SECTION 4 - Collecting Information

Assignment 4 - The Interview

Assignment 5 - Notes and Summary

Review of section 3

In Section 3 you:

discussed the elements of a Research Proposal
wrote research questions to focus on solutions
presented your plan in a presentation

objectives of section 4

In Section 4 you will:

practise how to choose and collect information from sources in order to answer your research questions
discuss how to record , store and share the answers to the research questions that you find
prepare to conduct an interview with an expert to collect more information on your research questions

Activity 1: Finding and evaluating sources

Pretend you are looking for answers to the research question, ' What is the most common solution to traffic congestion that cities have implemented in recent years?'. See Appendix 4 for search tools and scientific websites.

In your group you need to discuss how to find reliable, relevant and up-to-date sources. Your teacher will discuss with you what academic sources are acceptable.

Find one peer-reviewed academic journal article that would provide some information to answer the question.
Find one book at SQU library (see Appendix 4 for website) that might contain useful information.
Find an article in a scientific magazine that might be useful.
Make a note of the source location (online link or library catalog number), so you could find the source again.

What types of sources are there?

Encyclopedic - basic information about your problem from reference sources
Peer-reviewed academic journal articles - original research checked by academics and published in trusted Journals
Academic books - either written by one set of researchers or a collection of research divided into chapters
Scientific journalism - articles by journalists in scientific magazines, newspapers or websites written for the general public

Activity 2: Making notes

Below is an example Research Question followed by information from three different sources.

Read the research question and the source information. In your opinion, which of the three sources are most reliable? Why?
Identify the key information relating to the question and write notes similar to those shown in Figure 2.
In your opinion, are there any discrepancies in the three sources (do the sources disagree on details)?
What will your course of action be, if your answer is 'yes' to Question 2?
Write a synthesized summary of between 80-100 words.
Share your summaries in your group and discuss which give all the needed information in the shortest number of words.

Research Question: How many people suffer from malaria, and how many people die from malaria each year?

You have found three sources:

Source 1: Name: International Medical Corps

Citation: http://internationalmedicalcorps.org/page.aspx?pid=219&txtSearch=malaria (accessed online Sep 23, 2014)

Statistics from 2010 - One million people die each year from malaria; 90% of these deaths occur in Africa. Every 30 seconds a child dies from malaria. Malaria costs Africa more than $12 billion in lost GDP every year. 10,000 pregnant women and 200,000 infants die from malaria in Africa.

Source 2: Name: The Lancet

Citation: Murray, C. J., Rosenfeld, L. C., Lim, S. S., Andrews, K. G., Foreman, K. J., Haring, D., ... & Lopez, A. D. (2012). Global malaria mortality between 1980 and 2010: a systematic analysis. The Lancet, 379(9814), 413-431.

A predictive modeling analysis of death trends over time that was published by a team of U.S. and Australian scientists in the medical journal Lancet in early 2012 suggested that, while a trend toward fewer deaths had emerged, globally, deaths from malaria were far higher than the WHO estimates. That analysis revealed an estimated increase in deaths from 995,000 in 1980 to 1,817,000 in 2004, followed by a decline to 1,238,000 in 2010.

Source 3: Name: World Health Organization

Citation: http://www.who.int/malaria/en/ (accessed online Sep 23, 2014)

According to the World Malaria Report 2011, there were about 216 million cases of malaria (with an uncertainty range of 149 million to 274 million) and an estimated 655 000 deaths in 2010 (with an uncertainty range of 537 000 to 907 000). Malaria mortality rates have fallen by more than 25% globally since 2000, and by 33% in the WHO African Region. Most deaths occur among children living in Africa where a child dies every minute from malaria. In 2010, 99 countries and territories had ongoing malaria transmission.

Figure 2: Example Cornell Notes format

Activity 3 : Citing your sources

In your group decide which of these pieces of information about a source is needed. Some of the information is not needed. Decide which you think is needed in:

(A) - a list of references/sources at the end of your research

(B) - within the main body text

the author's full first names followed by the surname (Hamza Abdullah Al- Abri)
the full date of publishing (DD/MM/YY)
the author's job title (Professor of Engineering, SQU)
the title of the source ('An investigation into desertification in Oman')
the 'place' it was published (city or http address)
the author's surname followed by first initials (Al-Abri, H.A. )
the year it was published (2013)
the date you accessed the source (DD/MM/YY)
the surname of the author followed by the year of publishing (Al-Abri, 2018)
the name of the journal or website where the source was found (Sciencetoday.org)

Check your answers with the teacher

See Appendix 5 for information about the APA style of citations and tools to use

Home
Unit 1: Science in a Social Context
Unit 2: Coping with Natural Disasters

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Unit 2: Coping with Natural Disasters

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Activity 4: Storing and sharing notes

Discuss in your group what format your notes will take. Will you use Cornell? Another system? Where in your notes will you have the following information:
- the name of the source
- how to show others your original source
- which research questions it answers
- the main points
- the details
- a written summary in short paragraph form

You will put all your notes in your shared PBL Folder, so the teacher and other members of the group can see the information you have found, so make sure the notes are clear and easy to read.

Activity 5 : An interview with an expert

As one of your sources, you are going to contact an 'expert' on your problem and conduct an interview with them. You will ask the expert for the answers to one or more of you research questions.
You will make notes containing the questions you ask them as well as the answers you receive and put these in your shared PBL Folder. Your teacher will give you advice about who to contact and how to go about it.
You will practise writing 'follow up questions' in the following class activity.

Ask another group for their research questions and the problem they are trying to find solutions for.
For each research question, try to think what kind of answer an expert might give. Think of a 'follow up question' for each research question to get the expert to give more information (see Appendix 3)
Pass the questions back to the group for their review.

You are now ready to work on Assignment 4 - The Interview and Assignment 5 - Notes and Summary

What are 'follow-up questions'?

Follow up questions ask for more information about the first answer.

Imagine one of your research questions to the expert is, "Are there any ways to control traffic congestion in cities?"

The answer might be, "Yes". Obviously this is not a very useful answer. You may need to be ready to ask a follow up question to get more information about this, such as, "Can you give some examples of the ways this is done?"

Other possible follow up questions might ask for examples, details, advantages or disadvantages of solutions, asking about key words, or suggested sources:

- Example follow up questions:

"Can you explain how that works?"

"Are there any disadvantages to this solution?"

"What do you mean by 'flow'?"

"In which countries has this been tried?"

"Where could we find more information about this?"

see appendix 3 for another example of interview questions

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