RESEARCH TIPS
Analysing research findings
Research expert Tarja Moles provides a checkpoint to help you ensure your research is accurate, useful and unbiased
Tarja Moles
We live in an age where there’s an abundance of information available. However, errors, inconsistencies, misinformation, opinions and inferences abound too, and it can be difficult to separate good-quality sources from the more questionable ones. Here are five criteria to keep in mind when analysing your research findings.
Relevance
The first criterion is to check whether your findings are relevant to your research. If they’re not, search for other sources. There’s no point in spending time on analysing irrelevant material. If your findings seem useful, move on to analyse them in more detail.
Timeliness
The next criterion is timeliness. Generally speaking, you should aim to use as up-to-date information as possible. Check the publication date to determine whether the content is still current. Books, journals, reports, newspapers and magazines display publication dates prominently whereas websites can be trickier to check. You may be able to find a date at the top or bottom of a webpage. If it’s not there, skim and scan through the content to see if there are any signs of outdated information. The presence of numerous dead links also indicates that the site hasn’t been updated for a while. If you still can’t work out the approximate date, try using the Wayback Machine (http:// web.archive.org). It’s a tool that stores snapshots of webpages over time. Just enter a web address in its search engine, and once you get the results, select the date you want to view from the search results calendar.