Information-Based Researchfg

Information-Based Research: An Introduction

For Instructors

Objectives

The modules of this tutorial address the following objectives:

Information Cycles:

  • Awareness of a variety of information sources and their characteristics

  • Familiarity with the formats in which information is produced

  • Awareness of the chronology and patterns of information production and distribution related to news events and general empirical research

  • Understanding of possible uses of specific information types

  • Understanding of the concepts of primary and secondary sources and their significance

  • Understanding of the differences between scholarly and popular literature and its significance

  • Basic awareness of typical finding tools for a variety of information sources

Topics:

  • Basic understanding of a variety of sources for finding appropriate research topics

  • Ability to narrow or broaden a research topic to fit the scope of a specific project

  • Understanding of the significance of questions in information-based research

Search Strategy:

  • Ability to distinguish a database from a network or other information sources

  • Familiarity with the general characteristics of databases, including fields and record structure

  • Ability to distinguish the key concepts and terms related to a research question

  • Understanding of the relationship between search vocabulary and such issues as the time in which information is published and the discipline producing the information

  • Ability to generate broader, narrower, and related vocabularies for an information search

  • Basic understanding of Boolean logic and the use of the operators AND, OR, and NOT

  • Understanding of the role of nesting, truncation, and wildcards in precision searching

Evaluating:

  • Ability to review and revise searches in response to failure

© University of Washington Information Literacy Learning 2001