RES 500 OL - Research Strategies

RESEARCH METHODOLOGIES

A component of DMN 905 (Learning through Ministry Practice) prepared by William Badke (REVISED August 2011)

ASSIGNMENT FOUR

Background to Assignment #3

These days, there is almost no research that you can perform without computer databases. That is why this course places so much emphasis on database searching techniques. But we also need to work on evaluation of resources we do find.

During Assignment #4, you will be asked to evaluate three websites, use an academic Internet search engine (Google Scholar), and to do a search in ERIC (an education database)1. Evaluation

The task of evaluating information properly is becoming increasingly important as traditional patterns of publishing through the use of gatekeepers (editors, peer review) are being supplemented by massive amounts of information production that is not checked for accuracy/ quality by anyone except the authors of such information. This, of course, has been spawned by the Internet, but it is also found in newer trends of book self-publishing using print on demand technology that is much cheaper than the more limiting "books in my basement" approach of the old vanity presses.

Evaluation involves determining if the information you have encountered is reliable, useful, pertinent and so on. There are several websites that provide helpful information on evaluation of material from the Internet and other sources. Here are a few of them:

http://lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/evalcrit.html (Evaluation Criteria from The Good, the
Bad and the Ugly)

http://www.virtualsalt.co/evalu8it.html (Evaluating Internet Research Sources - The CARS Checklist)

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Evaluate.html (Evaluating Web Pages)

2. Google Scholar (access through TWU library home page)

Google Scholar (still in Beta test mode) is a special Google-driven database of "academic"
material in electronic form. The types of resources it finds include citations to books, citations
to (and sometimes full text of) published journal articles, conference proceedings, academic
websites, and so on. We are including it in the course for a few reasons:

   a. It is a "port in the storm" if you want to search for academic information but do not have
access to library databases;
    b. It provides an opportunity to work with a database that is different from those provided in
libraries:
    c. It demonstrates the advantages of search interfaces that have sophisticated features (like
subject headings) as opposed to the rather limited search options available in most open web
databases like this one.

Types of citations include:

[Book] - Citation for a book related to your search terms, e.g.

Google Scholar Image

Article - Usually not designated as an article. Generally from a journal, but sometimes from
some other source or an unpublished work, e.g.:

Three Variant Readings in Luke-Acts
P Parker - Journal of Biblical Literature, 1964 - JSTOR
... of the vine, until until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God the kingdom of God.
shall come. s For some other examples, see Pierson Parker, "Luke and the ...
Cited by 3 - Related Articles - Web Search

Conference Proceeding Paper - Usually not designated as such, but the citation indicates that it comes from a conference, e.g.:

Google Scholar Image 2

[Citation] - A reference to a book or article within a piece of scholarly writing, e.g.

Google Scholar Image 3
For this one, clicking on Web Search will lead you to other sources that have also cited this work, and perhaps will provide the work itself.

Google Scholar has an advanced search feature (as does regular Google) that enables you to formulate Boolean searches more easily. There is no sorting option for results, so results will be a mix of references to books, articles and websites. There is no way to rank them by date.

Note that you might find a lot of citations only to get the message that full text is not available. This is why you need to log in to Google Scholar through our library home page. Doing so connects GS with our journal list so that you can pick up full text articles when they are available.

To enable links to our library journals, go into "Scholar Preferences" and type in Trinity Western University in the Library Links portion. You will then get a box you can check off:

You can configure Google Scholar to allow download of citations to RefWorks. Click on "Scholar
Preferences" then scroll down to "Bibliography Manager." Choose the download button and select
RefWorks. Then click on the "Save Preferences" button.

Here is a screen shot of Google Scholar results. You will notice a PDF document, a book, and an
article from a journal. In this case, the article is not available from this website, but there is a
"Check TWU Library" link that will take you to our full text of the article. This feature is only
available if you log into Google Scholar through the library home page.

3. ERIC

Research Strategies, pp. 122-124, gives you a brief introduction to the ERIC database, which is centered in education but branches out to most of the social sciences. Read the introduction well.

Note that ERIC contains both ERIC documents (designated by numbers that begin with ED, as in ED376493) and ERIC journals (designated by numbers that begin with EJ, as in EJ873467). For ERIC journals, you will generally have to "Check for availability at TWU" links or use our Journal List to see if and where it is available in our collection. For ERIC documents, full text from 1993 on both in the library's EBSCO interface and in the public online edition of ERIC.

Some cautions on ERIC full text:

It is available only for ERIC Documents (ED, etc.), not journals (EJ), 1993 to present. Some documents may be over 100 pages long. Since the format used is PDF (requiring Adobe Acrobat to open), you may have quite a job downloading a document if your Internet connection is slow.

If you cannot access the TWU library EBSCO version, ERIC, with full text, is searchable athttp://www.eric.ed.gov. The EBSCO interface at TWU, however, is better. Locate it under the "Education" link at http://www.twu.ca/library/perindex.html

RefWorks has trouble formatting ERIC documents in Turabian or APA format. In particular, RefWorks drops the crucial ERIC identification number (ED+number). For your information, the following are the correct formats:

ERIC Format

NOTE: ERIC documents tend to relate to the social sciences. Thus the topics you are doing for assignments may not be relevant for an ERIC search.

Assignment #4

Read Research Strategies p.96-119, 122-124, 142-143 http://www.virtualsalt.com/evalu8it.htm (Evaluating Internet Research Sources - The CARS Checklist)

1. State your research question.

2. The following sites all relate to the Kingdom of God. Do the evaluations indicated:

http://www.ucg.org - This is an organization that proclaims the Kingdom of God.

a. When did the organization begin?
b. Is there anything about their belief structure that would cause you to wonder about their theology?
c. Have a look at their history (including the history of their elders). What tradition did they come from? Note that you will definitely have to go beyond this group's website to get the answer to this question. This is a difficult one, so do some deep digging. (Hint: the Worldwide Church of God is now Grace
Communion International. Its website may be helpful).
d. If someone were to ask for your evaluation of this organization, what would you tell that person?

http://www.gotquestions.org/kingdom-of-God.html - This is a site that answers religious questions.

a. What are the qualifications of the people answering questions on this site?
b. Who are they?
c. Can you find names, credentials, etc.?
d. What evidences of scholarship do you find on this site?
e. Is their site recognized for tax exempt donation status by the Internal Revenue Service? Would this matter in judging their quality?
f. If someone wanted to use this site as a source of reliable and accurate answers for biblical/theological questions, what recommendation would you give?

http://www.bible.org/page.asp?page_id=2583 – A study by Dr. Allen Ross

a. What are Dr. Ross’s credentials and how credible are they?
b. What signs of scholarship are in this work, and how credible do they look?
c. What is this page part of?
d. Evaluate this site overall on its ability to provide scholarly information.

3. Do a search for journal articles, academic papers or conference proceedings papers (not books or other types of websites) on your research question in Google Scholar, logging into it through the library home page and setting it up in Scholar Preferences to link to our library (very important).

Your results should be a list of 10 articles.

a. List the search terms you used (in the form you used them)
b. Provide citations for 10 articles that you think are relevant, indicating author, title, journal title, volume number, date and page numbers. You must be sure that these are either journal articles or scholarly papers (e.g. from the proceedings of a conference or an unpublished paper), not citations to books.
c. Indicate which articles are available full text directly from Google Scholar, which are available through the "Check TWU Library" link, and which are not available through either.

You will be graded on wise choice of search terms and on how relevant the articles are to your research questions.

Be sure you log in to Google Scholar through the library home page. You can configure Google Scholar (under "Scholar Preferences") to download to RefWorks.

If you cannot locate 10 articles for your topic with Google Scholar, be sure you include all your search terms in your assignment, and indicate what you think the problem was.

4. ERIC:

DON'T FORGET: If your topic is not relevant to the educational/social science emphasis of ERIC, then do a search on ERIC using a more suitable topic - e.g. Teenage Pregnancy, Gangs, Learning Disabilities, etc. But make sure you search narrowly and use subject headings. A search on "learning disabilities" is much too broad to be of much help unless it is narrowed.

a. Do a search related to your research question (unless it is not relevant, in which case you will need to choose a new topic) on the ERIC database:

But before you do, evaluate your topics. Is it relevant for an ERIC search? Why or Why not?

You will find ERIC on the EBSCO platform through the"Education" subject area at http://www.twu.ca/library/perindex.html. If you cannot get access to TWU's version of ERIC, use ERIC's own online version at http://www.eric.ed.gov/. TWU's version of ERIC on the EBSCO platform is preferred, however.

Make use of the "Narrow by subject" option to the left of the results list (EBSCO platform only). If a relevant subject is not there, find an ERIC document in your results that is relevant, open the full record, and click on a relevant subject heading. You can also click on "Thesaurus," and input subject words in the "browse" box to search on them. Remove subheading dashes.

b. Note down the search terms you used, and in what combination if you used more than one.

c. List 10 relevant citations to ERIC documents (not ERIC journals for this search) including relevant bibliographical information and ERIC identification numbers.

Use RefWorks to store your citations if at all possible. Note the formatting problem for ERIC documents in Refworks (described in background above).

Rubric for Assignment Four. Highest grade meets these criteria:

Identifies the crucial issues necessary for properly evaluating each Internet site (question 2.)
Provides fair, informed evaluation of each site.
Competent search terms and relevant results when searching Google Scholar. Identifies full text
Identifies topics that are fully relevant for ERIC
Creative terminology, including controlled vocabulary if available, in ERIC searches
ERIC Document results are on target to address the research question

To Assignment #5 (Last updated: October 26, 2011)