Unit 4: Scrutinizing the Purpose of the [Secondary] Research
20 Should You Believe It?
This is what we’ve been leading to in Part 1, peeps. The foundation of critical information consumers. Additionally, you now have all the building blocks to really start working on your Deconstruction Research in Journalism: Should You Believe it Project.
Learning Objectives
How do you properly evaluate a source?
Should You Believe It?
Evaluating Information: Ask yourself these questions…
In this course it is very important to be able to evaluate a source as reliable or unreliable. Provided that you have not discounted the information because you recognize it as a faulty everyday way of knowing (because we know those have problems!), below are a list of questions you should ask yourself to determine if it is valuable.
- Is the research cited primary or secondary?
- You can determine this by deciding if it is a collection of information (like a textbook) or a direct source (like a peer-reviewed research article you got from the University of Iowa Database). Be especially wary if is it a blog based on the author’s secondary research. This is actually just the author’s opinion.
- Is it an academic or commercial source?
- An example of commercial source:
- Companies such as Dove perform proprietary research. This research can be biased as it is performed by the company for their own purposes.
- An academic source would be used for scientific or scholarly purposes.
- An example of commercial source:
- Is it the OG original or is it a translation?
- Make sure that you always get back to original published research, not only a version of the research that has been re-written for easier public consumption.
- Is it sound? What is the reputation of the publication?
- The research should be peer-reviewed and come from a reputable source. Some publications are “predatory” – meaning they look reputable, but are actually biased and trying to influence public opinion in some way. It is important to look out for these types of journals and get your research from publication with a good track record.
- Is it recent/up-to-date?
- Old research may no longer be correct. For example, if a researcher did a study about how many books University of Iowa students read on average, but it was done in 1990, the information is most likely out of date.
- What is the author’s background/ qualifications?
- Are they reputable? Do they have qualifications from a good university?
Next Up:
Prepare Thee for Exam 1!
…Unit 1…Unit 2….Unit 3…Unit 4…Unit 5…Unit 6…Unit 7…Unit 8…Unit 9…Unit 10…Unit 11…Unit 12…Unit 13…Unit 14…Unit 15…Unit 16…
Unit 4: Scrutinizing the Purpose of the [Secondary] Research