Research Skills and Referencing

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1. Introduction
• Assessments require you to undertake critical thinking, this means you must develop arguments. • However the development of any argument requires supporting evidence. • Evidence is collected together through the process of topic research.
• Journals
– Jones C. (1980) ‘The Welfare of the French Footsoldier’ History 65. (no. 214), 193-213
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Other
• Material cited within another text where you have not quoted the original source.
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Source Materials
• Use signposts provided within texts to help verify source coverage, these pointers are in:
– – – – – – Contents pages; Chapter headings; Indexes; Summaries; Abstracts; Publication dates.
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Classroom Activity
• Suggest suitable keyword search terms for these examples:
– 1) The staff at South School is concerned about the possible misuse of computers by students. – 2) A citizen of San Francisco wishes to find out more about the possibility of local earthquakes.
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5. Referencing
• The purpose of referencing is to give credit to the author of the work that you used for evidence when developing your arguments. • This referenced information must be sufficiently accurate to enable the reader of your work to find the sources that you used.
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Internet Search Log
Use the Excel ‘sort’ command to sort your information.
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3. Research Techniques & Sources
• Many of us when given a piece of work to do, may think we know the answer and leap in immediately, trying to answer the question then realise we need to find out more supportive information. • Planning is needed, but this may not conform to a set model, see>>>>>
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Keeping Track
• Keep a research journal/ search log for each piece of work tackled. Keep a note of all sources used, including authors, book titles, website addresses, page numbers etc. See next slide. • Keep your notes collated together for each assignment.
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2. Resources
• Find out about the resources that are available to you. • These will be in the form of Libraries, many of these are now on-line, all have books, journals, newspapers etc. • Local authority libraries are another good information source, but can appear to be limited. The answer is to ask the librarian for help .
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4. Keywords.
• Use keyword searching to narrow down a complex search topic. • Use subject searching for a broad subject search. • Keywords are the trigger to a search process; the words used are those that best describe the topic.
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A subject development model
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Assess Expected Outcomes
• Are you writing an essay, a report or giving a presentation? How long is it expected to be in words or duration? • Use these answers to assess how much time to spend on researching each element of your work.
Research Skills and Referencing
Section 1.4 -2006 #1
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Contents
• In this session you will be covering the following topics:
1. Introduction; 2. Resources;
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Include These
• • • • • • • • • Name and initials of author(s) Title in full Year of publication Name and number of any journal Edition if relevant Location of publisher Name of publisher Page numbers where needed Full Internet web addresses
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The Process
• The previous linear flow chart of the steps that might be followed may not be appropriate. • Because it is quite possible to cover these processes in any order, and repeatedly until our research is completed. • Generally the process is more like a spiral that goes round, back and forwards, or linking in and out.
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Reference Lists
• Books
– Cottrell S. The Study Skills Handbook. 1999. Basingstoke: Palgrave – Payne E. & Whittaker L. Developing Essential Study Skills. 2000. Harlow: Pearson Education Ltd.
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Other available resources
• On-line access to all of the above, also specialist sources. • But it is essential to learn how to use the systems to your best advantage. • The Internet – do on-line tutorial to improve discriminate use, such as the Internet Detective • Anything else around you – news programmes, videos etc. all can be good sources.
• Using references is essential and will improve the quality of your work. As Stella Cottrell (1999, p.124) points out, ‘a few words, carefully chosen, make the most powerful quotations and demonstrate that you can select appropriately’.