The chapter talked about ways to gather information. There is primary and secondary information. Primary information is information coming straight from the source, like in an interview. Secondary information would be if you wrote a paper based on that interview, that paper would be secondary information since it would have gone through you.
The chapter then talked about different ways of collecting information. The first way was from print and electronic resources, these include Internet sites or library sites like the one that MSU has. There are also government web sites that are created by the government. These are good sources because the government is required by law to post many of their records as public record.
The second way the chapter discussed was internal records. These are records about a company or corporation that a company must keep about itself, like a memo. The problem with this source is the information has to be deciphered and then decide if your information is relevant.
The third way is through corporate libraries, these are resource libraries kept for a companies employees. The library is run by a librarian that saves time and money for the company by looking up information for employees and giving them the information.
The fourth way was personal observations. These should be given by an expert in the field. For example a chemist should explain why a chemical reaction occurred rather than a person with no experience. This also includes your hands-on experiences. The largest problem with this information is that its not always credible. Two people can experience the same event, but interpret them happening differently.
The fifth way is through interviews or letters of inquiry. An interview is conducted face-to-face, over the phone or via email. Its best to have your questions ready before you arrive or start the interview. There are two types of questions; convergent (only one right answer) and divergent (open ended essay questions). You should always send a thank you letter after the completion of the interview or after a response is received from your letter of inquiry.
The sixth way is through surveys and polls. This information is good for getting statistical information about a large group of people. The problem is you need to get a good sample in order to get valuable information. If you are looking for views about a fishing lure. You would not get valuable information by polling 5 year old children. Or if you ask how they like the lure if none of them have tried it. There are different types of questions, you can ask yes or no questions, short answer (fill in the blank an example would be age), essay questions, ask them to rate things on a scale, or to rank a list per your criteria.
Lastly you can gather information through empirical research. Empirical refers to your senses, so this includes and experiment where you try to observe a pattern or prove your hypothesis. You must take notes and interpret these findings. The problem with this method of collecting data is that it is sometimes difficult to report your findings impartially rather than report your findings to "fit" the hypothesis you are trying to prove.
The last thing the chapter talked about was ways to use these sources ethically. You must make sure you are getting your information from a credible source, Meaning not from a blog usually. Also it touched on ways to avoid plagiarism, including ways to not plagiarise a summary. That is by writing it with the book closed.
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I am currently taking a Research Methods & Design class for psychology and basically the entire class is devoted to thoroughly learning the process of successfully researching specific information. In lecture, we just recently talked about primary and secondary sources and learned when to use each one appropriately as well as how to properly cite them according to APA guidelines. Currently we are compiling a number of questions to put together in a survey to try and collect data relevant to college students. Throughout the semester I know we will be collecting various data and acquiring specific information that is applicable to our experiments and research.
This chapter is really important so that you know the best places to get credible, good information. Anybody can claim something, but without sources to back their claim up, it doesn't mean much.
Your summary gave a lot of great ways and places to get good information.
This chapter describes the key to writing a successful paper. I usually try and a use primary source when writing a paper. the reason being is that the more and more that the information you gather has been branched out from the original source, the harder it is going to be to verify it. If a fact can’t be verified, it is no longer a fact. I liked how you gave the different ways of collecting information. I am a big fan of using electronic resources as a means of finding information. It seems like it is the most convenient way of finding information quickly and in abundance.
This chapter really gave some useful information on different ways in collecting information. I have used Info trac before both in highschool and college. Info trac has electronic resources, and what I like about it is the fact that I know that I am not getting resources that aren't correct. When doing a random search on the web, many different things come up and it's hard to tell what is true and what isn't. I really have not used too many of the other ways that a person can gather information, but they are still good to know.
When I was going over this chapter, I thought that the most important portion of the entire chapter was the last part where it talked about the credibility of the source. If the source you have is not credible, then your statement is not credible, regardless of how it is presented. There are many ways to acquire research information, however, most people will prefer primary sources. The big advantage of using a primary source would be that it is your interpretation from the original sources, therefore the ideas will not be as skewed as if you take a secondary source (which is the summary of the summary). This idea of keeping our eyes open about various sources is quite important towards our success of producing reasonable results in our reports we might write. If we are writing with non credible sources, then it is pointless to write about anything. I really liked this chapter!
This chapter provides a lot of useful information, especially for college students who are often finding ways to get information for a paper or some other assigment. Credibility of this information is becoming more of a concern as technology advances and it becomes easier to copy documents or falsisfy information while retaining an authentic appearance. The section in this chapter that shows how to assess credibilty is very helpful.
Good info in this chapter dealing with research, credible sources, plagiarism, and so on. It helped remind me of ways to narrow down searches instead of getting tons of search results like I often times do. With the rapid increase in documents out there you definitely have to do some checking for credibility.
I think one of the most important things about research and gathering info is whether or not the source is credible. If you are getting information from a source that is unreliable, it may affect the overall outcome of your work. This can also cause for you to get the wrong idea on a topic and cause your work to make little or no sense. It is important to always use a credible source.
This chapter is undoubted important for students in school, however it has very important points for professional people too. Honestly, software engineers and developers don't have a lot of writing to do and so we don't need to worry a lot about sources as such. However, we do have to do a lot presentations, whether that be to your supervisors or other customers who are willing to buy the software that you made, and cold hard facts to represent in the presentation can really do the charm of selling the programs really well.
There are many different ways that my company and I gather information. First, is through e-mails which we file as archive files. Reason we do this is if there is a problem down the road, we will have a tracking system for that job. Second, is through phone calls and I track these through writing down messages and what was talked about. There are many other ways our company gathers information. Actually, just right now, I'm working on putting together a database to track Architects we contact for future work. I'm learning a lot and doing things I thought I would be able to do.
At my workplace i find myself using a lot is print and electronic resources and 'interviews' (me talking to a coworker who knows more about what's going on than me).
Any comments on..."is Wikipedia credible?"
Collecting information can be the toughest part of preparing a document and this chapter helps with the tasks of finding reliable information. Not all information is credible.
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