Part of evaluating sources, particularly for annotated bibliographies, is determining how and why they are useful. Apart from considering whether or not a source is reliable, it is important to survey how you expect to use the information you’ve found. To describe this, I have identified three different ways to use sources: as background Information, thesis Support, and results. By considering your sources in these different ways, it gives you a good idea of what to look for in them and how you will end up using them in your research. Also, bear in mind that one source may be useful in more than one area.
Background Information
Depending on your topic or your audience, you may need to take some time to address some of the basics in your field or a sub field if you are bringing several topics together. For example, if you were writing about what music to have playing during athletics practice and you were writing it to coaches, you’ll need to find sources that offer basic information on music. This helps to show your own understanding of the field and briefly introduces your audience to the field. This information generally appears in literature reviews at the start of formal research essays and demonstrates your own understanding of the field.
Thesis Support
It is one thing to understand the basics in the field, It is another thing to demonstrate and suggest ways to apply specific information. This information is more specific and gives additional credence to your thesis by showing how you reached it in the first place. It may be easy to shirk thesis support because a thesis is your own ideas and thoughts, but it is still important to show how your ideas work within the ideological framework of your discipline.
Returning to the music in athletic practice example, you could find studies that look at different genres of music and athletic performance. There could be certain songs, artists, themes to the lyrics, or tempos that could shape your own hypothesis. Maybe some researchers have looked at how some songs are better for practices, and others in preparation for big games. Once you have this information, you can demonstrate you have more than a rudimentary knowledge of the subject as you build it up to support your thesis.
Results
Being able to demonstrate the validity of your claim or argument, or to show it is more than an abstract theory, involves demonstrating your idea works by focusing on its outcome. This can be your experimentation, tangible evidence done elsewhere, or a thought exercise; it can vary depending on the situation or discipline.
This information generally comes in two forms: it can be either anticipatory or proven. If it is anticipatory, it hasn’t been proven by experimentation, but you have something to suggest what you think is reasonable. If it is proven, then you have concrete examples to support your conclusions. For the athletics and music example, there might be studies that have already employed what you are suggesting. If so, you could cite these studies, possibly as both evidence of results and as part of your thesis support.
Including a discussion of your results, whether anticipated or proven, with research to back it up, to show an understanding of how information and practice can coalesce into a solid result. It shows you’ve thought your ideas through from start to finish, and you can find ways to make your ideas and your research useful beyond abstract concepts.
No matter what, a strong research piece should have a smattering of each research source. Without any one of them, a piece will be lackluster, missing important information to either establish author credibility r, thesis validity, and the usability of the new ideas.
When evaluating sources, consider not just whether or not a source is useful, but how it will be useful. Consider what kind of information it is and how you will use it so you know where to include it.
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