Week 4 - Findings, Understanding, and Citing (2nd Half only)

Question 1

What are primary and secondary sources?

Answer 1

Primary:
- Journal articles
- First time research findings have been made available
- Written by original researchers

Secondary:
- Textbooks reporting research, literature reviews describing and summarising multiple primary sources
- May be published several years after research originally published
- Written by author of a textbook, or a review

Question 2

Compare using primary and secondary sources?

Answer 2

Primary Sources
- Data and analysis results interpreted by original authors and so more credible (account of the research will be more accurate)
- Contains greater detail about methods so easier to be critical regarding reliability and validity of findings

Secondary Sources
- Interprets, analyses and/or explains primary sources
- May include biases in interpretations
- Useful as summaries of research
- Provide an overview of the research field

Question 3

What is a peer reviewed journal?

Answer 3

Evaluation of scholarly research submitted for publication
Anonymous review by researchers and/or experts in the subject field
Assessed for originality, validity, and quality

Question 4

What is ‘AND’ or ‘+’

Answer 4

Contains both/all keywords

Question 5

What is ‘OR’ or ‘,’

Answer 5

Contains either or both key words

Question 6

What is ‘NOT’ or ‘ANDNOT’ or ‘-‘

Answer 6

Excludes keywords from a search

Question 7

What are parentheses (brackets)

Answer 7

Searches bracketed terms first, and then adds them to the remaining search elements

Question 8

What are is truncation ‘*’

Answer 8

Searches for any words starting with that word stem

Question 9

What are wildcards ‘?’ or ‘$’

Answer 9

Allows searching for words with variant spellings

Question 10

What are phrases “XYZ”

Answer 10

Searches for the exact phrases

Question 11

What is a cited reference search?

Answer 11

Allows us to see who has cited a piece of research and how the field has developed since then