ASSIGNMENT FOUR

Evaluating Information

The task of evaluating information properly is becoming increasingly important as traditional patterns of publishing through the use of gatekeepers (editors, peer review) are being supplemented by massive amounts of information production that is not checked for accuracy/quality by anyone except the authors of such information.  This, of course, has been spawned by the Internet, but it is also found in newer trends of book self-publishing.

Evaluation involves determining if the information you have encountered is reliable, useful, pertinent and so on.  There are several websites that provide helpful information on evaluation of material from the Internet and other sources.  Here are a few of them:

http://www.virtualsalt.com/evalu8it.htm (Evaluating Internet Research Resources - CARS Checklist)

http://lib.nmsu.edu/depts/reference/documents/WebEvaluationCriteria.pdf (Web Evaluation Criteria)

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Evaluate.html (Evaluating Web Pages) 

Google Scholar (access through TWU library home page)

 Google Scholar is a special Google-driven database of  "academic" material in electronic form (see Textbook, section 6.2.2).  The types of resources it finds include citations to books, citations to (and sometimes full text of) published journal articles, conference proceedings, academic websites, and so on.  We are including it in the course for a few reasons:

    a. It is a "port in the storm" if you want to search for academic information but do not have access to library databases;
b. It provides an opportunity to work with a database that is different from those provided in libraries;
c. It demonstrates the advantages of search interfaces that have sophisticated features (like subject headings) as opposed to the rather limited search options available in most open web databases like this one.

Types of citations include:

[Book] - Citation for a book related to your search terms, e.g.

[BOOK] The (Magic) Kingdom of God: Christianity and Global Culture Industries
ML Budde - 1997 - books.google.com
... Library ofCongress Cataloging-in-Publicatkwi Data Budde, Michael L. The (magic)
kingdom of God : Christianity and global culture industries / Michael Budde. ... 
Cited by 7 - Related Articles - Web Search

Article - Usually not designated as an article.  Generally from a journal, but sometimes from 
some other source or an unpublished work, e.g.

Three Variant Readings in Luke-Acts
P Parker - Journal of Biblical Literature, 1964 - JSTOR
... of the vine, until until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God the kingdom of God.
shall come. s For some other examples, see Pierson Parker, "Luke and the ... 
Cited by 3 - Related Articles - Web Search

Conference Proceeding Paper - Usually not designated as such, but the citation indicates that it 
comes from a conference, e.g.

[PDF] Information Literacy as a Catalyst for Educational Change. A Background Paper
C Bruce - 2004 - eprints.qut.edu.au
... Cognitive apprenticeships in education for information literacy. Paper to be presented
at the IFLA 5th World Conference on Continuing Professional Education ... 
Cited by 41 - Related Articles - View as HTML - Web Search - Import into RefWorks

[Citation] - A reference to a book or article within a piece of scholarly writing, e.g.

For this one, clicking on Web Search will lead you to other sources that have also cited this work, 
and perhaps will provide the work itself.

Google Scholar has an advanced search feature (as does regular Google) that enables you to formulate Boolean searches more easily.  It's not easy to find. To get to it, you have to click on the down arrow next to the search box:

 

There is no sorting option for results, so results will be a mix of references to books, articles and websites.  The sort by date option only works for the past year, though you can choose to search for articles from a specific range of dates (see column to the left on the results page).  

Note that you might find a lot of citations only to get the message that full text is not available.  This is why you need to log in to Google Scholar through our library home page.  Doing so connects GS with our journal list so that you can pick up full text articles when they are available.  See information below on how to do this.

You can configure Google Scholar to allow download of citations to EndNote.  Click on "Settings" then scroll down to "Bibliography Manager." Choose the option for EndNote.  Then click on the "Save Preferences" button.

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Below is a screen shot of Google Scholar results.  You will notice an article from a journal, an academic PDF without journal indicated, a "citation" without links, and a book.  In this case, the article is not available from this website, but there is a "Check TWU Library" link that will take you to our full text of the article. This feature is only available if you log into Google Scholar through the library home page.

 

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Clicking on "More" will give you a "Cite" link to create citations. (Note that some Google Scholar data is incomplete, resulting in incomplete citations. In such cases, you will need to find the rest of the data and insert it yourself.)

  

  

                      

 

 

Read Research Strategies, Chapter Six, Chapter Seven, and Chapter Eight, and http://www.virtualsalt.com/evalu8it.htm (Evaluating Internet Research Sources - The CARS Checklist).  

 

The following sites all relate to the Kingdom of God.  Do the evaluations indicated:

1. http://lifehopeandtruth.com/prophecy/kingdom-of-god/what-is-the-kingdom-of-god/

For this site, I am less interested in the content than who is behind the content (a significant factor in evaluating what is being said). Find out about the author (note that names can be links), the organization behind him, and some of the organization's fundamental beliefs about the Trinity.

a. Who is the author? What do you know about him?
b. What is the name of the organization with which the author is associated?
c. Is a problem with that organization's doctrine of the Trinity? If so, what is it?
d. On the basis of the author's education (if you can discover what it is) and affiliation, would you recommend this web article to others? Why or why not? 

2. http://www.kingwatch.co.nz/Kingdom_of_God.htm

I am interested here in the qualifications of the author (look for information about the author on the above site):

a. What subject matter did he study for his master's degree?
b. What are you told about the kind of theological education he received?
c. To what extent would you call his work "scholarly?" Give a reason for your answer. 

3. http://biblicalstudies.org.uk/article_kingdom.html

This article was written by a friend of mine who is quite brilliant. It has extensive endnotes.

a. What does the author say about the suitability of the article for research purposes?
b. If the content looks good, should a graduate student use it in a research paper even if its author doubts that it is suitable?
c. Looking at the issue another way, is scholarship determined by the quality a reader sees in a work or by the recognition that the work would receive from other scholars? 

A. State your research questions.

B. Do a search in Google Scholar for journal articles, academic papers or conference proceedings papers (not books, dissertations, sites described as "citations," or book reviews) related to your research question, logging into Google Scholar through the library home page (very important).

Your results should be a list of 10 articles related to your research question.

1. List the search terms you used (in the form you used them)

2. Provide citations for 10 articles that you think are relevant, indicating author, title, journal title, volume number, date and page numbers. You must be sure that these are either journal articles or scholarly papers (e.g. from the proceedings of a conference or an unpublished paper), not citations to books or theses/dissertations.  Proper Turabian Notes/Bibliography or APA format is required. (In Google Scholar, you can click on the "More" button under each citation, the "Cite." Copy/Paste the citation. [Note that "Chicago = Turabian]. Or you can download citations to EndNote and format them from there).

The citations needed to be listed in alphabetical order by author.

3. Indicate which articles are available full text directly from Google Scholar, which are available through the "Check TWU Library" link, and which are not available through either.

Some tips:

• You will be graded on wise choice of search terms and on how relevant the articles are to your research question. 
• Be sure you log in to Google Scholar through the library home page. You can also configure Google Scholar (under "Settings") to download to EndNote. 
• If you cannot locate 10 articles for your topic with Google Scholar, be sure you include all your search terms in your assignment, and indicate what you think the problem was. 

Rubric for Assignment Four.  Highest grade meets these criteria:

• Identifies the crucial issues necessary for properly evaluating each Internet site (question 2).
• Provides fair, informed evaluation of each site.
• Competent search terms and relevant results when searching Google Scholar. Identifies full text availability.
• Bibliography is in alphabetical order by author.
• All citations are in proper Turabian Notes/Bibliography or APA format.