2-Types of Sources
- Learn more background information.
- Answer your research question. (The evidence that data provide can help you decide on the best answer for your question.)
- Convince your audience that your answer is correct. (Data often give you evidence that your answer to your research question is correct or at least a reasonable answer.)
- Describe the situation surrounding your research question.
- Report what others have said about your research question.
Activity: Example of Data
Check out this very detailed data about frozen lasagna. Did you ever think this much data was available? Are there elements new to you? How might you use such data?
Movie: Reinterpreting Little Red Riding Hood
What is data? The word means many things to many people. (Consider “data” as it relates to your phone contract, for instance!) For our purposes, a definition we like is “units of information observed, collected, or created in the course of research.”
Erway, Ricky. 2013. Starting the Conversation: University-wide Research Data Management Policy. Dublin, Ohio: OCLC Research.
http://www.oclc.org/content/dam/research/publications/library/2013/2013-08.pdf
Data observed, collected, or created for research purposes can be numbers, text, images, audio clips, and video clips. But in this section on using data as sources, we’re going to concentrate on numerical data.
Data is the plural of datum. (It’s similar to how media is the plural of medium.)
Sometimes data is actually necessary to answer research questions, particularly in the social sciences and life and physical sciences. For instance, data would be necessary to support or rule out these hypotheses:
- More women than men voted in the last presidential election in a majority of states.
- A certain drug shows promising results in the treatment of pancreatic cancer.
- Listening to certain genres of music lowers blood pressure.
- People of certain religious denominations are more likely to find a specific television program objectionable.
- The average weight of house cats in the United States has increased over the past 30 years.
- The average square footage of supermarkets in the United States has increased in the past 20 years.
- More tomatoes were consumed per person in the United Kingdom in 2015 than in 1962.
- Exploding volcanoes can help cool the planet by spewing sulfur dioxide, which combines with water vapor to make reflective aerosols.
So using numeric data in those portions of your final product that require evidence can really strengthen your argument for your answer to your research question. At other times, even if data is not actually necessary, numeric data can be particularly persuasive and sharpen the points you want to make in other portions of your final product, e.g. describing the situation surrounding your research question. (See Making an Argument)
For example, for a term paper about the research question “Why is there a gap in the number of people who qualify for food from foodban