Chapter 7.2 Developing a Research Strategy
Learning Objectives
Differentiate between research time and speech preparation time.
Understand how to establish research needs before beginning research.
Explain the difference between academic and nonacademic sources.
Identify appropriate nonacademic sources information on the web.
Evaluate George's two thousand and eight: Six Questions to Analyze Sources.
Research Strategy as a Personal Map
Think of a research strategy as a personal map to the speech.
More clearly mapping out the steps needed from the assignment date to the speech date makes the speech development process easier.
The section covers time management, determining research needs, finding sources, and evaluating sources.
Allotting Time
Consider the time a project will take.
Project Management Institute's project life cycle: phases connecting the beginning of a project to its end.
Project Management Institute (2004). A Guide to the Project Management Body of PMBOK Guide (3rd ed., p. 19). Newton Square, PA: Author.
Time is often concrete in a public speaking class.
Need to think through how much time research and speech preparation will take.
Research Time
Research takes a good chunk of time.
Whether primary or secondary research, a significant amount of time is spent researching.
Howard & Taggart point out that research isn't "one and done".
Howard, R. M., & Taggart, A. R. (2010). Research Matters. New York, McGraw Hill, pages 102-103.
Allow extra time for targeted research later in the schedule.
Account for meeting with a research librarian, schedule ahead of time.
Devote no more than one third of speech preparation time to research.
Avoid spending all time on research and waiting until the last minute to prepare the speech.
Speech Preparation Time
The second task is to sit down and develop the speech.
Use research to flesh out ideas into a complete speech.
Give ample time to prepare.
One day of speech preparation per one minute of speaking time.
Allowing enough time to prepare buffers against things that can go wrong.
Give a little time buffer to be insulated from possible negative effects on your speech if something goes wrong.
Practice
Practice makes permanent.
Rehearse by delivering the speech out loud.
Speakers who only script or think through speeches often forget their thoughts.
Speech performance is more closely aligned with practice than just thinking about it.
Become comfortable with the text and nonverbal delivery of the speech.
Giving yourself plenty of speech preparation time also gives you more practice time.
Determining Your Needs
Start by asking yourself what you think you need.
Have a good idea about the topic before randomly looking at information.
Instructor may provide specific guidance.
Ask a series of simple questions:
What do I, personally, know about my topic?
Do I have any clear gaps in my knowledge of my topic?
Do I need to conduct primary research for my speech?
What type of secondary research do I need?
Do I need research related to facts?
Do I need research related to theories?
Do I need research related to applications?
The clearer about the type of research needed, the easier it will be to locate specific information.
Finding Resources
Track down secondary sources.
Information is readily available.
Used to have to go to a library and search through a physical card catalog to find books.
Researchers could literally spend hours in the library and find just one or two sources that were applicable to their topic.
Information is more accessible and easier to access.
We have too much information available.
Need to be more skeptical about where information is coming from.
Discuss how to find information in both non-academic and academic sources.
Non-Academic Information Sources
Also called popular press information sources.
Primary purpose is to be read by the general public.
Written at a sixth to eighth grade reading level.
Information is often limited.
Advantage: They appeal to a broad, general audience.
Books
Books abound and reading has never been easier.
Chances are someone has written a book about the topic.
Historically, libraries housed manuscripts copied by hand.
After Gutenberg's printing press, mass production was possible.
Printed manuscript is now giving way to the electronic manuscript.
Amazon.com's Kindle, Barnes and Noble's Nook, Apple's iPad, and Sony's ink based readers.
Carry the amount of information that used to be housed in the greatest historic libraries in the palms of our hands.
Three basic types of libraries:
Physical Library: Exists only in the physical world.
Physical/Electronic Library: Has both physical and electronic components.
E-Online Library: Exists only online
Physical Library
A library that exists only in the physical world.
Many small community collections are available only if you physically go into the library and check out a book.
Libraries generally model the US Library of Congress's card catalog system.
Most library layouts are similar.
Because the Library of Congress catalogs information by type, if you find one book that is useful for you, it's very likely that surrounding books on the same shelf will also be useful.
When people don't take the time to physically browse in a library, they often miss out on some great information.
Physical/Electronic Library
The library has both physical and electronic components.
Most college and university libraries have both the physical stacks where the books are located and electronic databases containing ebooks.
The two largest ebook databases are and Net Library
Collections are generally cost prohibitive for an individual
More and more academic are subscribing to them.
Some libraries are also making portions of their collections available online for free.
Harvard University's digital collections: http:digitalcollections harvard Edu
New York Public Library's ebook collection: .gov
Greatest advantages to using libraries for finding books: you can search not only their books, but often a wide network of other academic institutions' books as well.
Retail bookseller sites like Amazon.com can be a great source for finding books that may be applicable to your topic.
You don't actually need to purchase the book if you use your library because your library may actually own a copy of a book you find on a bookseller site.
Pick a topic and then search for that topic on a bookseller site. If you find a book that you think may be appropriate, plug that book's title into your school's electronic library catalog. If your library owns the book, you can go to the library and pick it up today.
Interlibrary Loans
Interlibrary Loans
A process where librarians are able to search other libraries to locate the book a researcher is trying to find.
If another library has that book, then the library asks to borrow it for a short period of time.
Depending on how easy a book is to find, your library could receive it in a couple of days or a couple of weeks.
Keep in mind that interlibrary loans take time, so do not expect to get a book at the last minute.
The more lead time you provide a librarian to find a book you are looking for, the greater the likelihood that the book will be sent through the mail to your library on time.
E-Online Library
A relatively new type of library, the library exists only online.
With the influx of computer technology, we have started to create vast stores of digitized content from around the world.
These online libraries contain full text documents free of charge to everyone.
Some online libraries we recommend:
Project Gutenberg, http:www.gutenberg.org,
Google Books, wwgoogle.com,
readprint, http::readprint.com.
Open library::openlibrary dot org
Get free ebooks. Http::getfreeebooks.com.
General Interest Periodicals
Magazines and newsletters published on a fairly basis.
Some popular magazines in this category include The New Yorker, People, Reader's Digest, Parade, Smithsonian, and The Saturday Evening Post.
Considered general interest because most people in The United States could pick up a copy of these magazines and find them interesting and topical.
Special Interest Periodicals
Magazines and newsletters published for a narrower audience.
In a 02/2005 article, Business Wire noted that in The United States there are over 10,000 different magazines published annually, but only 2,000 of those magazines have significant circulation.
Total number of magazines published in The US is greater than 10,000, but only about 2,000 have significant circulation.
02/2005, September '20 first.
Business Wire, retrieved from http:findarticles.com.
Some more widely known special interest periodicals are Sports Illustrated, Bloomberg's Business Week, Gentlemen's Quarterly, Vogue, Popular Science and House and Garden.
Newspapers and Blogs
Major source of nonacademic information is newspapers and blogs.
Thankfully, we live in a society that has a free press.
Include both newspapers and blogs in this category.
A few blogs, e. G, the Huffington Post, Talking Points Memo, Newsmax, The Daily Beast, Salon functions similarly to traditional newspapers.
In the past few years, we've lost many traditional newspapers around The United States.
Cities that used to have four or five daily papers may now only have one or two.
According to Newspapers.com, the top 10 newspapers in The United States are:
USA TODAY
THE WALLSTREET JOURNAL
THE NEW YORK TIMES
THE LOS ANGELES TIMES
THE WASHINGTON POST
THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
THE CHICAGO TRIBUINE
THE NEW YORK POST
LONG ISLAND NEWSDAY
THE HUSEON CHRONICAL
Most colleges and universities subscribe to a number of these newspapers in paper form or have access to them electronically.
LexisNexis has access to full text newspaper articles from these newspapers and many more around the world.
Since the dawn of the twenty first century, many major news stories have been broken by professional bloggers rather than traditional newspaper reporters.
Auchman, B. L. (2007, June 29). The top 10 news stories broken by bloggers. Tech News World. Weblog post. Retrieved 07/14/2011. From http:www.mpdailyfix.com technewsworld the top 10 news stories broken by bloggers.
Blogs can be a great source of information, but you often have to wade through a lot of junk to find useful, accurate information
Encyclopedias
Information sources that provide short, very general information about a topic.
Available in both print and electronic formats.
Content can range from eclectic and general to the very specific e.g. Encyclopedia of twentieth century architecture or Encyclopedia of Afterlife Beliefs and Phenomena.
Encyclopedias are designed to give only brief, fairly superficial summaries of a topic area.
May be useful for finding out what something is if it is referenced in another source, but they are generally not a useful source for your actual speech.
Many instructors do not allow students to use encyclopedias as sources for their speeches.
One of the most popular online encyclopedic sources is Wikipedia.
Like other encyclopedias, it can be useful for finding out basic information
Unlike the general and specialized encyclopedias available through your library, Wikipedia can be edited by anyone and therefore often contains content errors and biased information.
One should always be careful of information on the web, but this advice is even more important when considering group edited sites such as Wikipedia.
Websites
In the twenty first century, we live in a world where there is a considerable amount of information readily available at our fingertips.
You can spend hours and hours searching for information and never quite find what you're looking for if you don't devise an internet search strategy.
Select a good search engine to help you find appropriate information.
Table 7.1 Search Engines contains a list of common search engines and the types of information they are useful for finding.
Academic Information Sources
The main difference between academic or scholarly information and the information you get from the popular press is oversight.
In the nonacademic world, the primary gatekeeper of information is the editor who may or may not be a content expert.
In academia, extra checks are performed to ensure that the information is accurate and follows agreed upon academic standards.
Scholarly Books
College and university libraries are filled with books written by academics.
According to the Text and Academic Authors Association, http:w w w dot taeonline dot net, there are two types of scholarly textbooks and academic books.
Textbooks: books that are written about a segment of content within a field of academic study and are written for undergraduate or graduate student audiences.
Textbooks tend to be written at a fairly easy reading level and are designed to transfer information in a manner that mirrors classroom teaching to extent. Also, textbooks are secondary sources of information. They are designed to survey the research available in a particular field rather than to present new research.
Academic books: books that are primarily written for other academics for informational and research purposes.
When instructors ask for you to find scholarly books, they're referring to academic books.
Scholarly Articles
Because most academic writing comes in the form of scholarly articles or journal articles, that is the best place for finding academic research on a given topic.
Every academic subfield has its own journals.
Scholarly articles are written for a scholarly audience.
It's also helpful to realize that there may be parts of the article you simply do not have the background knowledge to understand, and there is nothing wrong with that.
Many research studies are conducted by quantitative researchers who rely on statistics to examine phenomena. Unless you have training in understanding the statistics, it is difficult to interpret the statistical information that appears in these articles.
Focus on the beginning part of the article where the authors will discuss previous (secondary) research, and then focus at the end of the article where the authors explain what was found in their (primary) research.
Computerized Databases
Finding academic research is easier today than it ever has been in the past because of large computer databases containing research.
A database company signs contracts with publishers to gain the right to store the publisher's content electronically.
The database companies then create thematic databases containing publications related to general areas of knowledge
The database companies then sell subscriptions to these databases to libraries.
The largest of these database companies is a group called Publishing, which runs both EBSCO Host, an e journal provider, and Net Library, a large e book library. Http:www.ebscohost.com
Some of the more popular databases that EBSCO provides to colleges and universities are:
Academic Search Complete
Business Source Complete
Communication and Mass Media Complete
Education Research Complete
Humanities International Complete
Philosophers Index
Political Science Complete
PSYC Articles
Vocational and Career Collection
Academic Search Complete is the broadest of all the databases and casts a fairly wide net across numerous fields.
Information that you find using databases can contain both non academic and academic information, so EBSCOhost has built in a number of filtering options to help you limit the types of information available.
Checking out your library's website to see what databases they have available.
Scholarly Information on the Web
In addition to the subscription databases that exist on the Web, there are also a number of great sources for scholarly information on the web.
Tips for Finding Information Sources
Recommend Mary George's book, The Elements of Library Research, what every student needs to know more highly. Honestly, we wish this book had been around when we were just learning how to research.
Create a Research Log
Nothing is more disheartening than when you find yourself at 1AM asking, Haven't I already read this?
A research log is a step by step account of the process of identifying, obtaining, and evaluating sources for a specific project, similar to a lab notebook in an experimental setting.
George M. W. (2008). The Elements of Library Research: What Every Student Needs to Know. Princeton, New Jersey. Princeton University Press. Page 183.
Keeping a log of what you've done is very helpful because it can help you keep track of what you've read thus far.
Can use a good old fashioned notebook, or if you carry around your laptop or a netbook with you, you can always keep it digitally.
There are expensive programs like Microsoft Office OneNote that can be used for note keeping, there are also a number of free tools that could be adapted as well.
The website's in. Table 7.3 Notetaking Help will help you find templates and tools for electronic note taking.
Start with Background Information
Not unusual for students to try to jump right into the meat of a topic only to find out that there is a lot of technical language they just don't understand.
Want to start your research with sources written for the general public.
Generally, these lower level sources are great for background information on a topic and are helpful when trying to learn the basic vocabulary of a subject area.
Search Your Library's Computers
Once you've started getting a general grasp of the broad content area you want to investigate, it's time to sit down and see what your school's library has to offer.
If you do not have much experience in using your library's website, see if the website contains an online tutorial.
Most schools offer online tutorials to show students the resources that students can access.
If your school doesn't have an online tutorial, you may want to call your library and schedule an appointment with a research librarian to learn how to use the school's computers. Also, if you tell your librarian that you want to learn how to use the library, he or she may be able to direct you to online resources that you may have missed.
Try to search as many different databases as possible.
Look for relevant books, ebooks, newspaper articles, magazine articles, journal articles, and media files.
Modern college and university libraries have a ton of sources, and OneSearch may not find everything you are looking for on the first pass.
Think about synonyms for topics. The more synonyms you can generate for your topic, the better you'll be at finding information.
Learn to Skim
If you sit down and try to completely read every article or book you find, it will take you a very long time to get through all the Start by reading the introductory paragraphs. Generally, the first few paragraphs will give you a good idea about the overall topic.
Start by reading the introductory paragraphs. Generally, the first few paragraphs will give you a good idea about the overall topic.
If you're reading a research article, start by reading the abstract. If the first few paragraphs or abstract don't sound like they're applicable, there's a good chance the source won't be useful for you.
Look for highlighted, italicized, or bulleted information.
Authors use highlighting, italics, and bullets to separate information to make it jump out for readers.
Look for tables, charts, graphs, and figures.
All these forms are separated from the text to make the information more easily understandable for a reader, so seeing if the content is relevant is a way to see if it helps you.
Look at headings and subheadings.
Headings and subheadings show you how an author has grouped information into meaningful segments. If you read the headings and subheadings and nothing jumps out as relevant, that's another indication that there may not be anything useful in that source.
Take good notes while you're skimming.
One way to take good notes is to attach a sticky note to each source. If you find relevant information, write that information on a sticky note along with the page number. If you don't find useful information in a source, just write nothing on a sticky note and move on to the next source. This way, when you need to sort through your information, you'll be able to quickly see what information was useful and locate the information.
Other people prefer to create a series of note cards to help them organize their information. Whatever works best for you is what you should use.
Read Bibliographies/Reference Pages
After you've finished reading useful sources, see who those sources cited on their bibliographies or reference pages.
We call this method backtracking. Often the sources cited by others can lead us to even better sources than the ones we found initially.
Ask for Help
Reference librarians are your friends.
They won't do your work for you, but they're more than willing to help if you ask.
Evaluating Resources
The final step in research occurs once you've found resources relevant to your topic: evaluating the quality of those resources.
Below is a list of six questions to ask yourself about the sources you've collected.
These are drawn from the book The Elements of Library Research by M. W. George.
George M. W. (2008). The Elements of Library Research: What Every Student Needs to Know. Princeton, New Jersey. Princeton University Press.
What is the Date of Publication?
Generally, the more recent the information, the better your presentation will be.
Who is the Author?
What are her or his credentials?
Does he or she work for a corporation, college, or university?
Is a political or commercial agenda apparent in the writing?
The more information we can learn about an author, the better our understanding and treatment of that author's work will be.
Who is the Publisher
In addition to knowing who the author is, we also want to know who the publisher is.
While there are many mainstream publishers and academic press publishers, there are also many fringe publishers.
A cursory examination of a publisher's website is a good indication of the specific political bias. Most websites will have an About section or an FAQ section that will explain who the publisher is.
Is it Academic or Non-Academic
Because of the enhanced scrutiny academic sources go through, we argue that you can generally rely more on the information contained in academic sources than nonacademic sources.
What is the Quality of the Bibliography/Reference Page?
Another great indicator of a well thought out and researched source is the quality of its bibliography or reference page.
If you look at a source's bibliography or reference page and it has only a couple of citations, then you can assume that either the information was not properly cited or it was largely made up by someone.
Checking them out is a great way to see if an author has done her or his homework prior to writing a text.
Is also an excellent way to find additional resources on a topic.
Do People Cite the Work?
One way to find out whether a given source is widely accepted is to see if numerous people are citing it.
If you're doing research and you keep running across the same source over and over again, that is an indication that it's an important study that you should probably take a look at.
Many colleges and universities also subscribe to Science Citation Index (SCI), Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), or the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (HCI), which are run through Institute for Scientific Information's Web of Knowledge database service, httpcolon//isiwebofknowledge.com. All these databases help you find out where information has been cited by other researchers.
Key Takeaways
In conducting research for a speech, commit adequate time and plan your schedule.
Consider both the research time or time spent gathering information and the preparation time needed to organize and practice your speech.
Get a general idea of your research needs even before going to the library so that you can take the most advantage of the library's resources and librarians' help.
We live in a world dominated by information, but some information is filtered and some is not. It's important to know the difference between academic and nonacademic sources.
Nonacademic sources are a good place to gain general knowledge of a topic. These include books, general or special interest periodicals, newspapers and blogs, and websites.
Academic sources offer more specialized, higher level information. They include books, articles, computer databases, and web resources.
A fundamental responsibility is to evaluate the sources you choose to use in order to ensure that you are presenting accurate and up to date information in your speech.