A favor:

[crispengray]

I have a favor to ask of you guys:

If you've got a middle schooler or high schooler you can point the direction of this journal, I'd love to get responses to the following questions. If you don't, but you're in school yourself, I could also use your responses. This is for my own class. Anonymous answers are fine.

Thanks.

Comments

[alkam]

1. What are the first steps you take when you are assigned a research project?
Loosely brainstorming topics, or a basic idea of how to go about presenting given topic. This usually involves talking to a few of my classmates, doing a few google searches and checking the first few relevant ones that come up, and looking up any sources my prof might've mentioned.

2. How do you take notes?
Whether handwritten or in a word processor, it's usually in a jumble. I slap all my ideas and information down as I come across it, and systematically organize, add, remove, and improve as I go until "notes" become "outline."

3. How do you know when you have found a quality resource?
When it can be verified and/or corroborated by other sources, and how much information is given. I also have a tendency to verify where statistics and numbers came from. If a resource is citing information from a statistic that sounds vague, it probably is. For example, it's always important to me to know who was a part of the study, who was conducting it, why, etc.

4. What resources do you use when doing research? How do you decide which resources to use?
Depends, but with the material I'm usually covering, the online resources for my textbooks tend to have pretty sound sources for my papers. At least one or two from those make it into every paper. University studies, international news sites (non-American based, usually), the American Anthropology Association, the APA, and the International Society for Technology in Education are also among my regulars.
I look for reliability, as little bias as possible, consistency, and simply sound logic.

5. How do you know when you are done with your research?
There's never one definitive point, but instead when I feel satisfied with what I have. 2-3 sources to support each main point

6. What search engines do you use when you do online searching? What do you use when you search (keywords, questions, subjects)?
Google! Also see answer #4.
Uh, depends on the subject, but usually it's anthropology, contemporary impact of technology (both good and bad), or psych.
Finding others who have studied or questioned the subject also gets searched,

7. How do you evaluate a resource and decide if it is going to help you?
Being well-rounded. A biased resource can have plenty of useful information, but if the information is sound, it can usually be found somewhere else that isn't as... "tainted" with a particular view.

8. How do you know if a resource is biased?
If they're drawing conclusions and naming causation when what they really have is coincidence. I generally get a bad taste in my mouth if the resource draws too many conclusions without corresponding data, or repeatedly cites the same source for their information. Also, I don't tend to like national averages, and the collection of the data is usually faulty, as opposed to the data itself (which is perfectly useful, for that tiny demographic...).

9. How do you cite your sources within your project?
Briefly throughout, and collected on the last page.

10. What type of citation format do you use?
MLA 6th edition. Prof-Toast led that boot camp.

11. How do you create your bibliography?
There's apparently little gadgets to do it for you, but I do it myself in the word processor with MLA format.

12. How do you use Wikipedia in your research?
It's a good starting place, but sort of like reading a middle school encyclopedia when what you need is Whitaker's Almanac. I'd never reference it or take information strictly from there.

13. When you are in the library doing research, what are you typically doing?
Using the library search engine, and buzzing around gathering books to find information and take notes.

14. What is your level of education? (What's your grade, or level in college?)
4th semester working towards my associate's degree.