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.

Audience Research

One purpose of research is to replace our assumptions with reliable facts. Sometimes, the research confirms our assumptions: other times, research proves us wrong. Regardless, properly done research leaves people with better information than when they started.

So once you have your information, what’s the best way to present it? That depends on your audience, and sometimes, researching your audience is just as important as researching your topic.

Unfortunately, we rarely take the time to understand just who it is we're writing to; we're much more concerned with our topics and arguments – what we're writing about – to stop and take a good look at whom we're writing to. This leads to making important decisions about how we write – our use of Pathos – based on unfounded assumptions. Therefore, just as we research our topics, we should research our audiences.

Researching an audience requires different methods and sources, frequently ones we’re unfamiliar with: article databases, reference books, and scholarly publications are about things not people or groups. The important thing is our research tells us worthwhile information about our audience. To do so, it is helpful to look for the following types of sources:

• Biographies and profiles: This is the first place to go. Profiles of your audience will give basic information about them, and more importantly some of their duties and responsibilities as well. It can be easy to dismiss these because they can be simple, but they are often invaluable in knowing where to go for more research.
• Publications by the audience: Publications by your audience can give an in-depth look at their stance on specific issues. It gives an opportunity to see how they view a situation: a glimpse at how they think and operate. There can be some risk here, as people normally want to present themselves, their ideas and conclusions in the best light.
• Publications about the audience: Important people and groups are often talked about by others, for good and bad. By investigating these conversations, you can get a better perspective of your audience. However, just as a person may try to put themselves in the best light, others may do the same, or even try to tear them down, so these sources should be carefully evaluated.
• Affiliated organizations: This is an interesting one. Most research involves going more specific, but this involves going broader and looking at what duties or responsibilities your audience has based on what organizations they belong to. It's worthwhile to consider this information because your audience may have to operate according to the regulations of these groups, or just being part of a group can influence their decisions.
• Demographic information: Researching information about the demographics your audience belongs to. For example, if they’re a teacher, what does your research tell you about teachers in general? While this kind of information can be useful, it is the broadest and can be the least helpful. This is not to say demographic information isn't reliable, but it's possible your audience doesn't fit the mold and can lead to oversimplifying a complex individual or group based on information describing entire sections of people. If you’re using demographic information, be sure to include other types of sources, ensuring you recognize your audience as an individual, rather than running the risk of stereotyping.

This is ultimately an issue of Pathos. In order to be aware of how your audience thinks and acts, you need to look at how they have acted and presented their thoughts. With this research in hand, you can make reasonably sound judgments about how best to write. Your audience ceases to be a name or an address, and becomes an active, living person or group, capable of making decisions and influencing others. Once you realize this, you're not just producing words, but producing them with the purpose of influencing someone else. In short, if you want your words to be powerful, you have to understand where they're going.

The Stasis Model, Part 1: Different Types of Claims

Consider these statements:

• It is snowing outside.
• Snow is white, cold, and falls from clouds under the right conditions.
• It is snowing really bad.
• We should dig the car out of the snow.

Each of these statements says something about snow, but each one says something different about it, and in doing so, makes different types of claims. When doing more serious writing or research, types of claims convey different information and refer to the stances we take on issues and topics. The Stasis Model is a way to help us know what kinds of claims we’re making and their relationship to one another by identifying four different types of claims. They are:

• Fact: Claims about the existence of something.
• Definition: Claims about the traits, characteristics, and attributes of something.
• Value: Claims about the superiority or inferiority of something.
• Policy: Claims about the action to be taken about something.

You can identify the type of claim something is by asking the following questions:

• Does it exist? Is it a thing?
• What's it like?
• How good/bad/important/unimportant/useful/useless/etc. is it?
• What should be done about/because of it?

So let’s apply these questions to the above claims:

Fact Claim: It is snowing outside.

• Does snow exist? Yes, and for the sake of discussion, let's say there is in fact snow outside, so still yes. Fact claims almost always boil down to either “yes it is” or “no it isn't”. If there was no snow outside, the claim would be false, because there's no snow outside. If the claim was “snow doesn’t exist”, it would still be a Fact claim, and false.
• This does not deal with what snow is like (Definition) or the severity of the snow (Value).

Definition Claim: Snow is white, cold, and falls from clouds under the right conditions.

• What is snow like? Even though the description is vague, it's accurate because these are some of snow’s attributes. Just because it doesn't describe the geometric patterns snow forms, the chemical composition, etc., does not make it an inaccurate description or any other type of claim.
• Fact claims just say whether or not something is. Definition goes into more detail to describe whatever it is. This doesn’t deal with the quality of the snow, just what snow is like.

Value Claim: It is snowing really bad.

• How good is the snow? Apparently, it's bad. This implies degrees of quality: good or bad, better or worse, etc. In our example, the snow is bad (snow that decreases visibility, takes out power, etc) as opposed to snow that is good (creates a snow pack for farmers, good skiing and snowboarding conditions, etc).
• Value claims require Definition and Fact claims; you can't claim snow is good or bad if you don't know what snow is, and you'd have to define just what constitutes good or bad snow.

Policy Claim: We should dig the car out of the snow.

• What should be done about the snow? This goes beyond describing something or judging its quality. Policy addresses the action that should be taken. In this situation, it's digging the car out of the snow.
• We can arrive at this claim because of the corresponding Value claim the snow is “really bad”. Once we determine the Value of something we can act based on the Value we claim it to have. If it's a good or important thing, we should promote, protect, and enable it. If it's a bad thing, we should deter and prevent it.

The Stasis Model gives us tools to better understand and break down our arguments by helping trace our ideas and make sure we understand them. We like to argue Policy and Value all the time, but we can't properly make these claims without understanding the Definition or even the Fact levels of the issue we’re making claims about.