Assignment 22: Original Research

Yes I have done original research before, in my psychology class last year, I had to interview 3 people for my final paper and I have also done it for little things in middle and high school but that was the biggest thing that I have used it for.
Original research is when you go out and find information on your own, you get your own research instead of getting it from library research such as research from a book or academic database, etc. Library research may guide original research because you may find a study and want to make your own study and compare it to that one or see if the results of that study in true in their town or with the people in their lives.
A pro of library research is that it is most likely legitimate because usually studies are preformed in big numbers and preformed by doctors in that field of study, that show its credibility. Also it is usually easier to get library research than to go out and get your own. A con of library research is that you may not be able to find research or a study on your specific topic that you are researching, so if you use original research, you can make your own topic of research. Also, another con of library research is you don't get to be involved in your topic, which may mean that you don't learn as much because with original research, for example if you do an interview, you get a lot of experience from it and can know the information first hand, so no bias except your own will affect the research and you may understand learn more from it.
Critical thinking skills that I think are used in both original research and library research include: interpretation, evaluation, inference, analysis and self-regulation. I think the most important critical thinking skill for library research is evaluation because when you are looking for research for a paper or presentation it has to be credible and evaluation is a skill you need to know if the information you are finding is just that, especially since it is not original research that is being done right in front of you, it is by people you probably don't know and you have to evaluate their articles, books, websites, etc. The most important critical thinking skill for original research I think is self-regulation because you are the one who is going out and finding the research, so you have to be able to monitor what you're doing, whether it is being in control of a study or an interview by evaluating and analyzing in one without having your judgments interfere.

Assignment 19-Statistics

My first statistical information about polygamy was found from an online scholarly journal from EBSCO. This article showed how its data was collected which was by taking a sample of 2330 Protestants, Catholics, Polygamous Mormons, and other religions who responded to a series of questions regarding their sexuality, polygamy, religious orientation, religious doubt, and whether Mormons are considered Christian. The data was collected by Michael E. Nielsen  out of the department of psychology at Georgia Southern University and Ryan T. Cragun out of the department of sociology at the University of Tampa. 

Nielsen, M. E., & Cragun, R. T. (2010). Religious orientation, religious affiliation, and boundary maintenance: The case of polygamy. Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 13(7/8), 761-770. doi:10.1080/13674670902832805

The only government documents I could find did not have statistics on polygamy itself but I just found the laws against polygamy and the political votes on that were done for marriage laws to be passed, I will continue looking though!

Checking In

      The successes that I am having with my semester research presentation is that I have all my questions done except for two and I am starting to put my questions on slides on a power point of what the slides are going to say because they can obviously not have sentences of my answers to the research questions.
      Challenges I still have with my presentations is finding a couple sources, such as one government document and one encyclopedia entry. I also have to work on fixing up and finishing my annotated bibliography.

Although I do not have any other research projects in my classes right now, I am sure I will have a paper or research project next semester that I will bring researching tips from this class and you it in my upcoming classes. Right now I have just been using the google 101 tips for my own personal knowledge of things that I want to look up and research.

Intellectual Property

My definition of intellectual property is a work or invention that is from someone's creativity and which they created and have the rights for.

The expert definition that I found was according to WIPO.Com, "Itellectual property (IP) refers to creations of the mind: inventions, literary and artistic works, and symbols, names, images, and designs used in commerce." Also owners are granted exclusive rights.

     Examples that I found in everyday life are:

Books, research documents, original artist paintings, etc.

Business logos, business name, business slogan and even business colors

Inventions

Recipes, business methods, marketing strategies, etc.

   Intellectual Property changes when it is shared because it may not be shared using the author's credit which means that no one knows who wrote, drew, or thought of that idea. The person that was the creator made not get paid for his or her ideas or a website like the website we looked at in class may try to get money using someone's creation, when really they have nothing to do with donating money for a cause or giving money to that person.

Urvashi Vaid Presentation

1. My expectations before this event was that Urvashi Vaid was going to talk a lot about gay marriage and the struggles that is going on to try and change the laws. I also thought that she would be a really good speaker since she is a very famous figure in the LGBT rights movement.
2. I thought that she was more going to talk at us and just tell us how we should feel but she was very kind and open to whatever thoughts we had, she even told us that she knew she couldn't change our minds in her short presentation or at least that it wasn't likely. I liked how she did her presentation because she didn't just talk, she changed up the dialogue; she told us stories, gave us statistics and compared different populations and not just LGBT populations, she also talked about heterosexuals and people of different races.
3. A statistic that I learned was that 6 out of 50 states are now legalized in gay marriage, I knew there were a few but I wasn't exactly sure how many. I learned that there has been a big, positive shift of attitude towards the LGBT community but race has still not been raised or represented enough in the community.
4. Yes I believe that it made Urvashi Vaid an authority on the topic because she is an author of LGBT movements and an attorney whom has been a leader in the LGBT movements. Also, she seemed very knowledgeable of all her facts and statistics in her presentation by sourcing where she got her information from.
5. One thing that can assist me on my Alternative Viewpoints paper is at the beginning of her presentation, Vaid discussed a suicide case from being bullied because he was gay and that is my topic of my Alternative Viewpoints paper, so I could find an article on the Tyler Clementi bullying case.

Google 101

      I learned a lot about Google in our class last week, I did not know that there were many searching tips that worked on Google, I thought those type of things were just in Academic Search Premier and scholarly search engines. In the past when I have used Google, I just would type in my search string with no extra characters or search tips because I did not know it would help, I would just reword my search if it did not work or use quotations around certain words that I wanted to come up together in the search. In class I learned many different ways to search on Google, such as, using this symbol , ~ = related terms when you use it in your search string before a word, that using the plus symbol is similar to using the work AND in Academic Search Premier and using .gov country, it allows you to find a government website. I also learned that you can google information from certain countries instead of general Google, which I thought was very interesting! I learned about the tools of Google on the side of the web page, like related searches not yet visited sites, etc. I thought that being able to search with images was cool and seems very useful to me. Since learning all of these things about Google I think of it very differently for using it as a source for research because it will make my research a lot easier to find a specific subject and now that I learned about Google Scholar, the sources I find will not just be websites or articles from them, they can be databases and academic works, which I find very impacting for my research.

Assignment 12: Blogs As Sources

    My opinion on the debate of using Blogs as a source really depends, I think, on what topic you are trying to find a source for. If you are trying to find a very factual source than I would make sure that it has sources that back up the information in it and know the writer's credibility. I know that a lot of blogs are opinion bases, just people giving their thoughts but there are also educational blogs and who's to say the other blogs aren't educational. Also, maybe the topic someone is researching on wants someone's opinion than a blog like that would be a great source.
   The blog that I found and was looking for was an opinion based blog, I found one from a woman's perspective, she talks about her story of how she became a polygamist and how her life is: http://www.polygrrl.com/polygamy-wife-part-1.html.

 I thought this was very interesting because its a type of information that really expresses one side of what it is to be a polygamist in this present time. I definitely think that this blog is legitimate because who knows about polygamist relationships better than someone who is in one.



(2011). Retrieved from http://www.polygrrl.com/polygamy-wife-part-1.html