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Welcome to the Green Career Tip of the Week
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Online Version of this Issue Green Career Tips Archive
Our Green Career Central Research Expert Lauren Delp shares Part 3 of her series about Researching your Green Career. This week, Lauren wraps up her series so you can continue your research with confidence. Read on! Thank you, Lauren!
If you missed Parts 1 or 2, Click Here >> |
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Tip of the Week:
Research - Part 3 of a 3-Part Series: The Chaff and the Grain
by Lauren E. Delp, Green Career Research Expert
So far we’ve looked at Getting Stuck Before You Get Started, or how to get unstuck when you don’t know where to start looking, and in Too Much Of A Good Thing we showed you how to organize your work so you don’t get paralyzed by too many unmanageable results. This week we’re going to build on that and look at how to deal with the veracity of the search results so you can move along confident of your data.
What you might experience:
- You feel frustrated and uncertain about what is high quality data, what is considered conventional wisdom, and what might turn out to be quackery
- You feel overwhelmed and begin doubting all your information and all your presumptions so far
Knowing when a result is reliable.
After only a bit of practice, you will be analyzing and validating your data on the fly with very little trouble or distraction.
There are three general areas to look at when sifting through web data.
Validate the source
- Determine who owns the website. You can do a first pass filter while still on your search engine page. If the URL of the page ends with .org (usually – though not always, a non-profit or non-governmental organization) or .edu (an educational institution), the page is probably worth a look.
On the other hand, this might be a private company and have their own agenda which could slant the information you find here.
If you see a lot of pop ups, confirm any information you find by looking for other sources.
Examining your confidence in the website is especially important when you have two conflicting pieces of information from two different sources.
- What is the website’s general reputation? Look at the website’s ranking.
RankAlert’s Site Rank shows how popular the site is, how long they've been on the Web, how many sites link to them, and their Google and Alexa ranking which reflects how many unique visitors they get. Enter the website domain into the search box.
UrlTrends shows rankings in the various search engines and directories over time, and compared to a standard.
If you came to this website because you found other websites linking to it or citing it as a source, that’s usually a good sign.
Network Solutions WhoIs frequently shows the owner of a domain (the part of the URL that ends with .com or .org, etc.)
Validate the information
- Does the information make sense? Don’t leave your common sense at home – just because the information appears on an expert website doesn’t mean you shouldn’t question it.
- How current is the information? This isn’t always easy to determine. Some websites show the date a page was last updated, and the bottom of a page often shows a copyright date which will at tell you whether it’s been touched this year.
Sometimes the context itself will tell you how current the page is. Another way to check out a page’s currency is to visit the Way Back Machine and search for the page: In the center column on the page is a search box, enter the URL, and then click the Take Me Back button. You’ll see a list of archive dates. A date with an asterisk next to it indicates that the page had been changed. Unfortunately, this method can only pinpoint to within maybe a six month window.
- Is the information duplicated elsewhere? I usually try to find the same or at least similar information in at least 3 different places, with some sort of indicator of each mention’s source.
If, however, I find the same information in multiple places and all references are citing from a single source, it's telling me more about the source than the veracity of the information. I will usually make a note that the originating website is either highly respected, or the only source of this information.
Determine how complete your information is
- Is there supplemental or derivative information elsewhere? If I find no other mention of the information aside from this single source, that's a good sign that this is either the most current or only available information out there. I always give more credence to information that appears at several reputable sites.
- Are you circling back on yourself? After a while the sources you've found and the information they've given you are showing up no matter where you go. That's a good sign that you can stop, you’ve probably reached a point of diminishing returns. You may find another page with something different, but it may take you longer than the additional bit will be worth.
Wrapping it up
- You can use the same research outline as in the previous two articles to make notes about the currency and veracity of the various pages. After just a handful of views you won’t remember what you thought, which page was more credible than another, which mention is an original source and which is a reference, and which one you’re noting only because none other exist.
- Ultimately – This is very important! – If you have what you need and you trust it, you can probably stop even if there is more information out there. Very rarely will you need to know everything there is to know – or rather, everything that’s ever been said – about a particular topic.
-- Lauren E. Delp is a Research Expert at Green Career Central.
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