Journal 3

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Conrad Keezer's Journal entry number 3, week of September 14-21, 2009

Chapter 21, finding and evaluating sources.

First off, perhaps the best way to compose and argue a thesis is to formulate a research question. Picking specific items, instead of broad terms is important. For example, choosing to do a paper on "Health care" could be too broad a subject to write an effective paper addressing a certain issue. However, using a subcategory of the contemporary health care debate, one could choose "would government involvement in the health insurance industry be beneficial?"

Once you have chosen your topic question, the next step should be to find information relevant to your subject. For the health care debate, information that is more current would be more relevant than information that is out of date. Also, information on such a subject should include studies done on the effectiveness of Government involvement in other areas, and the effects of free-market prevalence in others.

Now, the most important part in research is to determine the authenticity of your sources. Questions you should ask yourself are, "What is the potential bias of my source?" "Do they have something to gain/lose in this debate?" "What is their motivation in this issue?". Bias, and motive are two things to consider in evaluating a source of information.

Also, another thing to look for, is how professionally accurate is your source? Is it from a popular magazine, that is documented in a more informal style and might not have very stringent guidelines on determining the factuality of information? A tabloid magazine that features articles about Elvis Presley sightings obviously would not be considered legitimate enough for a research paper on health insurance. The best sources of information would be scholarly journals and research papers, followed by Newspapers and news agencies that take painstaking work to verify their sources.

There are five good criteria that should be used when evaluating a source. One, Authority; the ability to clearly tell who created the site, and is responsible for the contents. Two, Advocacy: the site states its position on a particular matter clearly. Three, Coverage: The site will most probably be filtered to support its position in the best possible way. Four, Accuracy: you need to check the facts against other sources. Five, Currency: How current are the articles? Do they have the most recent information on the subject?

In closing, the Web can give a vast amount of research information on an unprecedented scale. However, this information must always be taken with a grain of salt. One has to always carefully analyze the information at hand, and determine what is factual, and what is questionable.