Research - How to do it?

[Debbie Penley]

I was wondering if I could get some tips on how to do research - both basic and in-depth research.

The reason being is that I didn't realize until I was an adult for several years that many of the things I learned in school either weren't entirely true or have a different side to the story than the one we heard. Examples are Thomas Edison's inventing of the "THE" lightbulb, or how different the story of the Civil War is here in the north vs. what is told in the south, etc.

How can we test the validity of our sources, especially as "lay" people? I can only read the book about Egyptian history, at this point in time, so I can't verify *in person* whether what I'm reading about is true or not. I see shows on the Discovery Channel or History Channel that are fascinating, and I think, "How could I have found that out for myself?"

On the flip side, there are many, many sites on-line (and perhaps books, but I'd think less with the books) where most of the information is fictional and no care was taken to verify any of the information on the site. I don't want to stumble on one of these sites and relay that information on to my kids, and believe it myself, only to find out later I was wrong. But how can I tell?

Or earlier in another discussion, I asked about studies. Sandra made the comment that studies are not how we learn, but I'm still curious how we DO learn facts, then? I have read many parenting books and sites and have seen the "studies" that support everything from crying it out to co-sleeping and I'm not sure how to trust either side as far as "facts" are concerned. (I end up doing what I feel in my heart is best, regardless of the "studies", but just for the sake of knowledge, how do I determine if there is truth at all in the words?)

One great example is pirates. I tried looking up pirates because I was interested in the *real* life of pirates and what they did and how the parrot on the shoulder, the peg leg, and the hook all got introduced into the story. There wasn't a whole lot I could find, and not even many non-fiction books. I know there must be more out there, but I'm not sure how to find it.

Deb

[Sandra Dodd]

Easy parts first: Treasure Island is the source of some of the pirate images that spread out into everything, after that book was published. The same way there's been some WONDERful art based on Lord of the Rings (even before the movies), some of the coolest illustrations of Victorian times were of Treasure Island (and lots of good stuff on Robin Hood, too). You could do google image searches for illustrations of Treasure Island.

School-style research is practice research. Sometimes it's real (depending on the person, or when grad school comes), but sometimes it's like a game of research with arbitrary parameters, like "use three sources" or "one source must be from interlibrary loan" or "due by December 10, no exceptions."

In normal life, someone can study and inquire and collect data or trivia or information (which might be a better way to look at it than "collecting facts") on hobbies or interests and they can rush into a weeklong intensive world-crawl of everything they can find, or it can be something one intends to pursue until death, in which case there isn't necessarily a hurry.

As with anything, people sort through sources and resources and eventually find their favorites, in a field. Some people and books are full of shit. Some are golden. Some are somewhere in between. So you don't depend on any one source, ever, for anything. If two match, did one come from the other? If two out of three match, is the third one maybe the best source? Is newer always better than older? Is famous university always more valid than small state school? Is a Canadian university always a better source than... Pakistan or Mexico?

Gradually you'll discover your own prejudices and proclivities and with practice you'll develop your own set of critical thinking skills. If you read a study, start thinking of questions as you're reading. Sometimes there might be no good way to know for sure how valid or useful something is, which is fine. Keep it in mind, and in five years or a month (no tellin') another study might come along that you understand better, that reinforces or contradicts the first one. That doesn't make the second one "truth," it's just more data. Remember where you saw it for future reference.

Here's something funny from just a few days ago, a "study" cited on a package:
http://sandradodd.blogspot.com/2008/11/science-and-friday.html
I was amused by it; I didn't need to hunt down the methodology.

Oh! That's another thing to start considering: methodology. If someone makes a statement, what the basis? There are lots of kinds of bases for conclusions. If it's a study, you can find it and read about how they set it up. It's possible to read up on current standards for scientific studies in different fields. Some might seem very carefully designed, and others kinda slapped together to defend a particular point. Don't ever depend on just one.

Some unschoolers who are good at looking at studies and finding their strengths and weaknesses are Pam Sorooshian, Joyce Fetteroll and Schuyler Waynforth. You might seek out some of their writings. They're all very analytical, for different reasons.
http://sandradodd.com/pamsorooshian
http://sandradodd.com/joycefetteroll
http://sandradodd.com/schuylerwaynforth
see the pattern there? :-)

For history, I know someone who's interesting and trustworthy. I know him in person through the SCA, not as a history professor, but he is one:
http://www.nipissingu.ca/department/history/MUHLBERGER/blog.htm

Another couple of collections I have going (the kinds of things I've been looking at for years and don't ever expect to stop caring about) are here:
http://sandradodd.com/cake
http://biochemicallove.blogspot.com
and unschooling.
and the application of virtue to everyday life, which is usually addressed through my SCA writings, discussions and relationships, but sometimes in unschooling discussions
http://sandradodd.com/duckford/virtue/
(my name in that context is AElflaed; sorry for any confusion)

Sandra

[Meredith]

Did you try going to Wikipedia and entering "piracy"? Looooooooong article with many references, links and "see also"s.

You might also try the Mythbusters website... they had a show on "pirate myths" at one point...Arrr, lets' see if I can find an address for you...

http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/mythbusters/mythbusters.html

[Robin B.]

Then, of course, there's the "Talk Like a Pirate Day" website
http://www.talklikeapirate.com/piratehome.html

It's so much fun. Mark your calendar for 2009!

I also found this on their site:
http://www.bibliobazaar.com/subcat_booklist.php?cat_id=248

which lists books for sale about pirates from the 17th through 19th centuries.

Oh, and a National Geographic touring show:

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/mission/real-pirates/

[Joyce Fetteroll]

I had the same questions about research after college. It seemed like if I wanted to get closer to the truth about something it would take years to read and read and read before I could understand enough to tell truth from fiction.

But that turns out not to be the case. The more you research, the more you'll stumble across people who will say "Lots of people believe x but that's a myth," or words to that effect and they'll launch into some well research background. Once you've read a lot of "myth buster" type writing, you'll be able to pick up that tone and attitude even when they don't come out and say "Here's why that's a myth."

I think an essential part of the vague "tone and attitude" you'll pick up is that the writer isn't trying to convince you or persuade you that they're right or show you how much they know. They're laying out the information for you so you can see how they arrived at their understanding. Once you pick up on that tone you'll be able to pick up within a few paragraphs whether someone is just repeating what they've read or has a deep regard for underlying truths.

Some of my favorite myth busters are:

The Straight Dope -- There are also several books, collections of articles from the syndicated column. Written by Cecil Adams, "World's Smartest Human Being", but really Ed Zoti and a lot of assistant researchers.

Snopes -- They do a lot of urban legend busting. They're a particularly good source to use to check on those stories that get passed around by email. Lots of good research on where they began.

Myth Busters TV show on Discovery Channel

[Robin B.]

I always check Snopes when I get dicey e-mails in my inbox, asking me to do some odd chain-lettery thing. Mythbusters is our favorite family tv show.

I like "The Book of General Ignorance" for the same reason (busts myths and conventional wisdom). Funny, too.

http://www.amazon.com/Book-General-Ignorance-John-Mitchinson/dp/030...

[MariaD]

Consider apprenticing with real researchers. Usually, if you have a particular question, you can find a willing researcher for discussions of methodologies, scientific traditions, literature, current conferences and the like. All research starts from particular questions. For example: "How long was the average pirate "carrier" or lifespan?" Or, "Who was the most successful female pirate?" (a Chinese lady, apparently).

Many conferences are now held online, including virtual worlds like Second Life and World of Warcraft. You can sign up for those and participate without belonging to a university. In fact, I frequently take my kid with me when I "go" to such events. Registration forms don't ask about ages, just affiliations.

I got interested in pirates, too, at some point of my life, because they are a great source of metaphors. I found that researchers studying particular, narrower areas were more interesting. For example (books):
Seafaring women
Women Sailors and Sailors' Women : An Untold Maritime History
The book of pirate songs (a study in the history of music and songs)
Pirates of the Caribbean: Buccaneers, Privateers and Freebooters 14...

Consider emailing the authors - one of them, I can't remember which, described himself as "a PhD in pirates" and I thought it was cute and appropriate.

A more general book I liked for the research level:
Under the black flag: The romance and the reality of life among the...

An interesting fact: pirate ships were some of the earliest examples of direct democracies!

[M Lewis]

Well that started some interesting reading! I found this site: http://www.piratesinfo.com/ and ended up reading about Anne Bonny and Mary Read. That's the cool thing about research, there isn't one RIGHT way to do it. A question most likely leads to something that poses another question. You might start out looking for a specific thing, but then some little item might glimmer off to the side and start a whole new quest! Not even a quest but more of a journey. Because usually the MOST fascinating stuff you wouldn't even have thought to ask about!!
So if something on the History channel really piques your interest, then try just Googling it and see where it takes you. As for sources, use common sense. For example, the pirate site that I mentioned is not high on reliable source scale. There's a lot at the site trying to sell something, the entries are from various folks and resources aren't generally cited. However, one can further Google a topic that turns up there and find more sources. After reading about Anne Bonny, I did a quick little Google search and discovered there are not many sources, mainly a book on pyrates by someone who's identity is questionable and the "dictionary of national biography". I don't really care that much and it's a cool story. If I did care, I could download the corresponding volume of the dictionary and/or try to ascertain if I think that it's a credible source. But I'll probably go off looking into something else that's caught my eye;-)

[Schuyler]

Books are often not good sources of information, unless they are edited volumes, as they are usually just one person's interpretation of whatever is going on. There are many, many exceptions to that, but when I' m researching anything I use the internet first.

Often the key to researching something is the keywords you use. You mentioned the Civil War, I put in "history civil war from a southern perspective" to Google and got back this: http://ngeorgia.com/history/why.html . Quickly reading through that page a couple of other keywords presented themselves, "Nullification Crisis" "Panic of 1837" and others (many highlighted in blue, handily enough). I'd probably open another tab or window and put those terms into a search and read about those ideas. In another essay from the original search I got the "Confederate Constitution" to use in a different search. Sometimes I'll go to Wikipedia first and look something up there. The Civil War page is a good example, it has lots of internal links as well as a fair number of external links.

Often when I start a search about one thing or another I'm not quite sure what I'm looking for. The other day I was trying to find how long the U.S. and the Soviet Union occupied Germany after the Second World War. I couldn't remember the term "occupation", I forget the precise word a lot, so I started just by searching out U.S. Germany post World War 2. And I got there, but I got a lot of other interesting stuff on the way.

"Or earlier in another discussion, I asked about studies. Sandra made the comment that studies are not how we learn, but I'm still curious how we DO learn facts, then? I have read many parenting books and sites and have seen the "studies" that support everything from crying it out to co-sleeping and I'm not sure how to trust either side as far as "facts" are concerned. (I end up doing what I feel in my heart is best, regardless of the "studies", but just for the sake of knowledge, how do I determine if there is truth at all in the words?)"

There is truth in both of the words. It depends on what the goal of the action is. Crying it out is about getting your infant to sleep on a schedule. Interestingly when doing research to reply to this I found an article about Ferber toning down his stance on crying it out. There is study showing that mom's get an average of 3 1/2 hours of sleep a night in the first few months of having a baby. The article itself is filled with hints at panic from these women not knowing how to sleep with a newborn in the house. There is no conversation, except Dr. Tanya Bryon (who I just don't quite trust, she's very in the media in the UK) about the benefits to an infant of sleeping through the night, and those benefits are presented glancingly, without any footnotes, or information to back them up.

There was a great study funded by the NICHD on early child care that ended up with two camps, one supporting the outcomes of early entry into child care as children were more precocious and tested better at earlier ages the earlier they went into child care. The other camp found that children who went to child care at earlier ages were more aggressive than those children who stayed home for longer. David, my husband, was talking to one of the investigators, Jay Belsky, a while ago. Apparently his findings, the negatives of early child care, were so politically unwelcome that he is at Birkbeck in London now. That may be a bit sensational, I don't know if it's true or just perspective. There aren't any studies to back it up ;0).

Studies aren't false just because another study finds something different. Methodology is incredibly important. The aim of the study makes a difference, the goal of the individual that they are writing to. Crying it out sets up a rhythm that may increase mom's sleeptime. Co-sleeping is more about the child's outcome. Although, in my experience, I slept much better with Simon or Linnaea at my side than I did when they were sleeping on their own through the night, not that they slept away from me that I can remember.

[Joyce Fetteroll]

I'm still thinking about this. :-) It's a fascinating topic to me.

** How can we test the validity of our sources, especially as "lay" people? **

As I'm reading I must in the back of my mind be asking "How do they know that's true?" and "Why do they think that's true?" And the more those questions go unanswered, the less confidence I have in what the author's saying.

If what you're researching is something that's more towards the hard facts, like pirates and Egypt, then references to resources are a good sign. You'll also pick up a feel for resources you can trust like Dorling Kindersley.

If it's research on things that are less hard facts and more opinion where there isn't a single goal for everyone, like with child rearing practices, repeatedly pointing to studies isn't good enough. That's just saying they believe it because some expert says so. What's their goal and what's their bias? What was the researcher's goal and bias? If they say something works and their goal is to get the child to stop demanding, is that your goal?

** I don't want to stumble on one of these sites and relay that information on to my kids, and believe it myself, only to find out later I was wrong. But how can I tell? **

In school the goal is collecting information. You're "smart" in school if you know a lot. And I think when I first started researching things after college, that was still my goal and so my questions were like yours: "How do I know I can trust that?"

But somewhere along the line I made a mental shift to wanting to understand how and why and what's behind the facts. It wasn't a conscious shift but it made a difference in how I read and what I needed out of my sources, so sources I would have latched onto before that were full of "facts" and trivia just weren't satisfying anymore.

Which is a long way of saying that once you make that mental shift of what you want from your reading, you'll be less and less likely to be drawn to less rigorous writing and less likely to absorb unsupported facts that you'd pass onto your kids.

** I end up doing what I feel in my heart is best, regardless of the "studies", but just for the sake of knowledge, how do I determine if there is truth at all in the words? **

I suspect what you're doing is subconsciously being drawn to the one that feels like a good fit for your goals. Writing down your goals and what's important to you will probably make you more aware of the intellectual process that's going on underneath when you're deciding by what feels best.

** I tried looking up pirates because I was interested in the *real* life of pirates and what they did and how the parrot on the shoulder, the peg leg, and the hook all got introduced into the story. There wasn't a whole lot I could find, and not even many non-fiction books. I know there must be more out there, but I'm not sure how to find it. **

Quite often now I begin with Wikipedia which I know can be quite rigorous as well as full of unsupported fluff. (It's also good that there are people in the background putting up flags that say "Hey, this is unsupported fluff and needs cleaned up." ;-) You can't trust that they'll have seen every page but, at least with popular topics, you know there are fact fanatics out there who need to fix incorrect information. And they provide links to outside sources. I'd bet the pirates article would be pretty good. It's a topic that people are fascinated by and want to research so there's pirate fanatics out there keeping an eye on it ;-)

And it does, indeed, mention what Sandra did about Treasure Island:

Pirates are a frequent topic in fiction and are associated with certain stereotypical manners of speaking and dress, some of them wholly fictional: "nearly all our notions of their behavior come from the golden age of fictional piracy, which reached its zenith in 1881 with the appearance of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island."[69] Some inventions of pirate culture such as "walking the plank" were popularized by J. M. Barrie's novel, Peter Pan, where Captain Hook's pirates helped define the fictional pirate archetype.[70] Robert Newton's portrayal of Long John Silver in Disney's 1950 film adaptation of Treasure Island also helped define the modern rendition of a pirate.[70] Other influences include Sinbad the Sailor, and the recent Pirates of the Caribbean films have helped kindle modern interest in piracy and have succeeded quite handsomely in box office grosses.

There's even a link to an article Pirates in popular culture.

[Sandra Dodd]

I had forgotten to mark this topic as "follow" and I've missed some good stuff. I'm going to go and read it again now, but I came here to bring something Joyce wrote on the Always Learning list.

> And maybe to offer a different perspective on tv, sugar and > all the other things we consciously or unconsciously limit.

I don't doubt that people who limit sugar and TV and access to other
religious beliefs and so on have what they believe are good reasons
for the limitations they impose.

But sometimes those reasons don't have a foundation of thought
beneath them. They might be doing what has always been done because
they assume there's a good reason someone decided to do it that way.
(School, imposed bedtimes, 3 square meals a day, brushing twice a
day.) They might be going along with what they've heard because it
sounds sensible and imposing limits is a lot easier than delving into
research they're not confident they can interpret objectively. (It
*does* sound reasonable that exposure a lot of ads will cause kids to
want a lot of things, and that candy will make them ignore more
nutritious food (we can even see that happening if controls are
lifted at Halloween and kids pig out.)

And sometimes those reasons are based on fear. Sometimes fear can
cause people to research to support their fear rather than understand
what they fear better and see the situation more objectively.
Sometimes the information itself is skewed because the only ones
writing and researching are those who are afraid.

For instance, it's much easier to find research on the negative
effects of television than on the positive effects. It's much easier
to find articles on how bad sugar is than to find articles on why you
shouldn't worry. It's much easier to find the negative effects of
secularism than the positive effects.

It's much easier and more comforting to build protective walls
against what we fear than to face the fears and find out the truth.

I think when unschoolers start arguing against limiting TV what
people believe we're saying is that our opinion is better than yours
and you need to keep your opinion to yourself about TV and sugar and
plastic.

But what we're doing is reporting what *really* happens when kids are
free to explore the world in a supportive home, and free to use and
refine their own internal guides in an environment where parents are
there to help them make decisions. (Not make the decision we want
them to, but make their own decisions.)

What we pass on about TV and video games and candy isn't what we
guess will happen. It's not what we hope will happen while we look
through unschooling rosy glasses. It's what actually does happen. And
then also our best guesses at why unschoolers get different results
than what conventional parents fear will happen (and sometimes see
happen).

There are vegetarian parents who help their kids explore the world of
food without forcing them or guilting them into becoming vegetarians.

There are parents who dislike TV who find a way to see TV through
their kids and see the benefits of it. (And their kids don't end up
watching porn at 6!)

I remember at least one fundamentalist Christian who said she wasn't
forcing her beliefs on her kids and was allowing them to make up
their own minds about religion.

Fear is not a good mix to add to unschooling. Even fear of school is
not good. It narrows the world when we need to open doors for kids.

Joyce

If you want to see the rest of that thread it's here.

[Sandra Dodd]

The lyrics game word today is "Pirate," and there are photos of Kirby and Marty dressed as pirates, and again years later, bigger boys, still dressing as pirates. Above that is Ashlee, Marty's girlfriend. There's Cyril Ritchard doing Hook's Waltz from Peter Pan (if you can see Youtube videos from where you are), and then there's one of the characters that created much of the pirate costuming ever after, Long John Silver (this one by Orr, in the 1930's, but there are other well-known illustrations), and then the singingest musical pirates ever: Ruth, Frederick and The Pirate King (portrayed here by Angela Lansbury, Rex Smith and Kevin Kline).

-------------------

I've brought that from my blog to add to the pirate evidence.

I wanted to object to something elsewhere in this topic, too--someone said "real researcher." I believe the intent was "professional, full-time researcher." "REsearch" is finding things that already exist, and it is real however it's done. Some of the best finds ever are the connections made by everyday people who are not paid to do research, but they find something no one has seen for 70 years--a letter, or a passage in a long out-of-print book that ties in with something recent, or (speaking of pirates) an old map or photo, and they offer it up for others to use to document or illuminate history or science. Every connection made, no matter how old or payrolled the finder, is learning, and every time the learning comes from re-discovering what others have known before, that's research.

[Katherine]

What a timely discussion to pop up (after many months at rest)! My husband and I, just last night, were talking about the differences and similarities between the internet and univerity libraries for doing research and learning about new things. It is a given that the internet is an amazing tool with lots of information. My husband loves that there are physical repositories of obscure and hardly-read books sitting at the university library, that just may hold a treasure of information when stumbled upon.

I was lamenting the way I "learned" to do research in high school and college (and I was an English major). I would begin a class on a topic I was completely ignorant of. Then, after a couple of weeks we would be assigned a research paper with certain parameters--10 pages, double spaced, five book sources, three internet sources, etc. So, I had to write intelligently about a topic with information that I digested in a very short amount of time. On one paper I wrote, got a decent grade on, I was told by the prof that there were way better sources out there that I could have used. How could I have known that in such a small amount of time?

I'm glad that, in deschooling myself, I've been able to let go of the idea that "real" research has to be done in a quick amount of time. I'm glad that I have been able to follow trails of information that interest me, at my own pace. I feel knowledgeable in certain areas that I've been able to explore at my own pace and if someone said "Quick, write a ten page paper on X and turn it in next week," on certain topics, I actually could and with joy!

I'm so glad that with my children we can take time to build up a knowledge base and start earlier in life to make judgements and comparisons of information. This is, after all, the information age, right? I lament the years wasted on "hurrying" to assimilate copious amounts of information, that I then never felt confident about and also lost interest in pursuing further.