Question

1. How should students effectively incorporate academic journals into their research paper?

2. What are some of the challenges a researcher may experience in sorting out the primary data for data analysis?

Answer 1

1. Avoiding Plagiarism

Instead of rewriting an entire passage of a paper, it may be possible to cut and paste selected parts, stringing them together in a way that presents the gist of the passage and still sounds natural. But this is not paraphrasing. This is plagiarism. If you copy from another work, you must cite the author and then place the copied parts in quotation marks. This generally proves to be a clumsy and intrusive method in a research paper, which is why paraphrasing is so useful.

Use Your Own Words

In a paraphrased passage, you should still start out by referring to the original author, then summarize the relevant passage of the author’s work in your own words and in your own style. For example, “In his 1989 paper, Robinson concluded that . . .“ There should be nothing in the paraphrased passage that was obviously lifted from the original.

Give Credit where Due

Although the original authors should be given credit for the gist of the paraphrased passage, don’t give them more credit that they deserve. If a previous work supports your own there is a temptation to oversell the earlier work, as in the authors “proved” this or that. But scientific experiments cannot prove anything; they can only support a hypothesis or disprove alternatives. Better to use a more neutral statement such as “Robinson’s 1989 paper strongly supports the proposed mechanism, since it reports that . . .”

Don’t Overuse

When I began freelance writing, I found that the issue of “fair use” was of great concern to authors. In an original work of your own, you are allowed to quote a certain amount from a previously written copyrighted work, but if you quote too much you can get in trouble for copyright infringement. How much is too much? Nobody knows. Only the haziest guidelines exist. The situation is somewhat similar in the use of paraphrases. Paraphrases are supposed to be a small proportion of an original work. If the paraphrased material is a major portion, the new work risks being seen as derivative of the original, a weak paper riding on the back of a stronger one. A good paper stands on its own, and any paraphrased passages should be there only to clarify and support it.

2. Primary data means the raw data (data without fabrication or not tailored data) which has just been collected from the source and has not gone any kind of statistical treatment like sorting and tabulation. The term primary data may sometimes be used to refer to first hand information.

• Personal Investigation
  The researcher conducts the experiment or survey himself/herself and collected data from it. The collected data is generally accurate and reliable. This method of collecting primary data is feasible only in case of small scale laboratory, field experiments or pilot surveys and is not practicable for large scale experiments and surveys because it take too much time.
• Through Investigators
  The trained (experienced) investigators are employed to collect the required data. In case of surveys, they contact the individuals and fill in the questionnaires after asking the required information, where a questionnaire is an inquiry form having a number of questions designed to obtain information from the respondents. This method of collecting data is usually employed by most of the organizations and its gives reasonably accurate information but it is very costly and may be time taking too.
• Through Questionnaire
  The required information (data) is obtained by sending a questionnaire (printed or soft form) to the selected individuals (respondents) (by mail) who fill in the questionnaire and return it to the investigator. This method is relatively cheap as compared to “through investigator” method but non-response rate is very high as most of the respondents don’t bother to fill in the questionnaire and send it back to investigator.
• Through Local Sources
  The local representatives or agents are asked to send requisite information who provide the information based upon their own experience. This method is quick but it gives rough estimates only.
• Through Telephone
  The information may be obtained by contacting the individuals on telephone. Its a Quick and provide accurate required information.
• Through Internet
  With the introduction of information technology, the people may be contacted through internet and the individuals may be asked to provide the pertinent information. Google survey is widely used as online method for data collection now a day. There are many paid online survey services too.