Robert and Dixie have been assigned to speak on either side of an issue, a kind of “pros and cons” format. They chose home schooling as their issue. each has a general position on it (Dixie is in favor, and Robert against) but they admit they just don't know that much about it. So what now? How do they become well enough informed to give a speech on the topic? Where should they even start? How can you keep track of your research? Do you have cite it?

Overview

Research is necessary for an effective public speech. This chapter will help you make responsible, well-crafted, and carefully executed research choices. First, we will help you figure out what you already know and translate that knowledge into a research strategy. Next, we will provide some concrete tips on where to go for research (including other people as well as the Internet and the library), how to design a good search query for search engines and databases, and how to narrow your search. After that, we will address what you need to do once you have collected your research material, including how to read through it, take notes, and evaluate which sources are worthwhile. Finally, we will deal with how to use your research process to refine your arguments, choose and organize your quotations, and give proper credit for the sources you use in your speech.

MindTap®

Start with a warm-up activity about Stephanie's speech, and review the chapter's Learning Objectives.

INTRODUCTION: BECOMING AN EXPERT

Researching, composing, and delivering an effective public speech requires you to acquire some expertise on your topic. You don't have to be the kind of expert who can produce original facts, figures, and data and publish groundbreaking work regarding your topic. But you do need to become enough of an expert on your topic to translate the research that you have done to an audience that may not have the same background or comfort with concepts and terminology that you have developed in your research. On your topic, you are the expert for your audience's purposes. You should cultivate enough expertise on your topic to bring new insights to your audience and to speak with confidence and credibility.

MindTap®

Read, highlight and take notes online.

The audience members may know nothing about your topic. If this is the case, what you say could help shape their opinions, so your words should be backed up with some reliable information. Or you may be speaking in front of an audience that already has a good base of knowledge about your topic—and some strong opinions. In this case, your credibility depends on having a good grasp of the literature about your topic.

Expertise matters. For example, consider how a few medical experts changed the way we think about vaccination. In 1998, the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet published a study claiming a strong link between the autism and early childhood vaccination for measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR). The findings were widely publicized, and a movement against vaccination emerged. Parents worried that if they vaccinated their children, they would put their children at risk for developing a serious developmental disorder. Immunization rates declined significantly. According to an investigation by London's Sunday Times,1in Britain before the study, 92% of children were vaccinated against measles, mumps, and rubella. After the study, vaccination rates declined by 12%, and similar declines were reported in the United States. In Great Britain, the number of cases of measles rose from 58 in 1998 to 1,348 in 2008, and similar increases occurred in the United States.

Yet, it turns out that the study reported in The Lancet was based on flawed evidence, with a number of good reasons to question its claims. For example, although there has been a significant increase in diagnosed autism in the last few decades, there has been only a slight increase in MMR vaccinations. Children who aren't vaccinated have a similar risk for acquiring autism as children who are vaccinated. Moreover, the increase in autism didn't start at the same time as the introduction of the MMR vaccination.2

What does a story about bad laboratory research have to do with the kind of research you will conduct for public speaking? Plenty. Even though you probably won't be presenting laboratory research to the public, the way you put together your research about your topic—including the quality of your arguments and the sources you choose—will make a difference in the way your audience thinks about your topic.

The sources, ideas, and arguments that speakers use to justify a position in public have public implications, guiding the way that people think about significant problems. The question to keep asking yourself is whether the research you present in your speech will help your audience members to make better choices, perhaps changing their habits, their votes, or the way they think about the world. Citing bad research can perpetuate dangerous myths, and it might cause your audience to jump to unsafe conclusions. You have the choice and the responsibility to make sure the conclusions you come to in your speech are well founded and well supported by high-quality research.

RESEARCHING RESPONSIBLY

In a good presentation, the points are delivered in an articulate, well-organized manner using high-quality research from reliable sources, which are cited properly. Whether you undertake your research conscientiously can make the difference between misinforming your audience members and providing them with a truly helpful answer to a significant problem. In other words, you have choices about how you find and use research in your speech. Because these choices have implications, you have to engage in the process of researching, citing, and using information in your speech as if it matters to your audience.

Sometimes research seems like an annoyance—necessary for an assignment, but not all that important if your topic isn't obscure or controversial. But you shouldn't think about research as a process you can complete by just going through the motions. No matter how well you think you know a topic, responsible research will reveal new possibilities for argument and invention, giving you more choices. You might find incredibly persuasive support for your opinion, or you might change your mind as you unearth the best counterarguments against your position. The fact that you don't know the outcome is the best reason to research—in fact, it is the reason to research.

Geoffrey Canada speaks often on behalf of the Harlem Children's Zone, a pioneering school he founded. Do you think he should do and present research about his own work?

Do you need more reasons to conduct responsible research? You probably can't be clear and persuasive about your topic if you have only a hazy understanding of it. Actually, haziness in their speech is one of the ways to spot people who are trying to manipulate or deceive others into agreeing with them. We are naturally suspicious of a speaker who doesn't offer good evidence for his or her claims. When speakers demonstrate mastery of the details in their speech, we tend to trust them more. Having a well-researched speech helps the audience see your claims as plausible and avoids creating the impression that you're talking about something you don't know much about.

TRY IT! FINDING OUT WHEN RESEARCH IS NEEDED

Is it possible for unsupported claims to be persuasive? Try this experiment:

• Choose a topic and write an outline for a speech about it in about a minute, without researching or checking any facts.

• Then share it with a classmate or friend and see how persuasive he or she thinks the speech would be.

• What does your classmate's reaction tell you about research?

If your credibility is one more reason for responsible research, another reason is that your evidence is the audience's evidence; your listeners use the evidence you give them to persuade themselves. The impression made by a charismatic speaker fades quickly, but compelling bits of evidence, useful information, and well-chosen examples may stick in audience members' minds for a long time.

THE RESEARCH PROCESS

Research can seem like a formidable task if you throw yourself into it without a plan. But if you break the process into a series of manageable steps, you will be well on your way to an effectively researched speech. The keys are knowing where to start and being able to manage the process. The basic elements in the research process are:

1. Figuring out what you already know about your topic

2. Designing a research strategy

3. Organizing a search strategy for the various databases and resources that you will use

4. Gathering your materials, with complete source information

5. Reading and evaluating your materials and taking notes

6. Revising your claims and selecting the information you will use

7. Organizing and selecting research information and integrating it into your speech

8. Generating citations for your materials

In this chapter, we will walk through each of the steps in this process, focusing on practical advice for sharpening your research skills. Although there are many valid ways to engage the research process, having a well-thought-out plan and an organized approach to finding and using your materials is the key

Figuring Out What You Already Know

Once you have chosen a topic that matters to you (or one has been assigned), start your research process by detailing what you know about your topic already. Make your existing knowledge work for you by forecasting what you would say given just what you know about the topic.

Draft a brief outline of what you might say if you had to give the speech right now, without doing any research. In preparing this outline, ask yourself a few questions:

• What is your opinion on the topic as it currently stands?

• What are the reasons you hold this opinion?

• What arguments and ideas do you think your audience will expect to hear in support of the topic?

• What are the best counterarguments to your position?

Don't worry about making the outline perfect; just get down on paper what you already know. For example, if you were to argue that marijuana should be legalized in your state, you might write down this thesis and three-point outline.

Thesis: Marijuana should be legalized because the costs of keeping it illegal are too high.

1. Enforcing marijuana laws costs too much and takes up valuable law-enforcement resources.

2. The dangers of marijuana use are overstated, and we should be focusing on more dangerous drugs.

3. Making marijuana legal would allow for better regulation of it and would create a significant new stream of tax revenue.

Now ask yourself the questions suggested earlier. Here they are again, with your possible answers.

• What is your opinion on the topic as it currently stands?

I believe marijuana should be legalized because enforcing marijuana laws has large social and economic costs.

• What are the reasons you hold this opinion?

Because it seems like a lot of law enforcement costs are associated with marijuana laws, and I think these resources could be used elsewhere.

• What arguments and ideas do you think your audience will expect in support of the topic?

They might expect me to say I'm a marijuana user, but I'm not, so I probably want to present the case in terms of the public policy costs. They might expect a defense that marijuana is harmless, and they might expect me to argue that enforcement is not effective in reducing marijuana use.

• What are the best counterarguments to your position?

Keeping marijuana illegal lessens marijuana use, and marijuana use creates significant social problems because of addiction and its associated criminal behaviors.

You might notice that a few themes have popped up in your outline. Circle or list these and think about the ways they connect to your thesis. The following points connect to the thesis that marijuana should be legalized because the costs of enforcing marijuana laws are too high:

• Marijuana enforcement

• Rates of marijuana use

A necessary part of the research process is to figure out what you may know already. For instance, for a speech advocating the legalization of marijuana, you may already know that the use of marijuana for medical purposes is legal in some states but is contrary to federal laws.

• Harms of marijuana use

• Economic and social costs of marijuana laws

• Sources and uses of tax revenue

With this list, you're ready to begin researching. Your goal is to be sure you know something about these themes and that you have facts to back up what you say With any luck, you will find that your opinion has been confirmed by others, or you may find that you need to change your opinion.

Designing a Research Strategy

Once you have sketched what you already know about the topic, the next step is to design your research strategy, which consists of answers to three basic questions:

1. Where are you going to look? A good answer to this question requires more than just saying you will go to an Internet search engine. Skilled researchers rely on a number of different resources to find the best facts, data, evidence, and support for their claims. The next section, “Deciding Where to Go,” describes the variety of sources you could try.

2. How will you look for your sources? What search terms will you employ, and how will you modify them to get the best results? The section “How to Conduct an Online Search” will offer helpful hints.

3. What do you expect to find? It is a good idea to have at least some sense of the kinds of facts, data, and evidence you will be looking for. Your initial outline can serve as a useful resource for this, but you should be constantly doing a mental update of arguments that may turn out to be crucial to your speech.

Your answers to these three questions, which you can write down for reference if you find it useful, will help you orient your research strategy. First, they will give you a focus and a goal to return to if you feel you are getting lost in research or wandering too far afield. Second, they will help you compare your research practice to your research goals. At every point in the research process, remind yourself of your answers to these questions. It's easy to get sucked down a research rabbit hole, pursuing leads that take you farther and farther from where you wanted to go. This is normal, and you may even revise your approach midstream (more on that later, in “Revising Your Claims”), but you also want to make sure you're staying disciplined and connected to your original plan.

Deciding Where to Go

Where should you go, virtually or physically, to look for materials? Three kinds of resources are available to you:

1. electronic media (web-based articles, blogs, and multimedia resources),

2. print media (newspapers, journals and books), and

3. people (informational interviews and other kinds of conversations).

Which is best to start with? The answer depends on the topic you have chosen.

Web-Based Search Engines The big search engines—Google, Yahoo!, and so on—give you a useful place to start, and they will provide you with a wide range of sources. Google has functions for doing not only general web searches but also searches of blogs, news sources, scholarly articles, and books. For each of these search engines, do a general search, a blog search, a book search, and a search for scholarly articles. There are two good reasons to do all these searches: One, you want your sources to be as diverse as possible; and two, for certain topics, you might find relevant evidence in only one area. For example, if you have chosen a current-events topic, news sources probably are your best bet because books and scholarly articles may be outdated, except for general and theoretical backup. But, if you're talking about a relatively specialized topic—for example, something scientific or something about legal or public policy—a news search may not be your best bet.

The expansion of search engines such as Google has made research easier than ever, but the challenge is to get the best results from a sea of information.

Google (www.google.com) is one of the easiest and best places to start a research project. As you've probably discovered, however, the main challenge is not the lack of sources but, rather, the need to narrow your search appropriately. A generic search will give you a broader range of different kinds of sources, linking to home pages for various organizations, news stories, blogs, and other online content. Two more specific functions, Google News (news.google.com) and Google Scholar (scholar.google.com), can help target your search for materials a bit more narrowly. Google News (as well as Yahoo! News at news.yahoo.com) integrates news stories from many newspapers, TV stations, magazines, and wire services. It's a good place to search for topics that are either relatively recent (such as an ongoing political debate) or specific to an individual locality or event (for example, the rising crime rate in your city).

Academic Databases for Journals and Other Periodicals Searching in Google Scholar retrieves academic journals and reports in a single convenient feed, and it also will link you to a number of the major scholarly databases (such as JSTOR and Project Muse, whose articles are accessible through your campus library). These large collections of journals will give you a variety of sources in most academic fields. The coverage may not be as specific as you would like for some topics, but academic publications can be helpful in giving you a broader perspective.

________

databases Searchable collections of information that are stored electronically.

________

The journal articles and reports accessible through academic databases are peerreviewed—the gold standard for expert commentary on a topic. So, for example, if your topic is “climate change is induced by human carbon consumption” or “free downloads have hurt the music industry,” or any other topic in which some technical expertise would be useful in sorting out a question, such databases can be extremely useful. Peer review is important because it means that the accuracy and fairness of the source do not rely solely on the expertise of the person who wrote it, but it also has been reviewed by other experts in the field. If you need help in finding relevant scholarly articles, check the FAQ box on databases, refer to your school library's web page, or talk to a librarian.

________

peer review Prepublication evaluation of scholarly articles by other scholars or researchers in the field.

________

Books Searching your library's online book catalog can point you to resources available in extended print format. Searching for books can be a bit more tricky than searching for online resources because books are organized around broader themes than the topic you're researching. This doesn't mean that you shouldn't use books but, rather, that you may have to look at a higher level of generality than you would otherwise. For example, although you may find a number of good books on the topic of marijuana legalization, you also might want to look at more general books about drug policy that contain chapters or sections about marijuana.

Books can be a great resource for your speeches because they often are written for nonspecialist audiences, and their authors have more space to explain their arguments. For each book you think you might want to look at, take a note of the title, the authors or editors, and the call number. You may be able to find the full text of some older books online, but you also may have to track down books at the library, and you'll need all this information.

FAQ What are the best databases for scholarly articles?

Your campus library will have a database for just about any field that you might find helpful: America, History and Life (history and American studies, via EBSCO), AnthroSource (anthropology, from the American Anthropological Association), Business Source Premier (business journals and articles, via EBSCO), Communication and Mass Media Complete™ (communication studies, via EBSCO), and EconLit (economics, via EBSCO)—and that's just a sampling from the first few letters of the alphabet!

The major general article databases include the Gale Reference Library (for general inquiries) Academic Search Premier, Academic OneFile (great for finding scholarly articles), the CQ Researcher and InfoTrac (good for current events), LexisNexis Academic and LegalTrac (law and public policy journals), JSTOR and Project Muse (humanities), Infotrac, and Science Direct and SpringerLink (sciences). Most college and university library home pages have a list of the databases to which you have access as a student, and a basic description of each.

Interviews and Conversations You may find that you want information that isn't available online or in a library. If you know of someone who could have that information, arrange for an interview or conversation. You might be able to interview an author of an article you found, an official who has experience with your topic, or someone directly affected by your topic. Authors and other experts are superb sources of information, and they usually can direct you to other research resources. Officials with day-to-day experience with your topic can both tell you the significant arguments and issues from their perspective and give you a sense of what directions you might take. Finally, people directly affected by the issues you address can add a personal perspective on what might otherwise be fairly abstract evidence.

To interview someone, you can make initial contact via email or phone. Published scholarly articles often are accompanied by email contact information; if not, they usually will say where the author works, and you typically can find an email contact link on a department home page. Various officials typically list their email contact information on their organization's web page; if not, you usually can find a phone number for someone in the organization who can direct you. If you're interested in talking to someone who is personally affected by an issue, the challenge is to find a person who meets your criteria—usually by asking, emailing, or calling around.

When you contact the person you want to interview, clearly identify yourself, say you are calling for a class assignment, and have a list of questions prepared. You should record the interview, if possible, for transcription after the conversation. If this is not possible, take as extensive notes as possible while keeping sufficient attention on the conversation. You should also assure the person that you will send them your notes after the interview if they would like. If you would like to quote sources you've interviewed or corresponded with, let them know you are going to quote them and where, and give them a draft of the quote so they can review it for accuracy. And be sure to cite them by name and title in your speech.

Making a Methodical Search

To ensure a solid grasp on your topic, and to convince your audience you've done the work necessary to be a minor expert on your topic, you'll want to read and cite evidence from as many different kinds of sources as you can. You'll notice in class that the best speeches seem totally complete: The speaker has tracked down information that silences each doubt you had in mind as you listened. You must do the same. If you don't already feel skilled at library research, whether online or in person, take this opportunity to participate in one of tutorials that your college library offers and get know a reference librarian or two; they can be extremely helpful.

Personal interviews often yield information about local issues that you won't find anywhere else.

You also should be organized and methodical. Keep a running list of the places you have turned to for research. Note the search engines you have gone to, the specific versions you have used (for example, a general Google search, a Google Scholar search, a Yahoo! news search), and any other databases you have consulted (compilations of academic journals, websites that have been particularly helpful, library collections that you have used), so you can make sure you've researched all the resources you would like to use, and so you can return to a resource in case you want to double-check a fact or get more details.

HOW TO CONDUCT AN ONLINE SEARCH

Once you've decided where you would like to look, think about how to execute your searches. Online searching offers ease and efficiency, provided you remember a couple caveats: You shouldn't make your searches too general, because there are far more sources on most topics than any one person could read, and search engines are not yet very good at giving you the exact results that will be useful to you unless you invest some thought and effort in creating search terms and focusing your search.

Creating Search Terms

To start your search efficiently, create a list of search terms to use on the Internet and in your library's electronic catalog. Add to, modify, or eliminate terms as you go, based on how productive they are. The common themes that popped up in your initial outline about your topic can be converted into your initial search terms. Your list can have as many subcategories as you have themes for your topic, and if your research moves you in a new direction, you can add new themes and search terms.

Designing a good search requires trial and error. If your search terms are too broad, you will waste time picking through useless sources to find a few gems. If your terms are too narrow, you will miss many useful sources.

Start with one of the common themes as a search term and read the first few articles that turn up from that search. You also could try an “and” search, such as on marijuana and law enforcement, or marijuana and its health effects. Do “terms of art” (that is, terms that people in the field use frequently) or other concepts occur with any regularity? In working through a first search about our topic example of marijuana legalization, you would find some search terms to add to your list because you would get a sense of what phrases people are using to talk about the issue. For example, after scrolling through the first few search results, you might add the following terms:

“Marijuana reform”

“Marijuana prohibition”

“Marijuana decriminalization”

You also can experiment with synonyms and subtopics. For example, if you started with the theme of “social and economic costs of marijuana laws,” you might try “marijuana enforcement” and “marijuana and war on drugs” instead of “marijuana laws.” For “social and economic costs,” you might try “prison overcrowding,” “law enforcement resources,” “drug use,” and “drug rehabilitation.”

Try this process with a few of your themes, substituting search terms that appear in articles you find in your early searches. What new terms do you find? Don't hesitate to modify your list and return to it to brainstorm new approaches if you get stuck.

Google Like a Pro

If you were to take this course 20 years ago, a huge portion of your time would have been spent tracking down research. There were a few searchable electronic collections of articles, but the use of Internet sources was in its infancy—and a lot of the research work would have been done looking up sources, walking around the library to locate actual hard copies, and then maybe even using a copier or a microfilm to reproduce them. Before then, you might have even had to consult a card catalog or an actual paper index.

Thank heavens for the Internet, and specifically for search engines such as Google that allow you to search, retrieve, and look at digital resources without leaving the comfort of your chair. Whereas in the past the problem for student researchers was finding materials, these days the primary problem is having too many resources. You can easily become overwhelmed with the number of hits you get when composing many searches. Sorting through pages of results is not only tiring, but if you aren't careful, it's easy to get a bit lazy and just grab the first couple of hits that seem relevant to your topic. One way to deal with this problem is to be smart about how you tailor a search. Here's a list of advanced search techniques on Google (and some of these techniques are applicable on other search engines as well) that will help you create better, more narrowly targeted searches:

• If you want to search for a specific phrase, put it in quotation marks: Google will often look for terms that appear together without quotation marks, but including the quotation marks directs Google to look for an exact phrase. Exact phrases can be useful in limiting the number of results that you get, and in making sure that the results are germane to your topic.

• Learn how to exclude results: one great technique is to include a minus sign (–) before some words. Typing a minus sign before a term tells Google to leave out results that include the word you choose.

• If you want to search for variants of a word, including an asterisk is a helpful tool. So, if you're searching for variants of the term “night,” such as “nightly,” “nighttime,” and so on, just add the asterisk to the truncated version of the word: night⋆,

• Try using the search tools button just below the box where you type in your search on a Results page. It will pull up drop-down menus that help you limit your search in useful ways, including limits by date and location. Of course, if you want to produce a really narrow search, the Google advanced search function can be incredibly helpful. To find it, google: “advanced search,” or search at https://www.google.ca/advanced_search

For more information see:

https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?hl=en

Focusing Your Search

To provide yourself with a good introduction to the material but not get lost in a multitude of sources, you will have to narrow the focus of your search terms continually, moving from more general to more specific searches. If you simply type “marijuana legalization” into a search engine, you will get many sources—indeed, far too many to manage (there were more than 9,910,000 hits on Google for that search term at the time of this writing). You may want to skim a page or two of the results of this search, but the search term is way too broad for your purposes.

In your first general searches, look for any political advocacy organizations, think tanks (advocacy organizations for specific topics that produce materials for the public to use), or other groups that have a specific interest in your topic. Make a note of these websites and organizations and return to them later; they are often a treasure trove of good, though partisan, information. (See the FAQ box for more about think tanks and advocacy organizations.)

FAQ What are some go-to think tanks and advocacy organizations?

There are so many think tanks and advocacy organizations that it isn't feasible to list them all. Here are a few examples, organized by area of expertise and political persuasion, that will give you an idea of where to start.

	Generally Conservative	Generally Progressive
Foreign Policy	The Heritage Foundation	Brookings Institution
Domestic Policy	The Cato Institute	Pew Research Center
Economic Issues	American Enterprise Institute	Center for American Progress
Higher Education	Foundation for Individual Rights in Higher Education	American Association of University Professors

As you continue to narrow your searches, you will find interesting new angles and arguments on your topic, and you can begin to revise and refine your outline accordingly. Your goal is to have a good quotation or statistic to back up each of the major claims in your speech. (Chapter 7 will discuss more details about creating an outline of your speech.)

Ai-jen Poo is the director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance. When she speaks, should she be impartial about the issues?

GATHERING YOUR MATERIALS

If you have followed a research strategy patiently, you should be compiling a number of interesting leads for research. At this point in the process, however, you should not be reading your sources closely, nor should you be taking detailed notes on their contents. At this stage, you should simply be gathering materials in an organized way and getting ready to engage them more fully

You can gather materials electronically or in printed form. If you gather them electronically, you can download the materials (articles, news stories, blogs, and so on) to a folder and then open them individually when you decide to read them. Or you can cut and paste all the materials into a Word document. Compiling one big document of research materials has a couple of advantages: You can easily search your entire research results for key terms using the Find command. You also can move quickly between individual documents once you have combined them into a single document.

If you prefer to collect materials in printed form, you will need a system for physically organizing the materials (a set of folders or an accordion file works well), and you probably will have to pay for copying or printing the files. Although collecting in hard copy may be a necessity for various reasons, it also increases the amount of work you will have to do later, because you will have to transcribe quotations and statistics you would like to use into the body of your speech.

Regardless of your method, make sure that you have the complete citation data available for later use. This includes

• the title of the piece,

• the author,

• the journal or book title,

• the publication date,

• the Web address,

• and page range of the piece, if available.

If you download your research materials, this information usually is part of the package. If you are cutting and pasting into a single document, be sure to include this source information or enter it manually. If you are working with hard copies, write the citation data directly on the hard copy or keep a running document that is easy to cross-reference with the hard copy

READING YOUR MATERIALS AND TAKING NOTES

Now that you have a good-sized pile of materials, dozens of files, or a long research document, you can turn to reading and taking notes. Here your challenge will be to read efficiently and to make your reading count by ending up with good notes that you can use for your speech. You will want to be able to locate the quotes, facts, and figures you pulled from the individual documents without having to spend time rereading everything.

To begin, let's talk about reading strategies. Of course you have to read carefully, but you also have to read efficiently. Here are some tips:

• For journal articles, first read the abstract , the first few paragraphs, the section titles, and the concluding paragraphs. Use the same approach for long news articles, except they won't have an abstract. Reading in this way will give you a sense of the overall argument, and it will clue you in to which sections are most relevant for your purposes. You may even choose to skim or skip a few sections on the basis of this preview.

• For news articles, read the first four or five paragraphs carefully. Because news articles typically begin with the most important information, these paragraphs usually will give you the basics of the story. You can skim the later paragraphs to see whether they might have any useful information.

• For a book, reading the introduction or preface and the table of contents usually will save you work. Introductions typically walk you through the organization of the book, and you can choose to ignore the portions of the book that are not relevant for your purposes. If the book has an index, use it to look for specific pieces of information.

• Blog entries do not have a standard format—so there are not as many reliable techniques for reading them efficiently.

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abstract Summary at the beginning of a scholarly article.

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Newspaper articles usually answer the questions “who, what, when, where, why, and how” in their opening paragraphs, so when researching newspaper articles, pay special attention to the beginning.

As you read, take notes that will remind you how the research will be relevant for your speech and make it easy for you to fit it into your speech. What kinds of information will be relevant?

• Arguments that directly support points in your original outline are obviously helpful, perhaps to quote directly.

• Background information can provide context for your speech. In an informative speech, you might note general information about the object, process, or event you are talking about. In a persuasive speech, you might note information that describes current thinking about the problem you are addressing.

• Facts, statistics, and data can show the significance of your issue or be memorable because they are unexpected or make a particularly apt comparison. In an informative speech, you might note data that describe how widespread or significant an object, event, or process is. In a persuasive speech, you might note facts and data that speak to the scope and implications of a specific problem.

• Quotations from notable people with whom the audience might connect or regard as important can give you or your argument credibility. Other quotations are worth noting because they provide a rhetorically powerful justification for a major point or add explanatory value by using just the right words.

You can manage this part of the process several ways. One efficient method is to compile a working document, or a running list of important facts, quotes, stories, and other arguments that might fit into your speech. There is no need to organize these entries yet.

Another method is to identify each note with a tagline. The tagline is a short phrase describing the role the fact, figure, or quote might play in your speech. It precedes the actual fact, quote, or paraphrase of an argument, followed by a page number and other relevant source information so you can find it in the original document. It's useful to separate the tagline from the material you're borrowing by putting one of them in boldface if you're keeping a Word document, or using two columns if you're compiling your list by hand. To reiterate, at this point the entries only have to be distinct from one another; they don't have to be organized yet; that part comes later. Figure 6.1 shows what a typical tagline note might look like.

In this smaller, more usable research document, keep a running list of arguments, facts, and quotes distilled from your collection of research materials As long as your taglines are clear, succinct, and worded consistently, you'll be able to retrieve the information you need by using the Find function if you are working in Word.

Your goal should be to produce 5 to 10 pages of arguments for the average speech, with each entry containing a small fraction of the total words in the original research documents.

FIGURE 6.1 The tagline method of taking notes

If you make good choices, once you work all the way through your collection of research materials, you should be able to write your speech from the smaller, more distilled research document.

Of course, there are other ways to take notes. Some people use note-taking software such as Evernote. Others use an index card system or more elaborate written notes. However you choose to distill your reading into a more usable form, the same requirements apply: You have to be able to access arguments quickly, find individual items so you can quote or paraphrase them in your speech, and have all the necessary information to cite each piece of material properly.

EVALUATING SOURCES

As you distill your research into more usable form, you will be making a number of choices, including the arguments you would like to use in your speech and the evidence you would like to muster to prove them. But you should not choose quotes, facts, or arguments just because they confirm the case you would like to make. You must consider the credibility of the source. You may have found some powerfully worded, on-topic, quotations, but if they aren't from a credible source, you'll use them at your peril.

Let's take a look at how to evaluate the credibility of different kinds of sources.

MindTap®

Watch a video, and do an interactive activity.

Blogs

Blogs can be helpful sources of information, but only if the contributors are knowledgeable and trustworthy. You will want to find out what the blogger's qualifications are before you decide to quote from a posting. If evidence of the blogger's expertise is not included in the About section of the blog, you can try a web search for the author's name. A world of difference exists between a blog conversation among qualified academic or public policy sources and one among random members of the public. Because blogs are not edited or peer-reviewed, you should treat the information and arguments you find there with some skepticism; blogs often represent a specific point of view.

________

blog A web log, or personal journal, by an individual or a group of authors.

________

News Articles

News sources can range from highly credible to extremely biased. Nationally recognized, award-winning newspapers and magazines usually have experienced reporters, excellent research staff, dependable fact checkers, and skilled editors. Some examples are The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Wall Street Journal, and The Economist. But journalists are not necessarily experts in every area they cover. Staff writers for local newspapers and wire services may not have expertise in every topic they have to write about. Once again, you can go online to research the journalist's background. If he or she is not a specialist, let the article guide you to research done by more qualified writers.

Opinion or Advocacy Pieces

Editorials, position papers, and other opinion or advocacy pieces can give you someone's take on a topic, but you have to be careful about two issues here: bias and qualification. If you cite a really powerful article about legalizing marijuana from www.blazed.com or www.Iheartpot.org, you are not only potentially citing a poorly qualified author, but you also might undermine the perception that you are presenting balanced research on your topic.

FAQ What is bias?

Bias usually is contrasted with objectivity: The source is either “interested” or “disinterested.” Interested means that the source has a stake in the outcome and would like to see things turn out a certain way. Disinterested means that the source is neutral and will accept whatever conclusions to which the evidence points.

Even if neither bias nor objectivity exists in a pure form, we can examine whether a source, an expert, or an institution has a bias, relatively speaking, toward one side or another of a controversy. For example, a source may be biased if it has a significant financial, personal, or other incentive to make a particular argument.

Bias does not mean that the position of the source must be dismissed as wrong, but it does mean that you should pay extra close attention to the evidence that supports its arguments, because an interest in one side or conclusion can (often unintentionally) cause people to misrepresent arguments and evidence.

Majora Carter claims to be an expert in environmental justice issues. Can you determine from looking at her website or an online biography whether that claim is justified?

Scholarly, Peer-Reviewed Articles

Peer-reviewed articles by scholars and researchers are available on general Internet search engines and in databases such as Gale, InfoTrac, and Academic Search™ Elite, available at your local library or on your college or university library's web page. As mentioned earlier, Google has a specific search portal for academic publications (Google Scholar).

Peer-reviewed articles can be great sources because they have been subjected to a rigorous editorial process and are likely written by people with strong qualifications. Even though they are highly credible, however, they may be too abstract or specialized to be useful for a general audience. You'll need to consider your audience when you consider presenting information for a scholarly publication.

Research studies usually are presented in peer-reviewed articles and generally are good sources of information. Empirical data on your position can help answer questions and provide solid real-world evidence for your claims. Be careful to cite the conclusions of the study appropriately; if you are either mischaracterizing or exaggerating a study's conclusion, you can run into problems.

Wikis

Wikis , such as Wikipedia, are websites whose content is written and edited by the general public. These can be helpful for an introduction to a topic and sometimes can point you to other, more credible sources. Because wikis can be written and modified by anyone, however, they can't be relied upon, by themselves, to present accurate information.

________

wiki A website whose content can be created and edited by its users.

________

In general, Wikipedia is not a reliable source except as a possible starting point for your research. Citing it in your speech can damage your credibility by making it seem that you have taken the easy way out and that you didn't bother to find more authoritative information to support your claims.

Websites and Web Pages

Websites and web pages can provide a useful source of information and evidence, depending on the objectivity and expertise of their author or sponsor.

• Web pages maintained by faculty, research groups located at universities, and think tanks (such as the Cato Institute and the Brookings Institution) are generally reliable.

• Websites of nonprofit organizations such as the American Cancer Society and government research organizations such as the National Institutes of Health also are generally reliable.

• Corporate web pages often are full of promotional material. Don't use them as your only source about a product or a corporation.

• Personal or private web pages can have links to an immense amount of information on a topic, or they can be one person's ranting. Cite these as a source only after you have checked the author's credentials.

See the FAQ box for some additional insights about researching online.

FAQ Researching online is just like going to the library, isn't it?

No. The first rule of Internet research is always this:

Consider the source. Anybody can post anything.

Unlike book and journal publishing, in which a professional system of editing and fact checking ensures the quality of what's published, Internet publishing is cheap and private. What people post is limited only by their time and imagination. Although many print publications have an editorial stance (The New York Review of Books is somewhat liberal, The Economist somewhat conservative), they still have to adhere to standards of evidence and argument to maintain their readers' trust. Internet materials don't have to meet these standards, and their authors don't have to respond to criticism.

This is not to say that all corporate or personal pages are dubious or irresponsible, just that it's up to you to figure out which ones are. Let the researcher beware! Be suspicious of what you find online, especially if it seems too good to be true. For example, if you go to www.townhall.com, you might think, “Oh, town halls, OK, this should be a good, neutral source of information on public debate and discussion of political issues.” You'd be wrong, however; this site is a portal to many ultraconservative websites. Nothing is wrong with one-sided sites—unless you think you're getting a balanced view from them.

REVISING YOUR CLAIMS

Now that you've begun to read the research you collected, you may want to refine your argument. If you've researched effectively, you may want to modify your claims, or maybe even change your opinion on the basis of the work you've done. You may need to go back and forth between your arguments and your research several times. Your research may suggest new or better arguments, or you may find that some of your arguments require a little more research.

Sometimes when you've collected and read all the sources you planned to, you can declare victory and say that you've found enough good support for your original proposition to write a speech. At other times, the evidence doesn't cooperate—either because you don't find as much information as you'd like, or because the majority of your research points in a different direction from what you originally intended. These bumps in the road don't represent a failure; they represent the success of your research: You looked and couldn't find good, credible support for the case that you wanted to make.

FAQ What If I Change My Mind Mid-Topic?

The big-picture answer (though not the comforting one if you have a deadline) is that changing your mind based on your research is a good thing. It means that you learned something, and writing a speech should be easy now because you have a good understanding of both sides of the argument. You still can use many of your first ideas by introducing them and then explaining why the research or force of a better argument means that you, and therefore the audience, should think about the topic in another, better way.

If this happens, ask yourself what speech you could write on the basis of the research that you've already collected. You may be able to write a solid outline for a slightly different speech than you originally intended. If you have to go back to the beginning with a revised research plan, though, write a new projected outline with the arguments you are finding, and look in some new places, using new search terms. By being persistent, methodical, and flexible enough to change your plans a bit, you should be able to create a nice base of research in quick order and arrive at a robust, well-argued case for your speech.

ORGANIZING YOUR RESEARCH INFORMATION

Once you have a selection of quotes, facts, and data that you are comfortable with, you can decide how to integrate them into your speech. The easiest way to do this is to look at all your taglines and group them into like categories. Take note of the most frequent themes and group them into sets of similar arguments. If you've been consistent with your taglines, you should even be able to write a new outline with your taglines serving as the specific points. So, for the hypothetical marijuana legalization topic, the organization outline might look something like this:

I. Basic facts about existing marijuana laws

a. Tagline/Quote

b. Tagline/Fact

II. Social costs of criminalized marijuana

A. Overloads the criminal justice system

1. Prison overcrowding

a. Tagline/Quote

b. Tagline/Fact

2. Takes up law enforcement resources

a. Tagline/Fact

B. Increases criminality

Tagline/Quote

III. Economic costs of criminalized marijuana

Obviously, such an outline will put you ahead of the curve in terms of writing an outline for your speech (see Chapter 7). But don't be concerned if organizing your research doesn't automatically produce a speech outline or if your speech outline doesn't end up exactly matching the organization you chose for your notes. Your goal here is to organize all your research materials so you can access them quickly when you start writing your speech.

You should have a number of facts, quotes, and other pieces of supporting materials for any given point you plan to make. Order the supporting materials from most useful to least useful, so you can easily pick and choose between them. What makes supporting evidence good? The quality of the source, the extent to which it supports your claim, and other considerations including, for example, how good the quote sounds, or how robust the study data are. To choose the supporting material for your speech, ask whether the individual fact, quote, or piece of data advances your goals, given the specific audience and situation. Let's look at this question in a bit more detail.

CHOOSING THE SOURCES FOR YOUR SPEECH

You don't want to cram all your research into your speech. You have to decide which pieces of information will make the cut and appear in your speech. When you write a rough draft for a paper, for example, you do so realizing that you aren't going to keep all of it. Some material will be fine as is, some will be OK but in need of improvement, and some will be destined for the recycle bin. In the same way, you have to gather a large enough body of research so you can make some good choices about what to include in your speech and what served only as background information helping you to understand the topic. (Your instructor might want this material to appear in the bibliography you turn in, however.)

How do you choose? For each piece of evidence you're considering for your speech, ask yourself three questions.

1. What purpose does the information serve for your overall goal? What will your audience understand about the topic if you include this quotation, fact, or statistic? Would the audience miss the information if you did not include it? If the material advances an argument crucial to your speech, use it. But if it's on a side issue, even if it's a great quotation, it will distract listeners from your argument.

2. What kind of evidence is it? You probably will serve your purpose best if you have an appropriate balance of facts, quotes, and statistics, because audiences tend to get bored if you include too many of one kind. A speech that is all quotes or all statistics can be difficult to listen to.

3. How good is the evidence? This is not only a question of whether the information helps you prove a point or convince your audience. Evidence is only as good as its source, and, as you've seen, not all sources are strong ones.

When you have polished your research skills, you will find that you will easily discover more sources than you can possibly cite in your speech, so it's important to choose carefully, and cite the sources that best help you make your case to your audience.

Championships by local teams are exciting for the audience, but are they relevant to every sportsrelated topic?

CITING YOUR SOURCES AND AVOIDING PLAGIARISM

One of the essential choices in research is to give credit where credit is due. There are two reasons. First, showing that qualified people support your claims helps to prove the credibility of your case. Second, giving the audience the necessary information to track down your sources shows that you're confident in your claims and allows the audience to continue the conversation you've started. Perhaps most important, academic life is based on the principle that everyone should get credit for the ideas that they introduce, giving us strong practical and ethical reasons to avoid plagiarism.

In Chapter 2, we made the case for not plagiarizing other people's work. That rule affects you most directly when you're turning your research into a speech. Because the audience usually won't receive a written copy of your speech, it can be easy to plagiarize.

To avoid this potential problem, give credit in two different places. First, you should say, in the body of the speech, where you got the fact, quote, statistic, or argument. This is as simple as naming the person, publication, or organization that produced the information. For example, you might say in your speech: “The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws said in a 2004 report that….” The main thing is to give your audience a cue that you're relying on someone else's hard work.

Second, you should list the sources that you cite in your speech in a bibliography. A bibliography is record of all the sources where you found your information. Think of it as a way for somebody to look up and verify your information, making sure that you represented it accurately. Your bibliography has to be complete enough to allow someone to go to a computer or the library and look up whatever he or she doubts.

________

bibliography A record of all the research sources for a speech.

________

A common style for organizing the information in a speech's bibliography is the American Psychological Association (APA) format, which is standard in the social sciences. (See the FAQ box for some examples.) You can think of a bibliography citation as answering four of the journalist's “W questions”:

FAQ What does APA citation style look like?

Here are some examples of APA citations for different types of materials you may find in your research.

Book (one author): Larson, Erik. (2014). Dead Wake: the last crossing of the Lusitania. New York: Crown.

Book (two authors): Keith, W. M., & Lundberg, C. O. (2008). Essential guide to rhetoric. New York, NY: Bedford/ St. Martin's.

Book (edited volume; entire book): Sullivan, J. J. (Ed.). (2014). The best American essays. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Book (chapter in edited volume): Chao, P. S. (2006). Tattoo and piercing: Reflections on mortification. In L. J. Prelli (Ed.), Rhetorics of display (pp. 327–343). Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.

Journal Article (one author): Zigarovich, J. (2015). Illustrating Pip and the terrible stranger. Dickens Quarterly, 32(1), 21–43.

Journal Article (two authors): Arendt, F., & Northrup, T. (2015). Effects of long-term exposure to news stereotypes on implicit and explicit attitudes. International Journal of Communication, 9, 61–81.

Journal Article (three to five authors): Foulger, T. S., Ewbank, A. D., Kay, A., Popp, S. O., & Carter, H. L. (2009). Moral spaces in MySpace: Preservice teachers' perspectives about ethical issues in social networking. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 42, 1–28.

Magazine Article (no author, accessed online): Laughter is an effective catalyst for new relationships. (20015, March 25). Science Daily. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150316160747.htm

Newspaper Article (one author, accessed online): Morgenson, G. (2009, November 11). From an idea by students, a million-dollar charity. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/12/giving/12STREET.html

Blog Post: Robert Hariman. (2015, March 4). When war is a memory that won't go away [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://www.nocaptionneeded.com/2015/03/war-memory-wont-go-away/

Video Blog Post: UW Madison LGBTCC. (2010, November 22). Stop the silence [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFW63cjN6xk

Author = who?

Year = when?

Title = what?

Publication = where?

Your instructor may prefer a different style for your bibliography, but whatever style you use, be consistent, so all the entries are formatted in the same way Make sure your citations are complete, so your audience won't have trouble tracking them down if they choose to do so. If you have more questions about how to compile a bibliography, talk to your instructor or a research librarian, or take advantage of the online research and citation resources at Purdue University's Online Writing Lab (OWL) at http://owl.english.purdue.edu/

GETTING HELP FROM A RESEARCH EXPERT

Sometimes when you're conducting your research, impressive materials seem to be falling off the page or computer screen. Other times, some additional searching and revision may be necessary to come up with a well-researched speech. No matter what, keep trying! If you don't give up the first time you hit a snag, and if you're flexible enough to revise your speech based on the research you find, you'll be in solid position to give a well-supported speech. Obviously, you can go to your classmates or instructor to compare notes, strategize, and look for more solutions.

But going to the library and talking to a research librarian is one of the easiest ways to get over a research hump. Most college and university libraries have a dedicated staff of people who are eager to help you compile research. Don't be afraid to take advantage of this easy and free way to hone your research strategy. You may save a substantial amount of time and effort by consulting a research expert early in the process, and the skills you gain by doing research alongside a qualified instructor will have benefits for the remainder of your academic career.

The librarian is one of your best resources for helping you efficiently find the information you need.

Summary

Research requires you to make a number of choices about how to support the claims in your speech and to make the speech persuasive and useful for your audience. Saying what you think in a clear, organized, and persuasive manner is crucial, but you also have a responsibility to make sound arguments that are well supported by facts, figures, statistics, and expert opinion. If you're organized and persistent, you'll eventually find what you need or make a reasonable revision of your initial hypothesis.

MindTap®

Reflect, personalize, and apply what you've learned.

Engage in research with a strategy in mind, combining the knowledge you already have about the topic and techniques for learning new information, balanced against the time you have and the research demands of the project. Decide where you will go for information and how you will execute and refine your search. Next, make choices about how you will gather, evaluate, and organize materials and how you will translate them into notes, or usable chunks of information that you can transform into a speech. After reading the research you've collected, consider whether you need to revise the arguments you intended to make. Finally, choose the quotes, facts, and data to include in your speech, and make sure you properly credit the work of others that you have used.

One last reminder: Take advantage of the many resources on campus for helping you learn to research more effectively. Seeking them out early in the research process will pay off.

Questions for Review

1. What are your research responsibilities?

2. Describe the process for researching a speech topic. Why is it essential to have a strategy?

3. How will you generate search terms for your research?

4. How should you keep track of your research?

5. How do you properly cite a source, both in a speech and in a bibliography?

Questions for Discussion

1. What are the various ways you might use research in your speech? What, for example, determines whether you need to directly quote someone? When do quotations distract, and when do they help?

2. What makes a good source? What makes a poor source? What are some ways you can tell the difference?

3. What are the biggest roadblocks to research in your experience? What strategies have you used to overcome them?

Key Concepts

MindTap®

Practice defining the chapter's terms by using online flashcards.

abstract

bibliography

blog

database

peer review

wiki