More than Quaint Quotes: Source Assessment

Once, a student asked me how to cite a webpage for a research essay. The page in question was a collection of quotes, each one removed from its broader context. Quaint little quotes may seem useful, but they’re like buzzing flies in your house. Obnoxious and out of place. The student just wanted something fancy from someone important so they could meet the required number of sources. I've addressed this issue elsewhere, but I want to explore a different facet of it now: Source Assessment.

Source Assessment deals with how a source is useful in a larger project. It requires a researcher to go beyond “this is relevant” to “I will use this source to do this or for this purpose.” However, not all sources can be treated the same way. Just as you need to evaluate a source to determine its reliability, you need to consider the part each source will play in your research project. There are at least four different jobs each source can do for you.

Background

You have to start somewhere, and researching basic background information ultimately fulfills two purposes: it’s a way for you to make sure you know your field, and to show your reader that you do. 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. 

Grounds

It is one thing to understand the basics in the field, but it is another thing to demonstrate and suggest ways to apply specific information. Sources that work as Grounds meet this need: more specific information that ties closely to and supports your thesis. Grounds are therefore the closest information you can find to your own thesis. These will involve studies of closely related information or research you’ve used, the key concepts, theories, and studies that are the foundations to your study.

Backings

Backings exist in a weird place, and can sometimes be sources that don't at first seem too relevant to your own topic. Backings, however, serve the important role of supporting your logic. In the same way Grounds relate to and support your thesis, Backings support the internal logic of your argument, and are therefore usually broader in their scope than your Grounds. In choosing sources as Backings, you need to think about the decisions you’re making as part of your argument and what research you can find to support them. In that regard, Backings are sources we sometimes find later, whereas the others are some of the first sources we should find.

Rebuttals

Also known as counterarguments, rebuttals offer opposing viewpoints to your own. While simply ignoring or dismissing rebuttals is an attractive idea, it's better to acknowledge, address, and, most importantly, resolve conflicts. Researching potential rebuttals is therefore a good way to strengthen your argument. By extension, additional sources can be used to either counter rebuttals or adjust your own argument to accommodate them.

In summary:

• Background Information gives information about your field.
• Grounds gives your individual argument a foundation (no pun intended, at least on my part).
• Backings basically say “It worked for them: it should therefore work for me.”
• Rebuttals offer opposing viewpoints to your own.

Overall, Source Assessment is vital because it helps you get past the quaint quotes problem: simply digging through a source for something that sounds good. It’s important to really think about the information a source has and consider how you can use it. When you're researching, don't just ask if you understand the information or if the piece is reliable, but ask how it contributes to your argument?

To see how these different types of source uses fit in a broader schematic, check out the Toulmin Method.

Note: The blog post is an updated version of the post “How will you use it? Evaluating Research Sources” posted February 10, 2015.

How will you use it? Evaluating Research Sources

This post has been replaced by the post "More than Quaint Quotes: Source Assessment", posted Wednesday, April 27th. Please refer to that post.

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.