I am happy to report I am done with the project. Overall I would say I am a better database searcher now. Although I think I lean a bit heavily on my AND command, I have enjoyed truncation and even the occasional field search.
As I annotated my bibliography, I also felt I learned a lot about the research topic. Although I won't be organizing this into an actual literature review any time soon, I can see themes forming around user age and other demographics, visual features vs. content, the effect of domain names, the effect of purpose in searching in credibility criteria looked for, brand trust, and more.
For anyone curious, here is the almost final* version: https://viewer.zoho.com/docs/kcd2bi
*The first citation should actually read "seeking out .edu domains" -- oops!
Friday, December 9, 2011
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Final Project Post 5
My goal was to be done with this project by today...and while I'm not quite there yet, I am happy to report some more progress. This week I branched out to a new database and found some more good articles. I was also able to select and annotate the ones I chose from my first round of searches and get my search report written up.
Choosing the articles was a bit of a challenge. For one thing, I had a few on my list that I hadn't realized were just abstracts. Those I wasn't able to track down full text articles had to be removed. Then there were a few that weren't quite on-topic as much I had originally thought, and a couple that I realized were just dissertations (and had not been published/peer-reviewed). I am hoping the second round will be a little better. Just a few more annotations and I will be proud to call this done. Hope to report back soon!
Choosing the articles was a bit of a challenge. For one thing, I had a few on my list that I hadn't realized were just abstracts. Those I wasn't able to track down full text articles had to be removed. Then there were a few that weren't quite on-topic as much I had originally thought, and a couple that I realized were just dissertations (and had not been published/peer-reviewed). I am hoping the second round will be a little better. Just a few more annotations and I will be proud to call this done. Hope to report back soon!
Friday, December 2, 2011
Final Project Post 4
This week I tried some new search techniques. First, I tried searching fields. This began by searching the KW Identifiers Field in ERIC. I tried to search "credibility AND adult AND online" with all fields set to KW Identifiers. To my surprise this produced no results. I was only able to produce results when searching for just one term in this field and results were fairly limited. I decided to try something different. Next I searched "credibility" in the SU Descriptors (subject descriptors) field and "online" in all fields. Through this method I found three articles I ended up taking a second look at, including one that made it to my list of potential articles:
Metzger, M.J., Flanagin, A.J., Zwarun, L. (2003) College student web use, perceptions of information credibility, and verification behavior. Computers & Education, 41, 271-290.
Having sifted through many results, I had some new ideas for keywords I wanted to try out. These included "truth," "trust," "evaluating," "validity," "information source*," and "web." Since there were variations on these that also might be useful (for example, "trustworthiness" or "evaluation") I was also eager to try out truncation. Next, I tried "cred* AND students AND information source* AND Internet OR Web." I also limited my results to only search Journal Articles and Peer Reviewed articles. This proved to be a very productive search, resulting in the following articles making it to my list:
Van de Vord, R. (2010). Distance students and online research: Promoting information literacy through media literacy. The Internet and Higher Education, 13(3). 170-175.
Rhoades, E.B., Irani, T., Telg, R., & Myers, B. (2008). Internet as an information source: Attitudes and usage of students enrolled in a college of agriculture course. Journal of Agricultural Education, 49(2).
Iding, M., Crosby, M., Auernheimer, B., & Barbara Klemm, E. E. (2009). Web site credibility: Why do people believe what they believe?. Instructional Science, 37(1), 43-63.
Next, I tried "Internet AND 'information literacy' AND students NOT elementary NOT 'high school'". I had shied away from searching "information literacy" since I felt it was too broad a term and not quite what I was investigating. Though numerous, my results confirmed this. Many were prescriptive rather than investigative and focused on a set of information literacy activities much broader than what I was interested in. Nonetheless, I identified two more potential articles:
Halverson, K.L., Siegel, M.A., & Freyermuth, S.K. (2010). Non-Science majors' critical evaluation of websites in a biotechnology course. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 19(6) 612-623.
Yarmey, K. (2011). Student information literacy in the mobile environment. EDUCAUSE Quarterly, 34(1).
As I look towards wrapping things up things, I hope to identify a few more articles through more searches. Then I will begin reviewing them for relevance and usefulness in answering my research question. Hopefully a few themes will emerge for my hypothetical literature review and I will have a good set of articles to use. I am a little confused about whether we are allowed to use more than one database for this project, but if so, I think this will be very useful in finding more articles, particularly since my topic extends from the education field into communications. (Since one would feel free to in a real literature review I would assume so, but I will check to make sure!)
For now, I am going to start annotating some of my clear "winners." :)
Metzger, M.J., Flanagin, A.J., Zwarun, L. (2003) College student web use, perceptions of information credibility, and verification behavior. Computers & Education, 41, 271-290.
Having sifted through many results, I had some new ideas for keywords I wanted to try out. These included "truth," "trust," "evaluating," "validity," "information source*," and "web." Since there were variations on these that also might be useful (for example, "trustworthiness" or "evaluation") I was also eager to try out truncation. Next, I tried "cred* AND students AND information source* AND Internet OR Web." I also limited my results to only search Journal Articles and Peer Reviewed articles. This proved to be a very productive search, resulting in the following articles making it to my list:
Van de Vord, R. (2010). Distance students and online research: Promoting information literacy through media literacy. The Internet and Higher Education, 13(3). 170-175.
Rhoades, E.B., Irani, T., Telg, R., & Myers, B. (2008). Internet as an information source: Attitudes and usage of students enrolled in a college of agriculture course. Journal of Agricultural Education, 49(2).
Iding, M., Crosby, M., Auernheimer, B., & Barbara Klemm, E. E. (2009). Web site credibility: Why do people believe what they believe?. Instructional Science, 37(1), 43-63.
Next, I tried "Internet AND 'information literacy' AND students NOT elementary NOT 'high school'". I had shied away from searching "information literacy" since I felt it was too broad a term and not quite what I was investigating. Though numerous, my results confirmed this. Many were prescriptive rather than investigative and focused on a set of information literacy activities much broader than what I was interested in. Nonetheless, I identified two more potential articles:
Halverson, K.L., Siegel, M.A., & Freyermuth, S.K. (2010). Non-Science majors' critical evaluation of websites in a biotechnology course. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 19(6) 612-623.
Yarmey, K. (2011). Student information literacy in the mobile environment. EDUCAUSE Quarterly, 34(1).
As I look towards wrapping things up things, I hope to identify a few more articles through more searches. Then I will begin reviewing them for relevance and usefulness in answering my research question. Hopefully a few themes will emerge for my hypothetical literature review and I will have a good set of articles to use. I am a little confused about whether we are allowed to use more than one database for this project, but if so, I think this will be very useful in finding more articles, particularly since my topic extends from the education field into communications. (Since one would feel free to in a real literature review I would assume so, but I will check to make sure!)
For now, I am going to start annotating some of my clear "winners." :)
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