What Is?

Research involves terminology. There are several important terms to understand.

    Primary Sources

    • Materials that have not been evaluated
    • Documents not written by a researcher
    • Unbiased source of information
    • Examples include census materials, diaries, and government reports

    Secondary Sources

    • Materials that have evaluated the available information
    • Researcher has probably developed a hypothesis, tested the hypothesis, analyzed primary and secondary sources, formed an opinion and written about it.
    • Biased source of information
    • Examples include books and articles

    Peer-Reviewed and Refereed Articles

    • Published in scholarly and research journals
    • Evaluated for its content and methodology by experts in the field before it was published

    Peer-Reviewed and Refereed Journals

    • Usually includes footnotes, bibliographies, or reference lists of the material the author used to write the article
    • Usually includes abstract or summary at the beginning of the the article
    • Has distinct sections within the article including the introduction, literature review, methodology, results, discussion, conclusion, and steps for further research

      • For a tutorial describing characteristics of a peer-reviewed journal, how to determine if a particular journal is peer-reviewed, and how to limit searches to peer-reviewed journals, go to the Research Guides page and click on the link for the Peer-Reviewed Journal Tutorial (PDF).

    Plagiarism

    Plagiarism is to use another person's idea or a part of their article, book, or web site and to pretend that it is your own.

    For more information, look at the Indiana University web site Plagiarism.

When you are ready click Research Assistant to go back to the Research Assistant or Writing the Paper to go to the next step in the research process.