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.