Speaker 1: Now, let's take a look at finding sources and conducting research. There are several types of sources that you should look for when you are conducting research. Some of these sources include books, peer-reviewed journal articles, press sources such as newspapers and magazines, websites, media sources, and people. Each of these types of sources has different strengths and weaknesses and shows the different types of sources and indicates how long it typically takes to publish that source and how deep you might expect the information and analysis to be. First, let's take a look at books. Books typically take the longest to publish, so while they might not have the most recent details about something that has occurred in the last few days, these are good sources to rely on for in-depth information and for accurate overviews of topics that are established. And there are a lot of different types of books, and each book type will serve a different purpose. For example, textbooks are an excellent source for getting a comprehensive explanation of a topic that has been studied for an extended period of time. These research-based books are an outstanding source for extended research about a specific topic. These books can provide explanations about how to apply a particular concept to a large audience. It provides detailed biographies and histories, make an argument about what should be, it provides statistics, numbers, examples, and testimonies. If you've gone to school, which I'm assuming you have, you're familiar with textbooks. So it provides a good, comprehensive explanation of a particular topic. Now, memoirs and non-fiction novels can be a good source for narratives, testimonies, and examples. The great thing about books is a lot of books are very accessible, even for free. Your local library has a lot of access to books. If you're a university student, your personal library should have access as well. And even if you're stuck at home taking online courses, the good thing about libraries are that a lot of the textbooks as well as PDF documents and things along those lines are accessible for students. That's one luxury that being a student has. If you're not enrolled as a university student, the great thing is you can go to Google Scholar or you might even possibly be able to find PDF versions of textbooks. Or just do a simple Google search and there are plentiful amount of YouTube videos that actually provide a comprehensive explanation of certain books. Again, keep in mind, it's a comprehensive explanation, so it's a brief little summary. Next, let's take a look at peer-reviewed journal articles. Now, peer-reviewed journal articles are original research studies that are published in academic journals. And these articles are published in peer-reviewed journals are based on original research studies that were conducted by expert researchers who typically work for a university, a research hospital, or another research-focused organization, such as the Pew Research Center. These research articles share the results of studies and they are only published after they go through an extensive peer-review process, which means the other research experts in the same particular field review the research to make sure that the study used rigorous methods that can be trusted and the conclusions were warranted based on the findings of the study. Now, these articles are the best source for in-depth findings about a very, very, very specific research question and provide highly reliable information. But they will also be written with a high level of detail that is intended for experts and might be difficult to understand if you are just beginning to learn a topic. Now, due to the extensive research and review process, peer-reviewed journal articles are excellent sources but can take anywhere from a year to several years to publish. To find peer-reviewed journal articles, you can use your local library or even go onto Google Scholar, which is awesome, which will allow you to select and limit your search to peer-reviewed journal articles. Now, if you're a listener and you're interested in going to grad school, pretty much a large portion of your graduate studies will be focused on pretty much creating journal articles that are focused on very in-depth, specific, specialized fields of research. So if you're interested in journal articles and extensive research on a very narrow, specific topic, then definitely go to grad school and I think you'll have a blast. So there's that. Next, let's take a look at popular press sources. Now, popular press sources, such as newspapers and magazine articles, can be written for either the general public or a specific audience. Now, some of these sources are focused on sharing current news stories, and some examples are the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, there's a lot, while others are focused on specific interests. Now, some examples of these are Scientific America, Popular Mechanics, and so on and so forth. And there are also popular press sources that focus solely on entertainment, such as in-touch people and things along those lines. Now, these sources also vary greatly on the type of information and the credibility of that information. You know, most newspapers and magazines are now available both in print and online, which makes it a lot easier to find articles from various points in history and to read articles published around the world. Now when deciding what type of information to share from a newspaper or magazine, it is important to consider the information is reliable. Now, websites and media sources can either be awesome sources to find accurate information or it can be extremely unreliable, biased sources that shouldn't be trusted. Because websites and media sources can be updated at any time, it is important to evaluate the source to find out who the information is coming from and whether they have any expertise in that subject area. For example, the Mayo Clinic website or the Center for Disease Control website are excellent sources for health information, but googling a condition that you are concerned about is likely to also result in a lot of bad information from sources who have no expertise on the topic. So as you are considering sources, it is important that you take some time to evaluate the quality of the resource before deciding whether to use it in your presentation. One particular website that is worth noting is Wikipedia. Wikipedia articles can vary greatly in quality. Some are excellent, well-researched encyclopedia entries written by experts, and other entries contain little to no research. You can usually tell how well-researched the entry is by examining whether the entry contains citations, and if so, what type of sources have been cited. If the entry cites a lot of peer-reviewed journals and academic books, then it may be reliable. Anyone can change any Wikipedia entry at any time, so just be careful. Some Wikipedia entries are frequently updated by public relations professionals whose job is focused on making a person or product look great. So always be weary, be mindful, and be smart. In general, we suggest using Wikipedia as a starting point for your research to get background information, and then to explore and cite other consistent sources for additional details and information for your research. Wikipedia is a great starting point, and that's one thing I always tell my students. It's not black and white when it comes to Wikipedia. Again, there are awesome great entries that are published by reputable experts. So one thing I do suggest if my students want to use Wikipedia is use it as a starting point. So one thing about great Wikipedia articles is, again, there's a lot of citations, and you can find the citations at the very end of each Wikipedia page. They're usually in blue, right? It's like the footnotes, and they will source and cite the original source. And one thing when it comes to research is one thing I always encourage my students to do is always use primary sources. So primary source, simply put, is just where the original source came from. So now we live in a generation where everyone can pretty much, you know, copy and paste information. So for example, let's say you're a blog writer, and you want to share a piece of research that the CDC has recently published. Now, it's totally fine if you want to cite the CDC. However, if you're doing an extensive research paper, it would be ideal not to cite yourself and your blog entry, but instead cite the CDC because the CDC is the primary source, and the blog entry is just the secondary source, right? But obviously, the blog entry doesn't have incorrect information because it's citing the primary source. However, it's always better to cite said primary source. So Wikipedia, again, if it's a great article and a great entry, definitely look at the citations. And I always suggest my students to cite the original primary source from Wikipedia, not Wikipedia itself, right? It's always about the primary sources. Now, a final source that you can consider is people, right? People have expertise or experience related to your topic and who are in a position to know about a particular subject. One way to do this is to conduct an interview with an expert. If you're trying to understand what others believe or what their perceptions or experiences are with a particular topic, another opinion is to conduct a survey and to share those results in your speech. For example, if you want to give a speech arguing that your campus should offer a class on stress management, you might want to take a survey or you might want to survey other students to find out how many of them would be interested in taking such a course. And the great thing about interviews is it's great. It's just conducting research, right? It's collecting data about people's particular opinions on a particular subject and people are a great source of information.