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.

Research All Grown Up: The Literature Review

All Annotated Bibliographies want to be Literature Reviews when they grow up.

So you’ve done your research, you’ve developed your thesis, you have a good idea of what you want to do for your research essay. You have all this helpful research, but you’re at a loss of how to incorporate it it, and prove you’re not just spouting random things, that you’re ideas are grounded in the work of the experts.

This is why we have Literature Reviews. The granddaddy of the Annotated Bibliography, this is a form of writing that fulfills many of the same purposes of the Annotated Bibliography, but while putting them into the essay itself. This isn’t literature as in fiction; rather, this refers to the influential works and writings of the scholars and experts in a field. Basically, you’re taking what the experts have said and bringing it all together.

Both genres, the Annotated Bibliography and the Literature Review, are ways for researchers to present their research. However, Annotated Bibliographies are preliminary pieces, done before the main ideas and concepts are formed, generally so the author can catalogue and make sure they have a basic understanding of their topic and what the experts say about it. Annotated Bibliographies are rarely published and remain a resource for the researcher as they work on a larger piece. The Annotated Bibliography is work researchers do for themselves, which is why it is a popular assignment in writing classes: go through the process of understanding and evaluating your research early on.

Literature Reviews are different. First and foremost, they get published, though not usually independently; they are significant parts of larger pieces of research and fulfill specific purposes. Find a major scientific study and the first couple of pages will likely focus on work other people have done, identifying current theories and concepts. They won’t be comprehensive, i.e., bringing every piece of research ever that’s related to the topic, but it will focus on more recent and more significant ones.

The Literature Review, though, is not where authors provide and discuss their own ideas and conclusions. The Literature Review opens a piece as a kind of information genealogy. In a way, you are taking your Annotated Bibliography and sorting the information by theme or concept (generally using a graduated or comparative method of organization), and showing how different scholars and researchers have addressed similar issues that contribute to your own work. It is a matter of showing how you can take other’s ideas and concepts and synthesize them. Therefore, Literature Reviews generally do three closely related things.

First, it’s how researchers can demonstrate their expertise. Major research pieces can have bibliographies that go on for pages, but some of these sources can be mentioned a handful of times in a research piece. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s the researcher’s opportunity to show the work they’ve done, and the extent of their knowledge and familiarity with the information.

Second, it is where the researcher traces how they developed their ideas, and that their work fits with the rest of the literature. They can take different ideas and synthesize them, bring them together to generate new knowledge and information, tracing the history of their topic, within their own research, and contextualize their work within the greater picture.

Third, it shows how your research fits in the bigger picture. You don't want to just know a lot of stuff, but show you can fit your work in with the work of others. Writing and research don’t take place in a vacuum, and if you try to, or even if you only do some research, you’ll likely just make claims others have made, and done a better job making, before. It’s a good way to showcase your ignorance, and you don’t want to do that.

There’s a lot riding on a Literature Review. It’s an exercise in establishing your credibility and showing the people who know about your topic you’re worth taking seriously. A bad Literature Review can break your piece faster than a bad idea. You could have a great idea, but if you can’t show where it fits with the rest of the research being done, nor can you demonstrate your own familiarity with the discipline, it’s going to be really hard for those who do know to take you seriously.

Show that you Know: Source Integration Overview

Source integration is a matter of properly introducing, referencing, citing, and explaining research sources. On the one hand this is important for coherent writing. On the other, it's an important way to demonstrate familiarity with the research itself. If a source is poorly integrated, it suggests the writer didn't understand the information.

So, when you embark on a research project and are faced with referencing your research in your essay, take the following into consideration.

• Research First: When starting a research project, you shouldn't start with drafting the actual essay. Instead, invest in research and learn more about your topic.
• Active Research: Good source integration means good research, and good research means taking the time to read closely, take notes, and evaluate your sources.
• Take Notes: Jotting down interesting information, highlighting or bookmarking intriguing passages, and otherwise making personal records of what you learn from your research.
• Introduce & Explain sources: Any time you put research into your own writing you are repurposing and recontextualizing it. Therefore, it is essential to take the time to explain your research before summarizing, paraphrasing, or quoting it (also, see Hit & Run Quotes below).
• Summarize: Explaining the main points, thesis, and arguments of a source.
• Paraphrase: Taking a selection of a larger piece and reiterating the main points in your own words.
• Quote: Using the exact words of a source in your own piece.
• Blended Words: Carefully integrating a quote with your own words.
• In-Text Citations: Knowing where to place in-text citations, and why they go there.
• Synthesis: Finding and recognizing where your sources have related points so you can reference them together.

Knowing how to integrate sources is important, but sometimes a good way to figure out why we do something is to understand how not to do it.

• Hit & Run Quotes: This term comes from a book entitled They Say/I Say, and it refers to improperly introduced and explained quotes.
• Patchwriting: Paraphrasing and quoting at the same time and without quotation marks. This involves taking a selection from a source, changing a few words here and there, and not treating it as a quote. This can be borderline plagiarism. Instead, quote or use more of your own words.
• Just the first few pages: Don't just rely on a few pithy statements from the opening pages of a book or article; take the time to go through the entire piece and you'll find more useful information.
• Excessive Integration: There is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Sometimes, it's easier to just quote ad nauseum or even give too much supplementary information.
• Plagiarism: The failure to properly acknowledge research, or, taking the work of another passing it off as your own. This is one of the worst things you can ever do.

Improper source integration can harm an essay. Sometimes it’s easy to just drop in quotes or citations and call it good. However, good source integration is more than just a stylistic issue. Coherent writing means a coherent thought process, so coherently integrating sources suggests a better understanding of the material. An author who drops in quotes willy-nilly probably just found and crammed them in there and doesn’t understand what they are saying. Taking the time to introduce, explain, synthesize, and blend shows you know the information well enough it is part of your own thought process and knowledge: it shows you are confident in your knowledge and you can control the information.