This chat goes directly to librarians, Betsy & Melanie.
Contact Us Directly
Betsy Fleming, MLIS
Cartersville Library
(678) 872-8089
eclark@highlands.edu
Melanie Vincent, MLIS
Rome Library
(706) 368-7731
mvincent@highlands.edu
Planning Ahead?
This video will walk you through how to use this page.
Evaluating what you find is an important part of your research. You need to be able to assess what you read for quality, accuracy, and be able to notice any biases. You cannot go wrong with asking, "Who?", "What?", "Where?", "Why?", and "When?" when reading. Context is important as well, and you can take a look at the slide show at the end to see different ways to approach information in varying contexts.
Generally, you will be safe using peer-reviewed articles that you can find in GALILEO. A peer-reviewed article is an article written by an expert in a field, reviewed by other experts in the field. Peer-reviewed articles often contain original research or review and discuss original research. These are articles written by researchers for other researchers, so you can generally spot these articles by the level jargon that they use. For a closer look, take a look at Anatomy of a Scholarly Article from NCSU Libraries. If you hear the words "evidence-based" from your instructors, peer-reviewed articles should be a part of your research strategy.
Some peer-reviewed articles can be further broken down by their study design by using the evidence-based pyramid. All of these study designs serve a purpose in scientific discovery, but you may be able to be generalize or be more confident in your results using source types from the top of the pyramid, like Clinical Guidelines, than at the bottom of the pyramid, Expert Opinions. Know that things like systematic reviews and clinical guidelines rely on existing evidence. A systematic review where randomized control studies abound may reveal more convincing results over a systematic review where only case studies are available.
Since we're talking about evaluating sources, know that there is discussion about what and how to include different sources in the pyramid. Several different variations of the pyramid exist. If you are interested, take a look at this opinion piece: https://ebm.bmj.com/content/21/4/125
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