Writing a Paper for Me

The ability to efficiently, effectively plan, do, evaluate, and communicate the results of research is a skill that most of you will need both professionally and personally for the rest of your life. The college graduate's ability to isolate and focus on a problem or issue, and then plan, do, and evaluate research in such a way as to more clearly understand the problem and, hopefully, find a credible solution is a skill that goes a long way to explaining that million dollar difference in lifetime expected earnings between high school and college graduates.

Remember, all research is not created equal. Just because research is done does not necessarily mean that it is good research or that its conclusions are valid. We need to be canny consumers of information.

Kinds of research and sources: There are three basic kinds of data sources, and their information and applicability vary by distance. If you were doing a paper on the emotional effects of job loss, talking to someone who just lost their job would be about as close to your topic as you could get. That's what we mean by distance. The closest sort of research is called primary. It will get you some things that no other kind of research can, and one of those is a sense of immediacy. But, not all problems are best served by immediacy. Say I want to know strategy for drinking a fairly large amount of alcohol is least likely to give me a bad hangover after a party. My friend swears by the following: induce vomiting by eating a spoon full of mustard to get rid of the alcohol, have a glass of water, and then sleep it off. Pop a couple of Tylenol in the morning. Hmmm. Will that work? Is there a better (or even a best way)?

Primary research: This reports on actual research the researcher(s) do, not that written by others that they find in books, articles, and such. A key performance area in primary research is a clear statement of methodology. There may be an appendix discussing the questions asked in a survey, the way the research sample was selected, or even providing a reproduction of such things as questionnaires. Why? Good research is as transparent as possible, making it reproducible. The big question is this: if I do the same things in the same way with essentially the same subject group, do I get the same result? Research that cannot be reproduced also cannot be taken seriously.

Example: I might want to interview people at the party, asking each what to drink in order to minimize the hangover, but you know they're not only drunk as skunks in May themselves (unreliable sources), but haven't personally tried all possible alcoholic beverages, subject to different preferences and tastes, and come in a wide variety of physical types.
Questions researchers have to consider: As I set up primary research, I'd need to do a literature search to see what other research has been done in the field. I'd need to consider how I set up my research sample, what questions I put in my the questionnaire and why, how I select my respondents, how I assess my data, and such.

Secondary research: This reports on the research done by others that I read. Secondary research occurs when a project requires a summary or collection of existing data. As opposed to data collected directly from respondents or "research subjects" for the express purposes of a project, (often called "empirical" or "primary research"), secondary sources already exist. These secondary sources could include previous research reports, newspaper, magazine and journal content, and government and NGO statistics. Sometimes secondary research is required in the preliminary stages of research to determine what is known already and what new data is required, or to inform research design. At other times, it may make be the only research technique used. A key performance area in secondary research is the full citation of original sources, usually in the form of a complete listing or annotated listing. Where do I go to find such resources? Well, of course you can google key words, but that's not always the best way to seek good information. Example:

I Google this: best drinks to minimize hangover and get 101,000 hits. Sigh. I want to have this evening out some time this century. So, I go on Yahoo Answers and check out a similar question posed by 'Trixie' and 16 people's responses to her survey question indicating what the best drinking strategy is according to each. But, why should I trust them (or Trixie)? That was primary research for Trixie, but it was secondary research for me when I read about it.
Because Trixie's not all that useful, I keep at it, and find lower down in my good search a piece by Jon Bonné of MSNBC updated 8:59 a.m. ET, Thurs., Dec. 30, 2004 called "Happy New Year! (Ooooo, not so loud) From ‘hair of the dog’ to vitamins, methods to minimize your hangover." She reports on some calls she's made while putting together her article (her primary research) as well as some articles she's chosen (secondary research) by a variety of folks, some of whom are serious researchers on various aspects of the subject. However, she provides no bibliography, nor does she clearly differentiate between the guy who swears by his wife's shiatsu massage, the researcher at Tulane who feeds her subjects prickly pear cactus juice, and the researcher at the University of Florida who reports that acetaminophen can cause liver damage when frequently mixed with alcohol Interesting, but not conclusive or even highly value added.
Google Scholar: Still not really high quality information, and I'm not about to trust my tender head, stomach, and liver to our friend Jon Bonné at MSNBC, so I go to Google Scholar next. Here, I set Google Scholar Preferences. Don't know how? Do the three part Jing Tutorial on using Google Scholar.
Back at Google Scholar, having set things up correctly, I type in minimize hangover and get 2890 entries in English. That's still high, but a huge improvement over 101,000. I think I can improve on that by changing the search terms, though, so I type in best way to minimize alcohol hangover, and now am down to 987 articles. Some of them are kind of old, though, so I go to the top of the page and click on Advanced Scholar Search and tell it to search only on articles since 1990. That might be helpful, but if it isn't, I can always get rid of that constraint on the search. That done, I'm down to 746 articles, so I scan through the first few and come upon this: "Alcohol skills training for college students." by E.T. Miller, J.R. Kilmer, E.L. Kim, and K.R. Weingardt, found in the book Adolescents, Alcohol, and Substance Abuse By Peter M. Monti, Suzanne M. Colby, Tracy A. O'Leary. It's searchable, so I do that. They seem not to have a perfect answer, but they do tell me one useful thing: upchucking won't help, or at least not much (p. 194).

Clearly, that's not the end of my search, which would probably take several more articles and perhaps has no perfect answer beyond abstinence, but at least I have some useful data. I realize that there's not a perfect answer, but at least I'll not be chugging mustard and puking my guts out, nor will I be popping painkillers likely to do even more damage to my much put upon liver.

I now know the difference between Google and Google Scholar, and how to effectively use the latter. Note: when you choose a source on Google Scholar, you may be asked for your library bar code. No problem! I have that number stored in a safe place on my home 'puter (I'd never store it on a public computer) so that I can quickly copy/paste it when asked.
Subject Indices: Don't want to use Google Scholar? Can't focus as you'd like? No problem. Go to Ganser Library physically or online and use their subject or general indexes. It's important to select the right one. It would be silly to try to pull up a science-health article on Lexis-Nexis rather than MedLIne or Biological Abstracts, for example. From there, I can often find what I want. As when I try to pull an article up on Google Scholar using Find it At Millersville, off campus it's going to ask for my library bar code and last name. Then, it'll help me find articles and either make them available to me or send me along to Interlibrary Loan (ILL). These days, ILL can get an article to me in very short order, often by way of my email in 24 hours. There is no single perfect index for most needs, let alone all of them. Linguistics is particularly problematic because it brings together a wide variety of experts and expertise. Examples:
- Academic Search Complete is a comprehensive scholarly multi-disciplinary full-text database, with more than 5,300 full-text periodicals, including 4,400 peer-reviewed journals. In addition to full text, this database offers indexing and abstracts for more than 9,300 journals and a total of 9,810 publications including monographs, reports, conference proceedings, etc. The database features PDF content going back as far as 1865, with the majority of full text titles in native (searchable) PDF format. Searchable cited references are provided for nearly 1,000 journals. As when I try to pull an article up on Google Scholar using Find it At Millersville, off campus it's going to ask for my library bar code and last name. Then, it'll help me find articles and either make them available to me or send me along to Interlibrary Loan (ILL). These days, ILL can get an article to me in very short order, often by way of my email in 24 hours.
- MLA International Bibliography covers living Languages, Literature, and Linguistics. The MLA International Bibliography consists of bibliographic records pertaining to literature, language, linguistics, and folklore. It provides access to scholarly research in over 3,000 journals and series. It also covers relevant monographs, working papers, proceedings, bibliographies, and other formats.
- Biological Abstracts and BioOne Abstracts and Indices do the same kind of thing in Biology.
- MEDLINE with Full Text and links to Full Text Comprehensive MEDLINE with FullTEXT provides authoritative medical information on medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, pre-clinical sciences, and much more. This database contains full text articles from nearly 80 leading medical journals. Comprehensive MEDLINE with FullTEXT with MeSH includes the entire MEDLINE collection and uses MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) indexing with tree numbers, tree hierarchy and explosion capabilities to search abstracts from current biomedical journals, citations from Index Medicus, the International Nursing Index, and the Index to Dental Literature.

Tertiary research: This is a compilation, or (usually brief) summary of secondary research. We find it in encyclopedias (including Wikipedia), dictionaries, bibliographies, indexes, and such. Some definitions of Tertiary Sources:

works which list primary and secondary resources in a specific subject area
works which index, organize and compile citations to, and show you how to use, secondary (and sometimes primary) sources.
materials in which the information from secondary sources has been "digested" - reformatted and condensed, to put it into a convenient, easy-to-read form.

As you can see, these are sources which are once removed in time from secondary sources. Some examples of tertiary sources:

almanacs and fact books
bibliographies (may also be secondary)
chronologies
dictionaries and encyclopedias (may also be secondary)
directories
guidebooks, manuals etc
handbooks and data compilations (may also be secondary)
indexing and abstracting tools used to locate primary & secondary sources (may also be secondary)
textbooks (may also be secondary)

Examples of Primary, Secondary & Tertiary Sources

Discipline

Primary Source

Secondary Source

Tertiary Source

Art Original artwork Article critiquing the piece of art Art Index

Engineering Patent Derwent Patents index Guide to using patent literature

History Explorer's Diary Book about exploration APAIS

Literature Poem Treatise on a particular genre of poetry MLA Bibliography

Psychology Notes taken by a clinical psychologist Monograph on the condition Dictionary of psychology

Science Journal article reporting original coral research
1.Biological Abstracts

1. High school textbook entry on coral

2. Review of recent coral research 2. Encyclopedia article on coral

Theatre Videotape of a performance Biography of a playwright Chronology of the play

2002; Last revised July 14, 2008
Dr. Bonnie Duncan
bduncan@millersville.edu
1-717-871-2080
English Department
Millersville University
Millersville, PA 17551

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