Hello. I'm Dr. Haley and I'm going to be speaking to debt today about topic, about that central to our course, information and data literacy. >> And in the first part of this lecture, I'm going to talk a bit about bias, in particular, how it fits with aging research. >> Some tools that you can learn through this course like these, the trap test, then a bit about the use of peer reviewed journals to evaluate research. >> In subsequent lectures, we'll talk about other issues and evaluating research methods. >> And a major issues we're facing here are very important at all times. >> How can we really trust what we hear on TV or from our friends or read in a newspaper? How much can we trust what we think is our common sense or things that are widely accepted about topics like aging? >> How can we develop our critical thinking skills to look at news stories, research reports, or as I'm going to describe, sometimes figure out what is a legitimate research report and what is not. >> So in this course, we're looking specifically at psychology of aging. But I think it's important to note that the same skills and the same issues of challenging sources are important in any kind of work that you might be doing. So we're going to work on, first of all, identifying some clues to obviously fake information, obviously bad news. >> Also detecting things that are hyped, are exaggerated in the news. >> And in this course we're gonna focus on two kinds of sources. >> We're going to first portfolio project, do a paper looking at evaluating a website for its accuracy and such. >> And we're also going to look at a research article and there'll be another portfolio project focused on that. >> So we'll do this focussed on aging. But again, this is a broader skill that students can develop. So first of all, let's think a little bit about how age and age is often represented in media and the news. And I'm actually very much misrepresented. So ageism is an important issue. >> There's a lot of age bias. >> We know that just like sexism and racism, there are biases against older people that often are not challenged in, are often not considered. And so I'm going to mention four themes that I see as common in the media and the news to kinda give folks a heads up about this. And we'll use some media examples of that. >> And then I will go on to talk more about how to evaluate resources. >> So the four areas that I'm going to highlight, as I mentioned, our age bias. >> First of all, some of those are very frank and very negative. >> There's a kind of an age bias about the exceptional older adult, where basically older people who are successful or do something outstanding are heralded and in a sense, set aside as not typical of older adults. There's a theme of gloom and doom about aging that is often termed, for example, labelled as the aging of our society, is a silver tsunami or storm about to hit us. And then finally, we see a lot of media reports about health issues, particularly suggesting that cures are just around the corner. So here's some example of media that I've pulled for the purpose of this course that show ageism or negative stereotypes and portrayals of older people. So the slide on laughter, The picture on the left, you can see this is actually from an advertisement in a psychiatric journal for the medication Thorazine. >> Thorazine was the first anti-psychotic drug developed in the 19 fifties. And we can see here the portrayal of an older adult, probably who had Alzheimer's or other form of dementia, portrayed as as basically a raving lunatic with a cane about to attack people in the middle slide. >> And I miss not discussing these with students as I often do them live lectures. But we can see a sign denoting elderly people by a road. >> And look how elderly people are portrayed. The person in front is leaning over and it's frail and he uses a cane. And one behind is also frail and stupid. >> And we see the lack of attention and care to the sign, as well as an indication of the disregard for older people. Finally, on the right, you can see an example of a cartoon kind of thing that we might see on birthday cards as people are older. Laura portrayed in media. So you've got an older man portrayed in a very unappealing way. He says that came in here for a reason, but I forgot what it was. >> So he's depicted as confused and not knowing what he's doing. >> And the older woman sitting with him, I think you were going to throw me to the, to the rug and rubbish me. So they're basically poking fun at the idea that older people would have any sexual interests, which is seen as sort of ridiculous and worthy of scorn. And so these sort of negative ages, attitudes and comments are very common and we almost don't realize they're happening. Here's the theme I mentioned, the exceptional older adults. So we've got an older wet weightlifter. We've got Betty White, who's very commonly portrayed in the media as a very spongy and outgoing older adult. >> We've got the woman who swim from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage. >> The first to do so, who was in her sixties. >> And then because I'm a cigar smoke or I had to show, this is an elderly Cuban man who actually the switches 100th birthday. He celebrated with a nice Cuban cigar, some ROM, and some cash for his birthday. >> So these positive portrayals of older people are great. >> It can also be used to portray the idea that well, while most older people are dependent and struggling and impaired, there's a few exceptions out there. And so we want to watch that, that, that does not lead to us missing the fact that most older people actually are independent and functioning well. I mentioned this idea, the silver, silver tsunami. >> If we look at the top-left slide, commonly we see figures portrayed about the aging of America, the growth of the older adult population, as if this is a catastrophe waiting to hit. >> And this, of course, misses the fact that Most older adults are independent and our productive either in paid employment or volunteer work or with their families that we see also a portrayal of a headline, Florida car crashes caused by senior drivers. And so that's again, a dramatic exaggeration. >> Older adults are actually not the highest risk group for car crashes. >> It's actually younger people. And the theme of the sad older adult, the tarnished golden years being portrayed. So it's very important that we watch out for these types of media negative portrayals. Finally, the idea that there's a cure. Just around the corner, I put together this nice collage of headlines in front pages from British tabloids that sort of show the same kind of thing we see in US News breakthroughs around the corner, drugs that are gonna hit anytime to cure Alzheimer's disease, puzzles or other simple, simplistic cures. >> Chocolate all portrayed as potential cures for the problems and ailments of late life. >> And so we've gotta watch this. >> I had been in the field of Alzheimer's disease since 1981. >> There have been cures promised around the corner for a long time. >> And this is again a favorite, favorite angle in the media that's seen as sort of upbeat, but actually offers false promise and false hope. And even in research that is published in six, in prominent and well scrutinized peer reviewed journals. >> We see, for example, news reports. >> Here's a news release. >> Remarkable therapy beats terminal breast cancer. And if you actually look at the article that was published in Nature Medicine, It was a ladder to the journal, Describes data on a single patient who recovered from breast cancer. >> And of course, this is made into a major story when it's actually a single case. So we had to watch the way that scientific news is portrayed. >> So we're going to talk about in this class that uses something called the trap test. And that's outlined in some assignments that you've got for the class. I'm listing a couple of other great webpages here to help you understand how to evaluate research. The American Psychological Association has a great piece if you follow this link about fake news and how to identify it in terms of psychological science. >> The Alzheimer's Society, which is in the United Kingdom, also has nice very specific site about fake news and Alzheimer's and Dementia Research. >> We are using for this course something we call the trap test. >> And you've got some assignments and you've got some videos to watch that will teach you about using the trap test and you will uses in both of your portfolio assignments. >> This is also been called the crap test, perhaps using a less genteel terminology. >> The point is that what these metrics asks us to do is to look at websites or news stories or research articles through the lens of five criteria. One of those is timeliness. How up to date your information as a second has relevance? How much does it answer your question? And as you'll see when you are doing the assignment on a research articles, sometimes even a great research article really can't fully answer the question that you're interested in. >> Sometimes we don't have all of the answers. Authority, how expert is the opinion or the data that is being presented? >> How, how much has that material been peer reviewed or reviewed by editors? So that'll help you know something important in evaluating a source of information accuracy. >> Do they cite actual evidence that they cite other research reports that would confirm their use or their statements. >> And then the purpose. If you look at some webpages or even some research articles, you will find that the intent is really not to inform. It's to advocate or sell products that maybe to entertain. It may be for political or financial biases. >> So we want to look at all these careful, carefully. >> Again, your Canvas assignment has some detail about these, but these are the rough outlines of what we're looking at. >> So in this course, we're going to focus on peer reviewed journals in psychology. >> But there are many other resources that may not be peer reviewed journals that are very useful. And I've giving you some links here if you're interested in aging, of sources that really do have great information about aging. I note for example, the Nash and stood and aging, which is part of the National Institutes of Health, which has very credible information about aging. >> Now let's talk about peer reviewed journals. >> We're going to use that as the hallmark of a, of a great source for scientific information. >> So a peer reviewed journal has some characteristics important to understand. >> A journal will have a publisher that actually does the business of putting the material on the web or publishing in paper journals and distributing it, of advertising it, of setting up the structures for journal review. A peer reviewed journal will have an editor. This is UC and should be an eminent scholar in the area of the scientific endeavor. >> And then there are every peer reviewed journal will have an editorial board. >> And that editorial board will be made up of people who are experts in the topic, say in this case, psychology of aging. >> Now when research articles are written and one of us wants to submit them to a journal. >> We first of what, we submit them online. They used to be done to do this by paper and by mail, but they're submitted online. >> The editor will first take a quick look at it and we'll decide whether it's suitable even to be sent out for review because we get some papers that are obviously deficient or they're not up to the standards of the journal or the topic isn't appropriate for the journal. >> So some of those may actually be sent back. >> Peer reviewed. But if it looks like it's an appropriate journal, The article is sent out or the manuscript is sent out by peer reviewers who are people who are experts in the field. >> And most journalists use peer review anonymously. So for example, in my field of psychology of aging, we're going to look at a journal that has an editor. >> I'll show you. >> She reviews papers that come in. >> If it's a paper about family caregiving, which is my main area of expertise. Then this editor might choose usually about three reviewers who are experts in that topic and request that we review this manuscript and see whether it's completed appropriately and is appropriate for publication in a journal. >> And I'll say more about this. Those reviewers give the article very close scrutiny. >> So once this manuscript is submitted, as I've said, there's anonymous reviews and the editor then has quandary. They may have reviews that are mixed, where some people think the papers grade and perfect tests is. Others think it needs revision. Others may think it's fatally flawed and should be rejected. So we write detailed reviews at outline our views of the strengths and weaknesses of the paper. And then the editor looks at these and makes the decision. >> Many papers or outright rejected, the author gets a nice email back that says, we're sorry, this manuscript isn't suitable for this journal. >> Best wishes to you, and perhaps you'll be able to use the comments that you got. >> It needs reviews to be helpful. >> At the other end, a paper can be accepted exactly as it is in the editor would basically say, the reviewers don't see any concerns here. >> We're proud to accept this paper and we'll be publishing it. I've published somewhere over a 160 research articles in peer reviewed journals, and I've only had two that were immediately accepted without any revision for publication. So this is tends to be rare. So the more common thing is the editor, if it's really a manuscript that's outstanding and the reviewers have very few comments. They might say we accept this pending a few revisions. But more common is that the authors are asked to look closely at the reviews, tried to address the comments, revised manuscript and resubmit. So the top journals in the fields related to aging, whether that be medicine or scientific areas, or psychology, they accept less than 10% of articles that are submitted to them. >> Most journals, most good journals, accept less than 50% of articles that are submitted. >> So this peer review process is really an excellent way for scholars who know the field to look at work to see if there are mistakes that could be corrected or fatal flaws, and a research methodology that mean that this article really isn't suitable for publication and to check whether the conclusions for this paper are warranted. >> So another way to look at the peer reviewed process, this is from the Wiley journalist wanted to important scientific publishers. You can see a flow chart here that shows >> How an editor may, for example, assess a paper either rejected initially or send it out for reviews. Sometimes they may think that further reviews are needed, say a statistician. >> But we can see this flowchart. >> If the paper, paper may be rejected or if it needs revisions, it's sent back out. And so this is, when done well, a very complex and very challenging result. But it means that papers that are published have received a great deal of scrutiny. So as an example of a scientific journal in psychology of aging, here's the APA journal, American Psychological Association Journal, psychology and aging. So let's go take a look at the website for this journal. And what we can see on this website, a few things that you will want to look at as you look at peer reviewed journals. Well, first of all, we see there's an editor listened are listed Elizabeth Stein Morrow and follow her link, we see an impact factor. This is something I will come back to. The Web of Science has something called an impact factor. You can gauge the relative strength of a journal by, in a rough manner in the field of gerontology. They actually show the ranking, which I'll show you how to get within the field of gerontologists. >> Ninth highest rank journal. >> We can see that it is indexed by, it's got an index number. >> And we can see that there's a link, for example, let me find this to the editorial board. >> We can see that down below. And so let's take a look here. >> I will come back to Dr. Stein Moro. In fact, I'm going to copy her name because I'm going to look her up. >> We're going to investigate her a little bit and see what her qualifications are to edit such a journal. But let's look down here at the editorial board. And let's take a look and see if there's any familiar names here. So in fact, if we look at the editorial board of this journal, we will see some names that to anybody in the field of aging are familiar. >> Dr. Chang is at the University of Hong Kong. He's an expert on family caregiving, Dr. Karen hookers, and expert on social gerontology. We've got a variety of well-known scholars and I'm, let's take a look here. >> I see that for example, I'm looking for some familiar name. All of these folks are familiar to me. >> But as an example, look, there's Dr. Haley at the University of South Florida on this editorial board. So I'm kind of brag and here to show you this, these, um, Hoola, also on our faculty here at University of South Florida is on this editorial board. You can see people from prominent research universities. I think I've got one more. >> I want to show you here that Dr. Brent small, also from USF. >> So anyway, the editorial board of this journal is a good example of one that if you looked up any of these people, it's very prominent. You can look up its impact factor. You can note that it's indexed when you look at these cover pages of the journals. >> So you can actually do detective work on researchers who are claimed to be an editor and who are authors on Pape, scholarly papers, or even people who are mentors, potential mentors that you might go to work with for research. >> So in subsequent slides I'm going to show you it's pretty straightforward. >> You can Google a professor's name or a scholar's name and find out a lot about them. What research that they've done. Many professors, researchers have pages on Google Scholar, which I'll show you how to use that will identify their areas of research and their publications. Another resource that's very nice to know about is called ResearchGate, where many researchers have public pages that show their research and even make it available. So we're going to be reading and reviewing peer reviewed research articles in this course. >> And let me say some things about what you should be looking at when you are examining a peer-reviewed research article. Well, students are certainly familiar with looking at the article title and the abstract. But let's go beyond that. Take a close look. >> When you're reading these articles, who, who the authors are. >> You might even look up the lead author and see what other publication they've done. >> In a footnote. >> You'll also find what universities they're apart of, perhaps what departments they're a part of an aging research. We often see people who were not only in psychology departments, but maybe at medical schools or in other research entities will see acknowledgements of funding. >> For example, whether research is funded by say, the Nash institutes a health which would be mean it got a lot of scrutiny even to get the funding to do the work orbits, say by a drug company. >> We may be skeptical about its sources. >> I'll teach you how to look up journal quality. >> The abstract should provide a good summary of that paper, but you're missing a lot. If that's all you look at, introduction, key things that, that introduction of an article should do is that it should give you a rationale. Why is this study needed? What are the key missing elements in prior research? >> What are the controversies that are going to be addressed by this paper? >> And a well-written paper will leave the reader really interested and excited to find out what this paper is doing to address this controversy or a gap in the literature, the method section will tell you something about who the participants are, how they were recruited, whether they came from a random sample or they came from a clinic. >> Things about what measures were done and the research design. And in a subsequent set of slides, we'll talk about different research designs. >> In the results section, you'll see detailed statistical comparisons for a course like this. >> If you haven't had a research statistics course, I'd say basically, if it's a peer reviewed article, trust that it was done right. >> But you will see a lot of statistical comparisons that require fare better expertise to see if they're done accurately. When you read research articles, don't forget to look closely at tables figures. >> These will have a lot of important detail that may not even be mentioned, are just skipped over in the text. The discussion section, we'll come to some conclusions and talk about the implications for, say, practice with older people or for future research. >> A key part is a research article should discuss limitations of the research. >> And as a journal reviewer, one of the things I often mentioned in my reviews is that they haven't mentioned important limitations that should be presented. >> So that will wrap up this portion of the lecture. >> I hope you found this informative

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