around those unique words or phrases you don't change.

It is common to use a mixture of paraphrased text and quoted words or phrases, as long as the direct quotations are inside of quotation marks.

Providing Context for Your Sources

Whether you use a direct quotation, a summary, or a paraphrase, it is important to distinguish the original source from your ideas, and to explain how the cited source fits into your argument. While the use of quotation marks or parenthetical citations tells your reader that these are not your own words or ideas, you should follow the quote with a description, in your own terms, of what the quote says and why it is relevant to the purpose of your paper. You should not let quoted or paraphrased text stand alone in your paper, but rather, should integrate the sources into your argument by providing context and explanations about how each source supports your argument.

Using Multiple Sources

Sources are a great help for understanding a topic more deeply. But what about when sources don't quite agree with one another, or challenge what you have experienced yourself?

This is where your skill of synthesis comes into play, as a writer. Synthesizing includes comparison and contrast, but also allows you to combine multiple perspectives on a topic to reach a deeper understanding.

This video explains the process of synthesis in action.

Self-Check

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identify the relationship between a potential source and the writing task identify strategies for evaluating the rhetorical context (author, purpose, audience) of a source identify strategies for evaluating the authority, reliability, and effectiveness of a source (the C.R.A.A.P. method) identify strategies for comparison and synthesis between multiple sources Good researchers and writers examine their sources critically and actively.

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Learning Objectives

identify preliminary research strategies (developing a research plan, basic online searching, using Google)

identify intermediate research strategies (advanced online searches, finding scholarly sources and primary and secondary sources, librarian consultation)

identify advanced search strategies (advanced library searches, library databases, keyword and field searches)

Introduction

There are lots of reasons to include research in an academic essay.

Reading what others have written about a topic clearly helps you become better-informed about it

Sharing what you've learned about the topic in your essay demonstrates your knowledge

Quoting or paraphrasing experts in the field establishes your own credibility as an author on the topic

Responding to what's already been said on a topic, by including your unique perspective, allows your essay to enter the broader conversation, and shape how others feel about the issue

And, the biggest motivation of all: it's a requirement for an assignment (because your instructor wants you to do all of those things above).

We've learned that the writing process is a series of flexible steps that help you break a large project into smaller, bite-size pieces. Research is also a process. It's not something that can be accomplished well in one single step, but rather done in stages, with time for reflection and analysis in between.

The first part of that process is simply knowing where to look, and that's what we'll explore in the following pages.

Preliminary Research Strategies

The first step towards writing a research paper is pretty obvious: find sources. Not everything that you find will be good, and those that are good are not always easily found. Having an idea of what you're looking for-what will most help you develop your essay and enforce your thesis-will help guide your process.

Example of a Research Process

A good research process should go through these steps:

1. Decide on the topic.

2. Narrow the topic in order to narrow search parameters.

3. Create a question that your research will address.

4. Generate sub-questions from your main question.

5. Determine what kind of sources are best for your argument.

6. Create a bibliography as you gather and reference sources.

Each of these is described in greater detail below.

Pre-Research

A research plan should begin after you can clearly identify the focus of your argument. First, inform yourself about the basics of your topic (Wikipedia and general online searches are great starting points). Be sure you've read all the assigned texts and carefully read the prompt as you gather preliminary information. This stage is sometimes called pre-research.

A broad online search will yield thousands of sources, which no one could be expected to read through. To make it easier on yourself, the next step is to narrow your focus. Think about what kind of position or stance you can take on the topic. What about it strikes you as most interesting? Refer back to the prewriting stage of the writing process, which will come in handy here.

Preliminary Search Tips

1. It is okay to start with Wikipedia as a reference, but do not use it as an official source. Look at the links and references at the bottom of the page for more ideas.

2. Use "Ctrl+F" to find certain words within a webpage in order to jump to the sections of the article that interest you.

3. Use Google Advanced Search to be more specific in your search. You can also use tricks to be more specific within the main Google Search Engine:

1. Use quotation marks to narrow your search from just tanks in WWII to "Tanks in WWII" or "Tanks" in "WWII".

2. Find specific types of websites by adding "site:.gov" or "site:.edu" or "site:.org". You can also search for specific file types like "filetype:.pdf".

4. Click on "Search Tools" under the search bar in Google and select "Any time" to see a list of options for time periods to help limit your search. You can find information just in the past month or year, or even for a custom range.

As you narrow your focus, create a list of questions that you'll need to answer in order to write a good essay on the topic. The research process will help you answer these questions.

Another part of your research plan should include the type of sources you want to gather. Keep track of these sources in a bibliography and jot down notes about the book, article, or document and how it will be useful to your essay. This will save you a lot of time later in the essay process-you'll thank yourself!

Level Up Your Google Game

10 Google Quick Tips

We all know how to Google...but we may not be getting as much out of it as we'd like. The following video walks through ten easy tips for getting you closer to what you're looking for.

Getting More Out of Google

For a visual representation of additional online search tips, click the image below.

Intermediate Search Strategies

"Popular" vs. "Scholarly" Sources

Research-based writing assignments in college will often require that you use scholarly sources in the essay. Different from the types of articles found in newspapers or general-interest magazines, scholarly sources have a few distinguishing characteristics.

Popular Source

Scholarly Source

Intended Audience

Broad: readers are not expected to know much about the topic already

Narrow: readers are expected to be familiar with the topic before-hand

Author

Journalist: may have a broad area of specialization (war correspondent, media critic)

Subject Matter Expert: often has a degree in the subject and/or extensive experience on the topic

Research

Includes quotes from interviews. No bibliography.

Includes summaries, paraphrases, and quotations from previous writing done on the subject. Footnotes and citations. Ends with bibliography.

Publication Standards

Article is reviewed by editor and proofreader

Article has gone through a peer-review process, where experts on the field have given input before publication

Where to Find Scholarly Sources

The first step in finding scholarly resources is to look in the right place. Sites like Google, Yahoo, and Wikipedia may be good for popular sources, but if you want something you can cite in a scholarly paper, you need to find it from a scholarly database.

Two common scholarly databases are Academic Search Premier and ProQuest, though many others are also available that focus on specific topics. Your school library pays to subscribe to these databases, to make them available for you to use as a student.

You have another incredible resource at your fingertips: your college's librarians! For help locating resources, you will find that librarians are extremely knowledgeable and may help you uncover sources you would never have found on your own-maybe your school has a microfilm collection, an extensive genealogy database, or access to another library's catalog. You will not know unless you utilize the valuable skills available to you, so be sure to find out how to get in touch with a research librarian for support!

Primary and Secondary Sources

A primary source is an original document. Primary sources can come in many different forms. In an English paper, a primary source might be the poem, play, or novel you are studying. In a history paper, it may be a historical document such as a letter, a journal, a map, the transcription of a news broadcast, or the original results of a study conducted during the time period under review. If you conduct your own field research, such as surveys, interviews, or experiments, your results would also be considered a primary source. Primary sources are valuable because they provide the researcher with the information closest to the time period or topic at hand. They also allow the writer to conduct an original analysis of the source and to draw new conclusions.

Secondary sources, by contrast, are books and articles that analyze primary sources. They are valuable because they provide other scholars' perspectives on primary sources. You can also analyze them to see if you agree with their conclusions or not.

Most college essays will use a combination of primary and secondary sources.

Google Scholar

An increasingly popular article database is Google Scholar. It looks like a regular Google search, and it aims to include the vast majority of scholarly resources available. While it has some limitations (like not including a list of which journals they include), it's a very useful tool if you want to cast a wide net.

Here are three tips for using Google Scholar effectively:

1. Add your topic field (economics, psychology, French, etc.) as one of your keywords. If you just put in "crime," for example, Google Scholar will return all sorts of stuff from sociology, psychology, geography, and history. If your paper is on crime in French literature, your best sources may be buried under thousands of papers from other disciplines. A set of search terms like "crime French literature modern" will get you to relevant sources much faster.

2. Don't ever pay for an article. When you click on links to articles in Google Scholar, you may end up on a publisher's site that tells you that you can download the article for $20 or $30. Don't do it! You probably have access to virtually all the published academic literature through your library resources. Write down the key information (authors' names, title, journal title, volume, issue number, year, page numbers) and go find the article through your library website. If you don't have immediate full-text access, you may be able to get it through inter-library loan.

3. Use the "cited by" feature. If you get one great hit on Google Scholar, you can quickly see a list of other papers that cited it. For example, the search terms "crime economics" yielded this hit for a 1988 paper that appeared in a journal called Kyklos:

Using Google Scholar

Watch this video to get a better idea of how to utilize Google Scholar for finding articles. While this video shows specifics for setting up an account with Eastern Michigan University, the same principles apply to other colleges and universities. Ask your librarian if you have more questions.

Advanced Search Strategies

As we learned earlier, the strongest articles to support your academic writing projects will come from scholarly sources. Finding exactly what you need becomes specialized at this point, and requires a new set of searching strategies beyond even Google Scholar.

For this kind of research, you'll want to utilize library databases, as this video explains.

Many journals are sponsored by academic associations. Most of your professors belong to some big, general one (such as the Modern Language Association, the American Psychological Association, or the American Physical Society) and one or more smaller ones organized around particular areas of interest and expertise (such as the Association for the Study of Food and Society and the International Association for Statistical Computing).

Finding articles in databases

Your campus library invests a lot of time and care into making sure you have access to the sources you need for your writing projects. Many libraries have online research guides that point you to the best databases for the specific discipline and, perhaps, the specific course. Librarians are eager to help you succeed with your research-it's their job and they love it!-so don't be shy about asking.

The following video demonstrates how to search within a library database. While the examples are specific to Northern Virginia Community College, the same general search tips apply to nearly all academic databases. On your school's library homepage, you should be able to find a general search button and an alphabetized list of databases. Get familiar with your own school's library homepage to identify the general search features, find databases, and practice searching for specific articles.

How to Search in a Database

Scholarly databases like the ones your library subscribes to work differently than search engines like Google and Yahoo because they offer sophisticated tools and techniques for searching that can improve your results.

Databases may look different but they can all be used in similar ways. Most databases can be searched using keywords or fields. In a keyword search, you want to search for the main concepts or synonyms of your keywords. A field is a specific part of a record in a database. Common fields that can be searched are author, title, subject, or abstract. If you already know the author of a specific article, entering their "Last Name, First Name" in the author field will pull more relevant records than a keyword search. This will ensure all results are articles written by the author and not articles about that author or with that author's name. For example, a keyword search for "Albert Einstein" will search anywhere in the record for Albert Einstein and reveal 12, 719 results. Instead, a field search for Author: "Einstein, Albert" will show 54 results, all written by Albert Einstein.

Learn More

This short video demonstrates how to perform a title search within the popular EBSCO database, Academic Search Complete.

Practice: Keyword Search

1. Identify the keywords in the following research question: "How does repeated pesticide use in agriculture impact soil and groundwater pollution?"

2. When you search, it's helpful to think of synonyms for your keywords to examine various results. What synonyms can you think of for the keywords identified in the question above?

Sometimes you already have a citation (maybe you found it on Google Scholar or saw it linked through another source), but want to find the article. Everything you need to locate your article is already found in the citation.

Many databases, including the library catalog, offer tools to help you narrow or expand your search. Take advantage of these. The most common tools are Boolean searching and truncation.

Boolean Searching

Boolean searching allows you to use AND, OR, and NOT to combine your search terms. Here are some examples:

1. "Endangered Species" AND "Global Warming" When you combine search terms with AND, you'll get results in which BOTH terms are present. Using AND limits the number of results because all search terms must appear in your results.

2. "Arizona Prisons" OR "Rhode Island Prisons" When you use OR, you'll get results with EITHER search term. Using OR increases the number of results because either search term can appear in your results.

3. "Miami Dolphins" NOT "Football" When you use NOT, you'll get results that exclude a search term. Using NOT limits the number of results.

Truncation

Truncation allows you to search different forms of the same word at the same time. Use the root of a word and add an asterisk (*) as a substitute for the word's ending. It can save time and increase your search to include related words. For example, a search for "Psycho*" would pull results on psychology, psychological, psychologist, psychosis, and psychoanalyst.

Self-Check

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identify preliminary research strategies (developing a research plan, basic online searching, using Google) identify intermediate research strategies (advanced online searches, finding scholarly sources and primary and secondary sources, librarian consultation) identify advanced search strategies (advanced library searches, library databases, keyword and field searches) There are lots of reasons to include research in an academic essay.

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LibGuides: IB Extended Essay: Reflections

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LibGuides: IB Extended Essay: Reflections

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Make your own copy of this spreadsheet to help you keep track of your background reading and research

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Make your own copy of this spreadsheet to help you keep track of your background reading and research

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How to answer a 'to what extent' question

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How to answer a 'to what extent' question

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Sometimes, the question itself will provide you with the two elements that it wants you to compare. For example:

"To what degree was political ideology more important in Hitler's rise to power than the economic conditions in Germany in the early 1930s?"

As you can see in this "to what degree" question, it is asking you to decide whether "political ideology" was "more important" than "the economic conditions in Germany in the early 1930s". Therefore, in your answer to this question, you need to clearly state which you think was "more important".

Here is another example:

"To what extent did the Black Death in 14th century Europe decrease the papacy's cultural influence in comparison to the political scandals within the curia?"

Once more, it is easy to identify what you are being asked to decide between: whether "the Black Death in 14th century Europe" or "the political scandals within the curia" was more important in causing the decline of "the papacy's cultural influence".

However, sometimes an essay question will only give you one factor, in which case you will need to choose the second factor to compare it against.

For example

"To what degree was Julius Caesar's assassination the result of his own hubris?"

In this example, the question only gives you "his own hubris" as one important element. Therefore, you will need to decide, based upon your own historical knowledge and the sources supplied, something else to compare it against.

It is still important, though, that you still come to a conclusion about which of the two elements was the most important.

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How to answer a "to what degree/extent" essay question

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One of the most popular question types to appear on History assessment tasks is one that starts with the phrase, "To what extent/degree...". Despite the fact that it appears so frequently, particularly on exam papers, some teachers and students are not sure how to correctly write a response to it.

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Literature review (evaluative summary of your research)

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Literature review (evaluative summary of your research)

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Consider the following when developing a research question:

Is it an open-ended question?​

Is it appropriate in scope? Focused and narrow enough for your project or paper?

Does it suggest factors that can be measured?​

​Is it relevant to my audience?

Is answering the question manageable, and can I find and access enough documents, statistics, or persons to provide information to develop and support my ideas?​

Is the topic of interest to me?​

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UMGC Library: Research Tutorial: Checklist

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UMGC Library: Research Tutorial: Checklist

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activity 2.3 - good or bad research questions

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Activity 2.3 - Good or Bad Research Questions

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