Finding Answers, Part 2

We now return you to our continuing adventure in research, in which Your Humble Professor attempts to impart some wisdom on finding one's own answers.

In a previous adventure, we began discussing how one utilizes The Google to search for information in as safe and sane a manner as possible. In today's episode we'll talk about how to make sense of the results page and the resources provided therein.  I like to call this, 

"WHAT DO I DO WITH ALL OF THESE @#$%ING LINKS??!?"

In general, the goal here is to nab a few tools that help one evaluate the reliability of an informational resource.  This is a handy skillset not only for students of pesky teachers like me (who demand it of them constantly) but also of actual humans in the actual world.

Author's note: Please keep in mind that I was trained as a bench researcher.  I was taught to look for evidence and to back-up suppositions with data.  I <3 data.  Data, data, data.  This definitely shapes the way that I find and evaluate information in the world around me.  It can also make me a rather awkward dinner party guest.

Illustration by Jorge Cham, PHD Comics

Okay. So. You've gotten thyself to Google and used some awesome search terms and now you have a results page, which is a list of links to web resources that you may or may not find informationally useful.  First, let's acknowledge that It is a completely normal human impulse to start from the top and click on the first link on the list.  It must be the most relevant, the most important, the most reliable, the most wittily-written - why else would it be the first link???  

The thing is that several factors go into the order of links on a results page - in part this has to do with how well it matches your search terms and the overall quality/freshness of the website, but these aren't the only determinants.  Google also considers how many other websites link to a particular web resource (a measure known as PageRank) in placing a site on your results page. The point is that the first link on your results page may be the "best" resource for the information you're seeking ... and it may not.  

Check the domain
Before you start clicking, I suggest you scroll through your first page or 2 of results and perform triage.  One quick-and-dirty way to do this is to check the domain of each resource.  The domain is the suffix of a page's web address - for example ".com," ".org," ".edu".  The domain can give you a rough idea of who/what organization is responsible for the webpage (Webopedia has a list of some common domains here). There are also ways to alter your intial Google search so that the results are limited to only certain domains - for example, if you want results from only educational institutions, you could limit your search to pages whose addresses end only in ".edu".  While this can be a helpful practice, it is certainly not foolproof - just because a website is a ".org" or even a ".edu," that does not automatically make it informationally awesome.  A website that ends in ".biz" is not necessarily a poor resource.  However, performing such a check may allow you to be more targeted in your subsequent clicking, thereby making more effective use of your time and finger muscles.

Look for advertisements
Once you've settled on a link to click, take a look at where you end up.  In particular, pay attention to whether the website has advertisements or obvious sponsorship.  If so, consider how this might impact the information provided by the resource.  Finding that a website has ads or sponsors does not automatically make the information it contains inaccurate or biased;  knowing this is simply something to consider in evaluating the reliability/potential bias of the information it presents.

Check the "About" page
Many web pages have an "About" page that tells a reader more about the individual/group responsible for the resource.  Is this someone's personal webpage (and if so, what are that person's credentials? does the person seem reasonably qualified to share the information being imparted on the site?)?  Is this a resource created by a governmental organization?  Is the site produced by a group that might have an agenda such that the information could be biased?  Again, none of these automatically tanks a resource but knowing who is responsible is an important aspect of evaluating the reliability of the information it contains.

Check for citations
As you read through the informational portions of the site, check to see if there is acknowledgement of its own informational sources.  Are there in-text citations, footnotes or links? Are you, the reader, given the opportunity to view and evaluate the source material and draw an independent conclusion?  A resource that does this may inspire added confidence in a reader;  if nothing else, it gives you the ability to directly consult sources and make your own evaluation.

Trust your Dubious Eyebrow
We come now to the Holy Grail of resource evaluation tools, the researcher's best friend, that shining light in the darkness that is the internet: the Dubious Eyebrow.

"Oh really."

Everyone has a Dubious Eyebrow.  When it activates, pay attention.  This is your cue that something is not quite okay with the resource in front of you.  It's then up to you, the researcher, to determine what that is (is the resource's information not up-to-date?  is the writer unqualified to be writing on the topic? are all the cited sources fictitious?) and whether it's a deal-breaker for using that resource.  If yes, get thee back to your results page and try again.  If no, determine how big an impact the not-quite-okay has on the usability of the resource and what is still salvageable.

In Short
The suggestions above are guiding principles I suggest for navigating informational resources on the internet. For folks who aren't in the habit of critically evaluating their resources, it can seem a bit overwhelming at first.

No.

Rest assured that with practice, this is habit-forming.  The more often you engage in this process (when performing research for, say, a term paper), the easier/more natural it becomes and the more likely you are to unconsciously start employing it in every day life (when perusing articles friends have posted on Facebook or engaging in witty banter at the dinner table).

Acknowledgements

Credit for the knowledge I impart in this series goes to the following individuals, who have taught me pretty much all of what I know about informational research:  Yvonne Piper, R.N., F.N.P, M.L.I.S., Patricia Elzie, M.L.I.S., Joel Burton, M.A. and David Patterson, Ph.D.

Finding Answers, Part 1

When a student asks a stumpifying question mid-lecture, my first thought is generally, "Huh. I can't believe I haven't wondered that and looked it up by now."  My second thought is often, "I wonder why <insert name of student> didn't look that up him/her/zirself."  In some cases, it's likely that the question just dawned on that student in the midst of lecture and being in the very tech-free classroom that I insist upon, he/she/zie could not at that moment search for the answer and so decided to ask me.  In other cases, it might be that students aren't sure exactly how to go about finding such an answer (or it doesn't occur to them that they could).  Yes, the internet is a glorious treasure-trove of informational wonder ... but how does one parse the pile of links that inevitably result from Googling a topic?  Where else do people look?  Let's talk about this.  Let's talk about this in a series of related posts lest we all become completely overwhelmed.  

Credit for the knowledge I impart in this series goes to the following individuals, who have taught me pretty much all of what I know about informational research:  Yvonne Piper, R.N., M.L.I.S., Patricia Elzie, M.L.I.S., Joel Burton, M.A. and David Patterson, Ph.D.

Okay. So. I vote we start with The Googles.

by Hilariawesome

The default starting point for many folks when looking for answers on the interwebs is to high-tail it over to Google and enter their question/topic.  The upside to this is that these folks will then be deluged with links. The downside to this is ... well, that these folks will then be deluged with links.  Some of them may be informationally-dependable while others may not, and telling the difference can be challenging.  The order in which links fall on the response page says nothing for their informational reliability.  Folks who go the Google Route for answers have a bit of potential legwork ahead of them before they hit paydirt.

If you use Google (or another search engine) to find information, one way to decrease background noise is to be as specific as possible with your search terms.  For example, let's say I'm wondering if there is anatomical variation in biceps brachii muscles (known to many as "biceps"), so I have something on which to blame my poor ability to do biceps curls (sidenote: anyone else ponder this or is it just me?).  If I then head to Google and search using the terms "arm muscles," it's a pretty mixed bag - I get some sites that may have useful information (like anatomy resources) as well as links to fitness magazine sites and some advertisements.  If I make my search terms a bit more specific - "biceps" - then the results, while focused on a particular muscle, look quite similar.

If, however, I get more specific than that - "biceps anatomical variation" - suddenly my results look quite different.  My entire first page of results (except for Google's designated ad space) is a mix of scholarly articles, anatomy atlas references ... and of course there's always a link to a Wikipedia article.  By entering more, specific terms, one often gets a more targeted list of results.  Google Guide has a rather useful page that discusses this in more detail and provides examples. There are also fancy librarian-type search tricks one can use that are detailed in places such as this or presented as a tutorial here - if constructing Boolean search terms sounds like a hot way to spend an evening, this will be right up your alley.

Another option is to use Google Scholar, which searches only from scholarly articles, and if you so choose, patents and legal documents where appropriate.  Starting your search here narrows the sort of results you'll get right off the bat, which also helps to decrease the background noise of personal webpages and folks trying to sell you things. The potential downside is that the results you get may be less user-friendly (read: written for experts in a field for other experts in that field) than those you get from just-plain-Google.

That was long-winded.  High five if you made it all the way through.

In our next installment of Finding Answers, Your Humble Professor tackles how to evaluate the resources that show-up on that search results page.