Research Guide for Learner

Edwin:
Advice
when you are trying to search for something for your class or something you really
wanna know.try to think of a good question. Google is a very good search engine for
you, especially if you are in an international school. Because Google is very global, you
can search in any language that makes you feel comfortable and Google gives you
some website you may be interested in. But here you need to be careful with the
information, Google shows you the one which is the one you are interested in, perhaps
Google didn't give the best website you actually needed. Also, there are two types of
information, primary info, and secondary info, there is a huge difference between them,
the primary info is first-hand info, and secondary info is everyone can edit. Therefore,
when you search better, think which one fits your question.

Abbreviation:
● Try to use google for your search engine.
● Google is global.
● Google is not perfect, careful with all the information.
● Think of a good question.
● Know what info do you want, primary or secondary.

Images, examples and Non-examples for searching:

First we need to put any question we want to ask
After we type down the question we want to search, you can see google shows you
many questions you may ask, for example who is Kobe Bryant's wife.
Here is what you get when you want to know something, as you can see from the text I
highlighted, that’s the basic who Kobe is. But searching in different questions it comes
up with different answers.

For example here, if we are trying to search who is Kobe Bryant but we asked the
wrong question which is who is Kobe Bryant’s wife, then Google won’t tell you about
Kobe, but it surely will tell you who is Kobe’s wife. Here is what you shouldn’t do when
you are searching. So every time when we are researching we need to know what
question is the best for our information.

Biased information.
When we are searching there will be biased information, because people see things
differently. But there is no wrong or right between biased information, it actually
depends how you look at the things. For example Covid-19, if you want to know about
Covid-19, and if you are looking at an article written by a Chinese guy, he may say
Covid-19 may come from anywhere but unfortunately it began in China. However if you
look at the article written by a American guy, he may say Covid-19 came from China,
Chinese lap lost the virus so it affected everywhere.
You see the point, people have a lot of points of view. So when you are searching you
need to know what information you want and who writes those information, that’s very
important.

Inference information
Inference information is when we need to infer the information, we can put infer as
guess. We basically need to guess what the writer wants to tell us. For example, when
you see someone trying to eat new things, and after they eat it, how that guy’s face
reacts to it, if his face looks happy that means he likes the new food, but if his face looks
bad, that means he doesn't like it. Here we can infer he likes or he doesn’t like. Also
when we are reading the information, we need to infer what the writer wants us to know,
what feeling he wants to give us. ​Here are some examples and definitions for inference.

Susan:

Give guidance on citing sources

After you find information from a website, you should always include a source of where
your information comes from, this is called “citing sources”.

Citing sources is for:

 - To show your reader you've done proper research by listing sources you used to
get your information
- To be a responsible scholar by giving credit to other researchers and
acknowledging their ideas
- To avoid plagiarism by quoting words and ideas used by other authors
- To allow your reader to track down the sources you used by citing them
accurately in your paper by way of footnotes, a bibliography or reference list

How to cite sources?

- Copy the link of the website.
- In google docs, we have a section called “add-ons”, in the add-ons there is one
section called “Easybib bibliography Creator”.
- Click it
- After you click it, there will be three sections on the top
- Click on the website section
- Copy paste the link in the box
- Under the link it will show you the reference.
-
 - If you don’t want to use google docs for citing sources, you can try to search
“citing sources” in google and some websites may help you to cite your sources.

Different style of citing sources

There will be many different styles of cite sources, for example we have APA style and
MLA style, make sure to listen to the teacher of which style you need to use.

Format of citing sources

APA format

It should include the author’s name, public dates, website name and the link.
MLA format
Examples
An example of citing sources will be:
Basic Steps in the Research Process. (n.d.). Retrieved from
https://www.nhcc.edu/student-resources/library/doinglibraryresearch/basic-steps-in-the-r
esearch-process
Or
“Basic Steps in the Research Process.” North Hennepin Community College,
www.nhcc.edu/student-resources/library/doinglibraryresearch/basic-steps-in-the-researc
h-process.
A non-example of citing sources will be:
Missing author names or the website name and link, sometimes the website will not
include the date and you couldn’t find it, missing date will be fine.

As a reader…...
As a reader, when you are looking at some big websites like wikipedia and you find out
that there is no citation included in the website, what do you think? The big website will
also use the information from other website, make sure you check if there is any citation
has been included in the website or not ( except for the website said it is original from
their website ), if there is no citations, you may need to switch to another website,
because you can’t trust all the information without any citations, you don’t know where
does the information comes from which website, and you can’t make conclusion about
it, so make sure to check citations all the time.
 Guidance on Assessing sources
Chris
Introduction:​ Nowadays, the internet is the most important resource
for people’s study, work and life regardless of age and purposes. So it is
necessary that people actually find trustable and valuable sources online.
In this essay, I’m going to guide you how to find good sources.

Before you start to do your research, we should use well-known search

engines, such as Google and Safari. Reasons are well-known search
engines have more varieties of websites, and they have more strict policies
for publication. After that, we should narrow down the topic by carefully
choosing the keywords. In that way, we can find more specific information
related to our topic. Basically, don’t be too general when we are doing our
research. You might end up losing yourself in the ocean of information.

Guidance:
In my guidance, I have three steps that help you to judge if it is a good
website. Firstly, after we searched our keywords, we should visit
prestigious websites, which are well-known to the public, because they are
usually more unbiased and more objective to the topic, And also, in order to
maintain their reputation, they have strict rules to the published articles,
they wouldn’t publish junk information to fool the readers. Secondly, if the
website is not very famous, then how to judge the values of the website by
yourself? The first standard is that we should always check if there is a
published date and author’s name. Furthermore, we can search for author’s
background information, to check his or her education background and
qualifications. What’s more, we can also check the reference attached in
the article. Therefore, we can know whether the article is written based on
concrete proofs. Last but not the least, if the article referred to on the
website has been published in journals or magazines, then we can confirm
that it is a trustworthy website, because such publication has very strict
peer review.
Steps:
● Search for keywords to find specific information
● Try to visit prestigious and well-known websites
● Find publish date and author’s name (MOST IMPORTANT)
● Search for background information of the author or the
website(Check “About us” section)
● Check if the website is cited by other websites, journals or
magazines.

Importance of inference:
Inference is a necessary step when we are doing research. Firstly, by
inferring the title or headlines of the website, we can have a general idea
about the website. Secondly, check if there is an author's name or
publication, we can infer whether it is an authentic website. Lastly, when we
are going through the website, it’s hard for us to understand every single
sentence and phrase. However, by inferring the keywords, we can know
the background information, which can help us to have a better
understanding of the whole article.

Example​:
Good example:​https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7734058/
This article is basically about the Minamata Disease. I find out the website
is very trustable, because it has the published date and author’s name.
This is also a national website with reliable references. Most importantly,
this website has been cited by other relevant websites for 228 times, so we
can surely confirm that people actually believe the content.
Publish date, author’s name, cited by other websites, references.

Bad example:
https://www.bu.edu/sustainability/minamata-disease/#:~:text=Minamata%2
0disease%20was%20first%20discovered,continued%20from%201932%20t
o%201968​.

This article is also about Minamata Disease. However, I don’t think it is a

good website. Firstly, it does not have the publish date or author's name.
And also, it does not have any reference to its written information. Without
this information, it’s hard for us to trust any information from this website.

Picture of the front and bottom of the website.

How Bias Impacts Research:

Personally, I think there are two kinds of bias when we are doing research.
Firstly, bias from researchers, their opinion will be influenced by how they
are educated, so they would favor the information from their personal
ideas. In that way, the information they found would be more subjective
(Especially when we are searching for political or religious issues). Second,
bias from the article itself would also negatively influence readers’ thoughts
and results after reading it. So it is very important to find non-bias
information.
 Give suggestions for websites that can help (Ryuji)

Introduction
To do research for your work, you should find a website that best matches your
category/topic that you choose to research. This means If you choose a work website to
do research, it can make you wasting time to go back and find other websites that are
right for your research. This is why I make a guidance for you to help or make you
complete your research faster by don’t having any research problems.

Suggestions
I have a list of my suggestions that will help you to complete your research faster.
There are

● When you search your research question try to use a website that has a name
same or similar as your research category/topic.
● Look at your website writer information about what category/topic they are
professional on.
● If your research website has too little information, then find another website that
has the same info for your research question and combine them together.
● Try to use websites that include multiple research categories/topics such as BBC
or Newsela.
● If you make a lot of research before starting a new research, then list those
websites and note what those websites are best for.

These suggestions will help you much more or not that you expect, but it will help
you choose a website to do research faster by don’t having any category/topic mistakes.
What should you not do in your research

During a research by choosing a right website you choose not use a website by
not taking a survey before choosing to make a research. This will take a bit of time for a
survey, but it will help you to choose good information. You should not pick a random
website after you search your research question.

Examples of websites that can use in each categories

1. News/Articles: ​https://www.bbc.com/news​, ​https://newsela.com/

2. World history: ​https://www.history.com/
3. Science: ​https://www.aaas.org/
4. Math: ​https://www.khanacademy.org/math
5. Dictionary: ​https://www.oed.com/
6. Sport: ​https://www.skysports.com/