Lecture Notes in Research & Analysis Skills PDF

 Lecture Notes in Research & Analysis Skills Edited by: Dr/ A. Saleh -1-  CONTENTS Subject Page Introduction...

 Lecture Notes in Research & Analysis Skills Edited by: Dr/ A. Saleh -1-  CONTENTS Subject Page Introduction 3 Search Engines 13 Internet Searching 34 Evaluating internet Source 49 Scientific Method of research 61 -2-   Introduction Information Sources: 1- Traditional sources: Traditional sources are sometimes referred to as “old” or “mainstream” sources. Traditional sources are more authoritative as they come from professionals in the form of books, encyclopedia, Atlases, dictionaries, newspapers, radio or television. Pros: i. Reliable and credible- The published traditional sources have been thoroughly checked and therefore gain reliability. ii. Accurate- All facts and information must be as accurate as they can be, to adhere to the expectations writers face. iii. Professional– Traditional sources come from professionals who are trained in their field, and therefore know how to gather and write information in the most successful way possible. This enhances the general validity of traditional sources in comparison to non-tradition sources. iv. Objective- It can be argued that objectivity of traditional sources is a pro or a con, but I believe it is more advantageous. -3-   Cons: i. Restrictions- The tough restrictions can sometimes act negativity as it lacks the level of intrusiveness or brutality that non-traditional sources have the ability to give. ii. Limited- There is a limitation of traditional sources in comparison to non- traditional sources in some cases. 2- Non-Traditional Sources: Non-traditional sources also referred to as sources from “new” or “electronic” media, (websites, social media, unpublished websites and blogs). They don‟t have to be approved and therefore can be created by anyone. So you will probably find you have created multiple non-traditional sources yourself Pros: i. Less restrictions- there are less rules and regulations for those creating non- traditional sources as they are not required to comply to the strict guidelines. This allows for more freedom and opinion which is sometimes needed. ii. More opinions- These sources can be subjective, unlike traditional sources which are expected to be more objective. This allows for different sides of an argument to be seen and the view of people from the public to be heard. iii. Copious amounts- There are much a range of non-traditional sources which are very easily accessible. -4-   iv. Personal view- It is easier to get multiple opinions from those directly affected by an issue using non-traditional sources. Opinions and comments are usually spread all over the internet, especially social media on certain issues. Cons: i. Unreliable- Following the ability for anyone to create a non-traditional source, there lacks guidelines and therefore reliability. ii. Authorship- Non-traditional sources cause the authorship of a story to become more problematic. In a digital environment it is far easier to plagiarize from other sources. So be careful if you reference back to a non-traditional source. iii. Authenticity-The difficulty in authenticating some sources will create a general uncertainty, as it becomes harder to determine the originality of the source iv. Bias- Although seeing differing opinions is useful, they are not always entirely truthful due to bias. 1- TRY IT: You’ve already compared and contrasted the Internet and books or other texts with your class. Can you think of any other ways they are different? The same? -5-   Books Encyclopedias Traditio Maps nal Personal experience Atlases Information Media Newspaper sources Inter net  A comparison between Books and Internet as an information source is given in the following table: Books/Text Internet A book has to be published by a Anyone can publish a Web page publishing company Editors check and verify the No one checks to see if the information information is true or false Looking for a book can be more time (Using the Internet is much quicker) consuming There are millions of places to look You have to visit a library for information The library uses the Dewey Decimal The Internet uses search engines System -6-    When might using the Internet be better than using a traditional text? Topics that are contemporary (modern topics) – The Internet has more up- to-date information on current events. Topics that are controversial – The Internet can give you a lot of different opinions on one topic. It can help you research a topic from different perspectives. What is the Internet ?  The Internet is a network for computers. It connects computers all over the world.  People make their own websites. These websites have domains, which is an address. You type in the address to get to the right domain.  Most addresses start with www. This stands for the World Wide Web.  There are many, many websites. Some are owned and updated by government agencies, companies, schools and medical groups…….  Some people make money from their websites and others just post websites or web pages for fun or information. -7-  Why Use the Internet ?  The Internet has become a very important part of our world. E-mail: Email is now an essential communication tools in business. With e- mail you can send and receive instant electronic messages, which works like writing letters. Your messages are delivered instantly to people anywhere in the world, unlike traditional mail that takes a lot of time. Email is free, fast and very cheap when compared to telephone, fax and postal services. Many employees now have workplace email. 24 hours a day - 7 days a week: Internet is available, 24x7 days for usage. Information: Information is probably the biggest advantage internet is offering. There is a huge amount of information available on the internet for just about every subject, ranging from government law and services, trade fairs and conferences, market information, new ideas and technical support. You can almost find any type of data on almost any kind of subject that you are looking for by using search engines like google, yahoo, msn, etc. Online Chat: You can access many „chat rooms‟ on the web that can be used to meet new people, make new friends, as well as to stay in touch with old friends. You can chat in MSN and yahoo websites. Services: Many services are provided on the internet like net banking, job searching, purchasing tickets, hotel reservations, guidance services on array of topics engulfing every aspect of life. -8-  Communities: Communities of all types have sprung up on the internet. It‟s a great way to meet up with people of similar interest and discuss common issues. More and more people are choosing to share messages and pictures through email and social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube,..). E-commerce: Along with getting information on the Internet, you can also shop online. There are many online stores and sites that can be used to look for products as well as buy them using your credit card. You do not need to leave your house and can do all your shopping from the convenience of your home. It has got a real amazing and wide range of products from household needs, electronics to entertainment. Entertainment: Internet provides facility to access wide range of Audio/Video songs, plays films. Many of which can be downloaded. One such popular website is YouTube. Software Downloads: You can freely download innumerable, software‟s like utilities, games, music, videos, movies, etc. from the Internet.  Using the Internet can also save time, money and effort. For example: 1)- Using email and social websites is a less expensive way of staying in touch with family and friends, especially if they live far away. 2)- Banking online saves time because you do not have to write cheques or stand in line at your local bank. -9-    The Internet is a quick way to find information, such as local weather, phone numbers and postal codes.  The Internet is helpful when looking and applying for jobs. Most employers post job ads online.  Stores, government agencies and organizations now have websites. These sites have lists of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs). You may access these sites to get the answers to your questions without having to phone for information. This cuts down the time you spend waiting on hold.  Limitations of Internet: Theft of Personal information: Electronic messages sent over the Internet can be easily snooped and tracked, revealing who is talking to whom and what they are talking about. If you use the Internet, your personal information such as your name, address, credit card, bank details and other information can be accessed by unauthorized persons. If you use a credit card or internet banking for online shopping, then your details can also be ‗stolen‘. Negative effects on family communication: It is generally observed that due to more time spent on Internet, there is a decrease in communication and feeling of togetherness among the family members. Internet addiction: There is some controversy over whether it is possible to be addicted to the Internet or not. Some researchers claim that it is simply people trying to escape their problems in an online world. - 10 -   Virus threat: Today, not only are humans getting viruses, but computers are also. Computers are mainly getting these viruses from the Internet. Virus is a program which disrupts the normal functioning of your computer systems. Computers attached to internet are more prone to virus attacks and they can end up into crashing your whole hard disk. Spamming: It is often viewed as the act of sending unsolicited email. This multiple or vast emailing is often compared to mass junk mailings. It needlessly obstructs the entire system. Most spam is commercial advertising, often for dubious products, get- rich-quick schemes, or quasi-legal services. Spam costs the sender very little to send — most of the costs are paid for by the recipient or the carriers rather than by the sender. Internet Providers: You need an Internet Service Provider (ISP) to connect to the Internet. You will not be able to connect to the Internet without it. Browsers:  Once connected to the Internet, you need to use a “browser” to search the Internet. This is called going online. On the desktop (the screen you see when you start the computer)  This is Internet Explorer, the browser used to get “online” - 11 -   and use the Internet. At home you may choose a different browser.  Internet Explorer is the most common “browser”.  There are other browsers that people use on their computers. Three other browsers are: Mozilla Firefox, Netscape and Google Chrome.  URL– an address that you need to type to access a website. This usually begins with “www”. URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator. Reading a URL address:  Web Site – a location on the Internet where a person or organization has put their information for people to use.  Web Page – one page of a website. - 12 -   Search Engines  A search engine: is an Internet-based search box that provides text-match searching of its own crawler-built database of text indexed Web pages. Search results are ranked according to internal relevance-ranking algorithms. It is a tool providing searchable access to the text of millions of freely accessible Web pages. The purpose of a search engine is to extract requested information from the huge database of resources available on the internet. Search engines become an important day to day tool for finding the required information without knowing where exactly it is stored. Internet usage has been tremendously increased in recent days with the easy to use search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo! There are different types of search engines to get the information you are looking for. In this article, we will explain different types of search engines and purpose of them. - 13 -   You might have heard of search engines like: (Google, Ask Jeeves,Yahoo, AOLSearch, AltaVista, MSN Search….. ) These are the most popular search engines.  There are lots of other excellent search engines on the Internet that you may never have heard of! How do Search Engines Work? Search Engines for the general web (like all those listed above) do not really search the World Wide Web directly. Each one searches a database of the full text of web pages selected from the billions of web pages out there residing on servers. When you search the web using a search engine, you are always searching a somewhat stale copy of the real web page. When you click on links provided in a search engine's search results, you retrieve from the server the current version of the page. Search engine databases are selected and built by computer robot programs called spiders. Although it is said they "crawl" the web in their hunt for pages to include, in truth they stay in one place. They find the pages for potential inclusion by following the links in the pages they already have in their database (i.e., already "know about"). They cannot think or type a URL or use judgment to "decide" to go look something up and see what's on the web about it. (Computers are getting more sophisticated all the time, but they are still brainless.) - 14 -  If a web page is never linked to in any other page, search engine spiders cannot find it. The only way a brand new page - one that no other page has ever linked to - can get into a search engine is for its URL to be sent by some human to the search engine companies as a request that the new page be included. All search engine companies offer ways to do this. After spiders find pages, they pass them on to another computer program for "indexing." This program identifies the text, links, and other content in the page and stores it in the search engine database's files so that the database can be searched by keyword and whatever more advanced approaches are offered, and the page will be found if your search matches its content. Some types of pages and links are excluded from most search engines by policy. Others are excluded because search engine spiders cannot access them. Pages that are excluded are referred to as the "Invisible Web" -- what you don't see in search engine results. Search engines have three primary functions: 1. Crawl: Scour the Internet for content, looking over the code/content for each URL they find. 2. Index: Store and organize the content found during the crawling process. Once a page is in the index, it‟s in the running to be displayed as a result to relevant queries. 3. Rank: Provide the pieces of content that will best answer a searcher's query, which means that results are ordered by most relevant to least relevant. - 15 -   Search engines are classified into the following categories based on how it works: 1. Crawler based search engines 2. Human powered directories 3. Meta search engines 4. Other special search engines 1- Crawler Based Search Engines: All crawler-based search engines use a crawler or bot or spider for crawling and indexing new content to the search database. There are four basic steps, every crawler-based search engines follow before displaying any sites in the search results: Crawling Indexing Calculating Relevancy Retrieving the Result Crawling: Search engines crawl the whole web to fetch the web pages available. A piece of software called crawler or bot or spider, performs the crawling of the entire web. The crawling frequency depends on the search engine and it may take few days between crawls. This is the reason sometimes you can see your old or deleted - 16 -   page content is showing in the search results. The search results will show the new updated content once the search engines crawl your site again. Indexing: Indexing is next step after crawling which is a process of identifying the words and expressions that best describe the page. The identified words are referred as keywords and the page is assigned to the identified keywords. Sometimes when the crawler does not understand the meaning of your page, your site may rank lower on the search results. Here you need to optimize your pages for search engine crawlers to make sure the content is easily understandable. Once the crawler’s pickup correct keywords your page will be assigned to those keywords and rank high on search results. Calculating Relevancy: Search engine compares the search string in the search request with the indexed pages from the database. Since it is likely that more than one page contains the search string, search engine starts calculating the relevancy of each of the pages in its index with the search string. There are various algorithms to calculate relevancy. Each of these algorithms has different relative weights for common factors like keyword density, links, or meta tags. That is why different search engines give different search results pages for the same search string. It is a known fact that all major search engines periodically change their algorithms. If you want to keep your site at the top, you also need to adapt your pages to the latest changes. This is one reason to devote permanent efforts to SEO if you like to be at the top. Retrieving Results: The last step in search engines’ activity is retrieving the results. Basically, it is simply displaying them in the browser in an order. Search engines sort - 17 -   the endless pages of search results in the order of most relevant to the least relevant sites. Examples of Crawler Based Search Engines: Most of the popular search engines are crawler-based search engines and use the above technology to display search results. Example of crawler-based search engines: ✓ Google ✓ Bing ✓ Yahoo! ✓ Baidu ✓ Yandex ✓ Besides these popular search engines there are many other crawler- based search engines available like DuckDuckGo, AOL and Ask. 2- Human Powered Directories: A directory is a tool for browsing selected sites or getting started in a new subject area. Note that directories usually include only one main page per Web site. On the Web, a directory is a classified listing of Web sites, in which brief records for sites are placed within an appropriate hierarchical taxonomy. The classification of sites is typically done by human editors, and the sites are searchable by the category names, site titles, and brief site descriptions. Below is how the indexing in human powered directories work: ✓ Site owner submits a short description of the site to the directory along with category it is to be listed. ✓ Submitted site is then manually reviewed and added in the appropriate category or rejected for listing. - 18 -  ✓ Keywords entered in a search box will be matched with the description of the sites. This means the changes made to the content of a web pages are not taken into consideration as it is only the description that matters. ✓ A good site with good content is more likely to be reviewed for free compared to a site with poor content. Yahoo! Directory and DMOZ were perfect examples of human powered directories. Unfortunately, automated search engines like Google, wiped out all those human powered directory style search engines out of the web. Examples: [(Open Directory, Librarians’ Internet Index (LII), Yahoo!)] - 19 -   3- Metasearch Engine: It is a wonderful tool that takes your search expression and sends around to multiple search engines and then returns the results to you in categories. It is a finding tool that does not have its own database. Instead, it sends a query to several other search engines and then compiles the results on a single screen or in multiple frames or windows. Meta Search Engines use both crawler based and manual indexing for listing the sites in search results. Most of the crawler-based search engines like Google basically uses crawlers as a primary mechanism and human powered directories as secondary mechanism. For example, Google may take the description of a webpage from human powered directories and show in the search results. As human powered directories are disappearing, hybrid types are becoming more and more crawler-based search engines. But still there are manual filtering of search result happening to remove the copied and spammy sites. When a site is being identified for spammy activities, the website owner needs to take corrective action and resubmit the site to search engines. The experts do manual review of the submitted site before including it again in the search results. In this manner though the crawlers control the processes, the control is manual to monitor and show the search results naturally. Examples: (Clusty, ixquick, Dogpile, Copernic, Mama, Zuala…….) - 20 -   4- Other special search engines:  Portal: Originally designed as gateways to other Internet resources, portals have become destination sites with popular information such as news, shopping, entertainment, along with Internet services such as e-mail, messaging, personalization, home page creation, and more. Portals may, and often do, include a directory and search engine as well. A portal is a tool for quick access to popular information and basic directories and search engines. Examples: (Yahoo!, MSN, Lycos)  Ad Bidding Engine: An ad bidding engine is a special kind of search engine with a database of paid ads. The ranking of results is determined by which company is willing to pay the most per click. The top bidders for any particular search term are listed in the top spot, followed by those that bid lesser amounts. The ads may be followed by results from a general search engine. Examples: (Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture), Kanoodle, Miva) - 21 -    Answer Engine: An answer engine is a specialized search engine that builds a database of questions and matching answers. It typically provides just one answer for each question. A search query is matched with one or more of the question-and- answer pairs and presented to the searcher. Examples: [Ask.com, Fact City (now defunct), Shortcuts]  News Search Engine: A news search engine indexes only pages from news-oriented Web sites. Some cover only the Web sites of established news outlets, while others have broader news focus or specialize in blogs. Examples: [Yahoo! News, Google News, Feedster, Daypop, Alternate Terms, blog search engine, headline search engine, RSS search engine]  Opinion Engine: An opinion engine is a specialized search engine that indexes a collection of discussion forums, Usenet newsgroups, or other content based on individual opinion. Examples: (Google Groups, Epinions)  Invisible Web. The invisible Web consists of Web sites, pages, and other sources of Internet-accessible content that are not indexed by search engines or included in their databases. Examples: [Clinton-era State Department documents, Citations from Agricola, (hidden in a database)] Alternate Terms: [dark matter, deep Web, hidden Web] - 22 -  Top Most Popular Search Engines in the World Right Now. 1. Google: No one needs a introductions about Google, the search engine giant that rule about 80% search queries on the internet. According to the latest report, 80% of the search is powered by Google search engines and only a matter of 8% by bing. The search engine giant Google is dominating the mobile/tablet search engines. No need for further introductions. The search engine giant holds the first 2. Bing: Bing is one of the second search engines used today with about millions of queries every day. Bing is Microsoft attempt to challenge Google in search engine, but the real fact their effort they did not manage to convince the users that the search engine can produce a better search result than Google. The bing only share nearly 10% search engine market, even though the bing search engine is the def ault search engines in windows and internet browsers - 23 -  3. Yahoo: Yahoo is one of the top search engines in the late ‘90s and it is one of the most popular email providers and holds the 4th position with a 4% of search engine market share. From October 2011 to October 2015, the Yahoo search engine was handled by the mighty Microsoft soft bing network. After 2015 October yahoo came to an agreement with Google to provide a better search result to the users. Since 2015 the yahoo search is provided by both search engine giant google and bing. From October 2011 to October 2015, Yahoo search was powered exclusively by Bing. Since October 2015 Yahoo agreed with Google to provide search-related services and since then the result s of Yahoo are powered both by Google and Bing. Yahoo is also the default search engine for Firef ox browsers in the United States (since 2014). 4.Ask.com: Ask.com Formerly known as Ask Jeeves, it shares only a small amount of search results. ask search result is based on question/ answer format where most of the search queries are answered are in the form of polls. It also has the general search engine functionality but the results returned lack quality compared to Google or even Bing and Yahoo. - 24 -  5. AOL.com: According to daily search result AOL is still the top 10 search engine with a market share nearly below 0.06%. The AOL search engine networ k includes many popular web sites like engadget.com, techchrunch.com, and the huffingtonpost.com. On the month of June 2015, the AOL search engine is acquired by the company Verizon Communications. 6. Baidu: Baidu was founded in 2000 and it is one of the popular search engine used in china. Its market share has been increasing daily by a huge amount according to Wikipedia, the China search engine giant Baidu is generating billions of search queries per month. It is current rank the top 4 search engine according to Alexa ranking report 7. DuckDuckGo: Like the other search engines, DuckDuckGo is one of the popular and user - friendly it has a huge advantage over the other search engines. The DuckDuckGo search engine has a clean interface; it does not track any user, beyond it is not fully loaded with ads and has a number of very nice feature - 25 -  I am sure DuckDuckGo is the future of search engine is search queries are increasing by day by day duckduckgo (30 million searches / day ) will be used by other search engines and with some proper funding duckduckgo can get a decent search engine market share. Currently is at 0.24% of search in the internet. 8. Yandex.ru: According to Alexa ranking, Yandex.ru is among the 25 most popular websites on the Internet with the search engine ranking position of 1 in Russian. According to Wikipedia, Yandex search engine operates the largest search engine in Russia with about 65% market share in that country. 9. Excite: Excite is not popular search engine but is one that still gets into the top 10 search engine. Excite is an online service portal website that provides internet services like email, search engine, news, instant messaging and weather updates with a.005% of market share. 10. YouTube: YouTube was founded in 2005 by veterans of PayPal after that it was owned by the search engine giant Google, youtube holds the top 2 position in the search engine ranking. YouTube receives more than 1.5 billion logged in users per month and feeds over 1 billion hours of video each day to users. It is one of the most used search engine right now. 11. Facebook: In 2006 Facebook was introduced, before it was only accessible by the students and in 2006 the facebook was introduced to the public. It is one the mightiest social media search engines right now - 26 -  with over 2.5 billion users, however, last year it surpassed the search result at 2 billion searches/day putting it ahead of Bing and Baidu. With over 1.5 billion active users per month, Facebook also giv es businesses and advertisers incredible market access and tends. 12. Quora: Quora is the most popular search engine right now it is based question-and-answer search engine website where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users in the form of opinions These are the best and most popular search engines on the Internet today. The list is by no means complete and for sure many more search engine will be created in the future but right now Google and Bing will hold the leadership positions for years to come in the search engine market. - 27 -  Other Helpful Resources: Encyclopedias:  Online encyclopedias are a great resource for research. Try the encyclopedias listed below and see what you think.  Encyclopedia Britannica – www.britannica.com  Encarta – www.encarta.msn.com Libraries: Libraries are another place to find lots of useful information. Take a look at these sites! Boston Public Library’s database http://search3.webfeat.org/bostonsearch.asp?cat=dbchildren New York Public Library’s Student Page - http://kids.nypl.org/internet/reference.cfm You will need a library card to use some of the linked websites, so also check the webpage of your local library. - 28 -   Basic web search methods 1. Vary Your Search Engine: Search engines sort through about 625 million active websites to provide you with content. You may favor one, but do not let habit restrict you. No search engine is perfect, and they all have different blind spots. The most widely used search engines are Google®, Bing® and Yahoo®. Google usually returns the greatest variety of results and has by far the largest catalog of pages. Bing, however, has more extensive autocomplete results (where the search engine tries to narrow the search for you). Yahoo offers search as part of a wider range of services that includes news and shopping. Other engines such as DuckDuckGo® and Dogpile® also have their devotees. 2. Use Specific Keywords: Keywords are the terms that you use to find content on the internet. Making your keywords as specific as possible will help your search engine to track down the information that you want. Say, for example, that you want to find a local supplier that can design an exhibition stand for your company. If you type stand design into your search engine, the results will include many - 29 -   pages about other types of stand, whereas typing exhibition stand designer will return a more concise range of companies. You can further refine your search by including other specific keywords. If you add your location, for example, you will likely find someone local. 3. Simplify Your Search Terms: Some engines include stop words in their searches. These are frequently used words such as prepositions (in, of, on), conjunctions (and, but) and articles (a, the), which mean that you'll end up with more pages in your search results than you need. So, it is usually best to eliminate stop words from your internet searches. The main exception is if you are looking for a specific title or name that includes them. Also, use the simplest form of the keywords that you are looking for, by avoiding plurals and verb forms with suffixes such as -ing, -s or -ed. For example, you would improve the quality of your search results by searching for service rather than services, or finance rather than financed or financing. 4. Use Quotation Marks: Enclosing a search term within quotation marks prompts the search engine to search for that specific word or phrase. If the term is a single word, using quotation marks will cut out stemmed variations of it. For example, if you search for the word director, you will likely receive a lot of results for direct, direction, directions, and so on, too. Typing "director" (with quotation marks), however, will ensure that you only get results for that stem word. - 30 -   If the search term is a phrase, your search will be for that specific phrase, rather than for all the component words as individual items. So, for example, if you search for the phrase director of human resources, without quotation marks, your search will return results based on all of the words in the phrase (except of, which is a stop word.) Surrounding the term with quotation marks, however, will generate results that feature this specific term. 5. Remove Unhelpful Words: Inserting a hyphen/small dash/minus sign immediately before a word excludes it from a search. So, imagine, for example, that you are looking to find out more about marketing. However, you want to concentrate on traditional marketing techniques, whereas the internet appears to be full of references to digital and social media marketing, all of which are appearing in your search. Typing in marketing -digital will exclude digital from the search, making it easier for you to find the information you are looking for. Typing marketing -digital -social would allow you to get rid of even more clutter. 6. Refine Your Search Using Operators: Other characters or terms, known as operators, allow you to narrow down your internet search in more targeted ways. We explore a few, below:  Wildcard Searches: use the * symbol as a placeholder for another word. For example, searching for * man in the world returns results for the richest man in the world, the tallest, the oldest, and so on. Wildcard searches are also useful when, for example, you do not know the full text of a quote. - 31 -    Combination Searches: the OR operator enables you to search for two or more terms simultaneously and is most useful when those terms are very similar. Typing selling OR retailing, for example, will return pages where either of the terms is used, without both needing to be present. Another way to combine searches is to use AND. This operator ensures that you receive only search results that include two or more terms. For example, the search "Smee Computers" AND "Devlin Corporation" would only deliver search results that includes the names of both companies.  Search a Specific Site: when you type site: followed by the URL of the website that you wish to search and a search term, you limit your search to a single website. So, site: mindtools.com "human resources" will return all the pages from MindTools.com that feature the term "human resources."  Finding Related Sites: another useful operator is related: Typing this in front of a web address that you already know – as in related:xyz.com – your search results will deliver a range of websites that are similar to xyz.com. - 32 -   7. Avoid Search Pitfalls: When searching online, it is important to bear in mind that many companies now have staff who is dedicated to improving their visibility online. They constantly tweak the wording of their websites to match the most used keywords – a process known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO). As a result, the sites listed at the top of your search results may have very good SEO, but it does not necessarily follow that they will have the best content. So, even when you have put in the best search terms you can, it is often worth digging down through your search results to find the best information. - 33 -  Internet Searching Four Search Strategies: Keyword Searching Advanced searching Question searching Boolean searching 1- Keyword Searching: Enter terms to search Use quotation marks to search as a phrase and keep the words linked together Common words (stop words) are ignored (that, to, which, a, the, …) + and – can be used to include or exclude a word Stop Words and Case Sensitivity: Stop words are frequently occurring words that may not be searchable. Common stop words include the, a, is, of, and be. Numbers and recurrent URL strings (such - 34 -  as html and com) can also be treated as stop words. They are called stop words because they are so common that a search engine may stop processing them when indexing or running a search. Some search engines will search stop words only if they are part of a phrase search or if they are the only search terms in a query or have a + in front of them. In the past, both the treatment of stop words and the differences in processing uppercase and lowercase characters were more varied among search engines than they are today. Thus, today’s teacher will often pass over these topics in favor of more critical advanced features, such as phrase searching, truncation, field searching, and limits. Case sensitivity refers to how the case of letters within search query terms affects search results. Most search engines are case insensitive: They will ignore uppercase, lowercase, and mixed case when searching for a given term. On any search engine, entering a search term in lowercase will usually find all case matches, though with a case-sensitive engine (such as AltaVista used to be), entering any single uppercase letter in a search term will invoke only exact case matches. So, for example, while a search on next will typically bring up next, Next, NeXT, and neXT, searching on NeXT in a case-sensitive engine will find only pages that contain NeXT. For advanced classes, both stop word and case sensitivity issues may be taught. Do a search for “to be or not to be” in different search engines so that we learn which search on all of these small words and which do not. To show the value of a case-sensitive search feature, we used to do a search for the software company AI in case-sensitive AltaVista, then compare the results with those from a case insensitive engine. Case sensitivity isn’t a big issue, but using stop words in a phrase search is. The most important search engines, like - 35 -  Google, allow stop words to be retrieved if included in a bound phrase (enclosed within quotation marks). Knowing such details can help you achieve other instructional goals. For case sensitivity, searching on acronyms that are also common words—for example, IT for information technology and PIPES for Piperazine-N, N’ bis (ethanesulfonic acid)—can provide effective illustrations. Field Searching: Field searching allows the searcher to designate where a specific search term will appear. Rather than searching for words anywhere on a Web page, fields define specific structural units of a document. The title, the URL, an image tag, and a hypertext link are common fields on a Web page. Field searching is an option on the advanced search pages of some Web search engines and frequently can also be accomplished through the use of a prefix. For example, title: Einstein will look for the word Einstein in the title of a Web page. Unfortunately, the command syntax for title search varies among search engines. Older search engines such as AltaVista used just the title: prefix, but when Google started using the in title: prefix, both Teoma and Yahoo! adopted it. Check the search engine help files or see Search Engine Features Chart (www.searchengine showdown.com/features) for current syntax. A fair number of field search options are available at different search engines. In general, title, link, and URL field searches are taught. We often introduce title searching as a way to get a more accurate subject focus. Title searches usually provide the most relevant results for teachers and librarians. We uses link searches to help find related sites. The objective with link checking is to review the Web sites that link to a great Web site as a way of expanding the - 36 -  number of relevant resources. Run a link search on the URL of a site to find additional, similar sites. Field searching helps find pages primarily about your word(s).” URL field searches limiting a search to certain top-level domains or sites such as.edu or.nasa.gov. We show how to do a link field search because when evaluating a page, it is useful “to see what other pages link to it and what they say.” Beyond the use of the link search for evaluation purposes, We demonstrate it as a tool for competitive intelligence and recommend its use by Webmasters during site redesigns. We can use a link search to see which other sites have linked to their old URLs. link searching is “a great thing to show business researchers” for doing competitive intelligence research and for seeing which organizations link to each other. Limits: Limits provide a searcher with the means of narrowing search results by adding a specific restriction to the search. On Web search engines, the most common limits are date, site, and language. Language restricts a search to Web pages in a specified language. Some limits are more accurate than others. The language limits, for example, use word matching against dictionary files from various languages. Since not all languages are covered, and since multiple languages can appear on the same page, the language limit is not always accurate. Limits are most easily accessible on the search engines’ advanced search pages. They are usually located in various dropdown menu choices. Of the many limits available on the various search engines, site searching is the most commonly taught. The site limit “as a means of filtering searches,” and finds it “a good way to drop out sites dominating your results or to narrow into what you want (information from - 37 -  educational sites, for example).” Of the other limits, when teaching Google, We will cover language and date and how to use them from the advanced search page. However, we always explains that “dates generally don’t mean much” and that “often when people want to do a date search, they really want news content, so it’s better to go to a news search engine. We all would welcome a date limit that could consistently identify Web pages whose content was created or updated within a specified date range. Unfortunately, the date listed for a retrieved Web page may simply reflect the last time an advertisement was changed or the date when the search engine last visited it. In other words, the date may have no connection with the production date of the information content. The results reflect “the date last visited and not the real date of the page.” Still, we have found that a date limit can be useful for excluding some (but by no means all) older content from a search. It can also be used to find Web pages that have not changed in several years, which is useful for Webmasters searching for pages on their site that might need updating. Language limits help when searching terms that appear in Web pages written in various languages (for instance, names of businesses, people, products, and places), For many searches, the results will tend to be in the same language as the search. Some others see that Language searches are not as important... as teaching that you are searching full text, and [that] foreign language pages require searches in that language. The exception is such things as names of businesses, people, products, and places as well as common terms that appear in multiple languages. In other countries, language limits are of far more interest since searchers there may often search (and speak) in several languages. - 38 -  Sorting: Search engines can order search results in various ways, such as alphabetically, chronologically, or randomly. Sorting is the ability to change that order. Most search engines give no options beyond the default, which sorts results according to the search engine’s relevance algorithms. The idea is that the most relevant results will appear before the less relevant ones. Sometimes this works. For navigational queries such as finding the Web site for a company or organization, relevance ranking tends to work well. For other types of queries, relevance ranking has mixed success. The problem for instructors is that no one knows precisely how search engine relevance algorithms are determined. (The search engines do not make the details public, partly to prevent unscrupulous Web marketers from manipulating search results in their favor.) In addition, the relevance algorithms change frequently. Thus, we cannot know with any degree of confidence what makes certain results rise to the top. The algorithms are based at least in part on link patterns on the Web and in part on the location of the text on the page, but these concepts are difficult to explain to novice searchers. As of 2015, only some search engines like (Exalead and MSN Search) provide some additional sorting options. MSN Search’s Search Builder has sliders for results ranking that can change the order based on date and popularity, while Exalead offers a chronological and reverse chronological date sort. At the beginning level, sorting can be explained to students by pointing out that the search engines are trying to list relevant results first but that automatic sorting does not always work well. Next, have them try a few search words to see what comes up first, then ask them to think of ways to add more words to get more relevant results. Sheila - 39 -  Webber says, “getting them thinking about getting the best out of a relevance- ranked search is very important.” 6. TRY IT: Go out to a search engine (use Google, AltaVista, AskJeeves, and Yahoo). Search for: Washington – record number of returned sites and topics returned “George Washington” “George Washington” + president 2- Advanced searching:  Most search engines have something called an Advanced Search. An advanced search allows you to be more specific about what type of information you are looking for.  When you visit a search engine, the Advanced Search page is a great place to start!  This is effective in narrowing search returns to a specific topic or phrase Google Advanced Search Go to the Google site and then show where to click on Advanced Search. Discuss what to put in the fields for researching: - 40 -  Let’s see how the Advanced Search option works! 7. TRY IT: Go to www.google.com and click on Advanced Search to the right of the search box. Let’s say you discover that some of your results are about the Vasco da Gama hotel and vacations. You want to find out about the life of Vasco da Gama, but not about the hotel. In the Advanced Search menu, put Vasco da Gama in the box that says “all of these words” and hotel and vacation in the box that says “without the words.”  This will filter out the information you don’t want!  What is the difference between a Search Engine and an Internet Guide?  Why do search engines return different results for the same search query? 3- Question Searching: A question may be entered in the search field of a search engine. Ask Jeeves is a search engine that encourages the use of question searching 8. TRY IT: Search using Ask Jeeves ----Why is the sky blue? - 41 -  4- “Smarter” searching on the Internet and Boolean searching:  If you are confident with the basics of Google searching, the next level of search skills is using ‘search strings’. These are what advanced Internet searchers use to find exactly what they are looking for. A search string is comprised of a number of search commands which are typed in together.  Most Internet search engines also allow you to use a set of words or symbols to narrow your search.  For a comprehensive guide to Google search commands, see: www.googleguide.com.  As an introduction, here are some of the main search commands you can use: - 42 -  Command Details Use this word when you want to find two words together. For AND example “Vasco da Gama AND voyage” Use this when you can accept a couple of words. For example, OR “Vasco da Gama OR European explorers” Use quotation marks when you are searching for an exact phrase. For example, if you were searching for a book title, you could type “quotations” “The Voyage of Vasco da Gama” in quotations and the search engine will look for that exact phrase. Use this symbol when you want to exclude a word. For example, “Vasco da Gama -hotel” minus sign (-) Also reverse Search commands work in. For example, to cut out all results from government websites, you might include -site:gov.* in your search, or to cut out Word documents from your results you might include: -filetype:doc. Limits results to that web domain e.g. headache site:nhs.uk will search for the word ‘headache’ on the NHS webpages, while Site:[website domain] “international aid” site:gov.* will search for the phrase ‘international aid’ appearing on any government website (including gov.uk, gov.au, gov.ru, etc.). Limits results to documents with certain file extensions e.g. filetype:pdf will return only pdfs, while filetype:ppt will return only File type:[file extension] PowerPoint presentations. Useful file extensions to know include: doc (Word), xls (Excel), ppt (PowerPoint), pdf (Adobe Acrobat), swf (Flash), mp3 and wma (music), mpg and wmv (video). Searches for all numbers in that range. It can be particularly [number]..[number] effective for date searching e.g. “Luther King” 1963..1968 will find anything referring to Martin Luther King between those dates. Finds similar pages to the web address you type in e.g. related:[web address] related:google.com finds other search engines. Returns web pages which link to that web address – often these link:[web address] will be pages on a similar topic. Instructs Google to search for that word and any synonyms e.g. ~[word] ~university will find any result which includes the word university or similar words such as college. - 43 -  NESTING: As in basic algebra, by using parentheses you may specify the order in which operations take place. (Those inside parentheses are performed first). More complicated strategies then become possible. Examples: (athletes OR sports) AND drugs (airport? OR airplane?) AND terror? The first example will retrieve records in which the words athletes AND drugs OR sports AND drugs appear. The Second is a broader search and will retrieve airport, airports, airplane, airplanes in records where the term(s) terror, terrorist, terrorize, terrorists, or terrorism appear in the same record. Truncation: Truncation allows you to widen a search on a textual or name field by including truncation symbols (* or ?) in your search term. Truncation uses one or more question marks at the end of a search term to search on a word stem or incomplete term. Word stems should be at least three characters long. The * symbol is used to match any number of characters and the ? symbol is used to match a single character. Open Truncation You can truncate a search term by appending a question mark to the end of a term. For example, enter transport? and all records containing the word stem transport are retrieved, including such terms as transportation, transported, transporting, and transportable. Restricted Truncation: To restrict truncation, enter one question mark for each character you wish to allow. For example, enter transport??? and all records - 44 -  containing the word stem, transport, plus three characters are retrieved including transport and transporting. A question mark followed by a space and another question mark retrieves records containing the word stem and one additional character following the word stem. This strategy is frequently used to retrieve a specific search term in both its singular and plural forms. Internal Truncation A question mark can replace a character in a search term. For example, to retrieve records that contain the terms woman and women, enter wom?n. More than one question mark can be inserted in a term, however, the terms retrieved will have one character for each question mark used. For example, enter psych????ist and records containing the terms psychologist and psychiatrist are retrieved. You can also use internal truncation with open and restricted truncation. Internal truncation cannot be used to retrieve variations in spelling that result in words of different lengths, for example, color and colour. To retrieve variation in spelling, enter both terms separated by the OR operator, for example, enter color or colour. 11. TRY IT: i- Searching for variants of words. DEVELOP* to find Developing, Development, etc. ii)- Searching for a word where a single character may vary. WOM?N to find Women or Woman. - 45 -  The Teaching Choice: So which of the search features should you teach, and what proportion of a session should be dedicated to covering them? First of all, note that the various features can fit into a wide variety of sessions, though it is not necessarily a good idea to try to teach them all at once. Teaching them together may make sense when working with advanced searchers, especially those familiar with comparable features on commercial online systems. Paul Barron teaches “a search process that begins with a phrase search and progresses to using Boolean and proximity operators with field, top level, and geographic domain limiters and culminates with link checking of a selected result. Links checks are further limited using the Boolean AND operator with a keyword/phrase and a top-level domain.” In sessions for novices, explaining just one or two of these features may be enough. Phrase searching should certainly be one of the two. It is such a powerful tool that I cover it in every session. Advanced search features can be a strong draw for training sessions. The key is to teach the features that are most relevant to your audience and instructional goals. Provide the students with a few solid advanced tricks using these features, and they should see dramatic improvement in their searching success. - 46 -  Search String: For example, here is a search string you might use to find PowerPoint presentations about Martin Luther King’s speeches given between 1963 and 1967: “Luther King” ~speech 1963..1967 filetype:ppt. This example consists of four components: i) The phrase “Luther King”. ii) The thesaurus word ‘speech’. iii) The date range 1963 to 1967. iv) The file type ‘ppt’. Pictures and Images: The ability of graphic browsers to display text with embedded images was one of the great attractions of the early Web. If the rise of digital photography has not expanded the interest in online images, it has certainly expanded the number of pictures available online. Add in all the graphic buttons, logos, screen captures, and graphic design elements on the Web, and it is easy to see how image search engines can include more than one billion images. Searching images is popular, but the issues involved with image search are complex. With Web searching, the text of the query is matched with text on a Web page. With image searching, the text of the query has to be matched with a picture. Fortunately, images on the Web have some text associated with them: text within the file name, including the site name and directory; any text surrounding the image on a page; or an alternative text tag designed for non-image browsers. But the quality of all this - 47 -  connected text depends on the site creator. Picture search engines are available at Yahoo!, Google, Ask, and MSN Search, Ditto (www.ditto.com) and Picsearch (www.picsearch.com). Indeed, search engines do not necessarily index many of the image collections that can be found via a directory like LII. The directory approach helps find the collection by a broader topic word. With all picture search engines, instructors should be wary of potential display problems when demonstrating an image search. - 48 -  (Evaluating Internet Sources) Does the Web have high-quality, accurate, and reliable information? This question was frequently repeated in the Web’s early days and is still heard today. The answer is certainly yes... and no. The Web includes some very accurate and reliable resources, along with many inaccurate, unreliable, misleading, and outright false ones. How can you tell if an Internet site is reliable?  Internet sources must be evaluated to assure their authenticity and relevance because Web sites and pages do not go through the intensive editing processes that traditional print and visual resources do.  Therefore, YOU, the user, must learn to assess the validity of the sources you use in your research.  Don’t be fooled into believing that just because it’s on the Internet, it’s true. In essence, don’t believe everything that you read! - 49 -  Criteria for Evaluating Internet Sources: Authority Currency Accuracy Objectivity Usability Appropriateness 1- Authority: Authority refers to the reliability and credibility of the source. What are the author’s qualifications? Is the author or source affiliated with a reputable organization? Is there a contact person listed? Is there evidence of quality control? Examine the Domain One good way to assess the credibility of an authority or web site is to examine the URL: edu = college or university - 50 -  gov = government agency or organization org = non-profit organization mil = military organization com = commercial organization info = general information site net = network provider int = intergovernmental organization Be wary... A tilde ~ after the domain type usually indicates a personal web page and not an official part of that organization’s site Look for personal data about the author or organization Look for contact information, an email address, webmaster, editor, etc. 2- Currency … or timeliness:  Very often, Internet sources offer a real advantage in that they are often even more current than traditional print sources. - 51 -   The information can be updated constantly. However, you must be aware that the dates on an Internet site have various meanings. Examine the date... Date of information - usually indicates when the material was originally written Date of publication - usually indicates when the material first appeared on the Web Date of last revision or update - usually indicates the latest revision And check the links to make sure that they are up-do-date!!! 3- Accuracy: Accuracy refers to the reliability of the information. To examine the quality of the content on the site, ask the following questions: Is the information Dependable? Error-free? - 52 -  Documented? Accurate? Comprehensive? Understandable? 4- Objectivity: This refers to purpose of the site, evidence of bias or prejudice, and facts vs. opinion. Is there evidence of bias? Is only one side of an issue presented? Is any information purposely omitted? Is there a hidden message? What is the purpose of the site? To persuade, inform, explain, sell, promote, or ridicule? Can you tell facts from opinions? - 53 -  5- Usability: Usability refers to user friendliness and how easily the site allows you to retrieve information. Consider the following criteria: User friendliness- Is it easy to find, read, and use the information? Organization- Is it logically and clearly arranged? Table of Contents or Index- Is it labeled clearly and is it complete? Design- Is it clean, clear, and uncluttered? Consistency- Are navigation buttons the same throughout? Links- Are they clear, accurate, workable, valuable? 6- Appropriateness: Various types of webpages exist. Examine the purpose of the site to help you to determine the appropriateness for use in your research. Five types are listed below. Advocacy Webpages Business/Marketing Webpages - 54 -  Informational Webpages News Webpages Personal Webpages REMEMBER: Anyone can post information on the Internet!  Make sure the information you are using comes from a person or organization that can be trusted.  One simple way to tell if a site is reliable is to look at who runs the site. Usually, looking at the first section of a web address will tell you where it came from. If it came from a museum, university, or some other place you’ve heard of, chances are that it can be trusted.  The following table provides a checklist you can use to decide whether a website is reliable. If the site contains several characteristics in the “Questionable” column, you probably shouldn’t use it! - 55 -   Dupe Detector: A checklist to help surfers begin determining if information found on a website is true or not* Website: Trustworthy Questionable 1. Do large companies you know advertise on the site? Yes □ No □ 2. Are there any ‘dead links’, or links to ‘moved pages’? No □ Yes □ 3. Do the images support the stated facts? Yes □ No □ Is the site hosted by a credible provider and reside in a 4. Yes □ No □ ‘trustworthy’ domain. Are there links and references to other websites, 5. Yes □ No □ resources and experts that corroborate this information? 6. Is the resource available in another format? Yes □ No □ Do the site’s authors have other publications with 7. Yes □ No □ credible sites and publishers? Are the site’s author’s experts in the subject? (Do they 8. Yes □ No □ have any credentials or experience around the topic?) Is contact information provided and does the place/e- 9. Yes □ No □ mail exist and work? Does the site present highly biased visuals (e.g. racist 10. statements, derogatory remarks, and emotional No □ Yes □ language)? Is the site professional (grammar and typing errors are 11. Yes □ No □ not present or very minimal)? Totals**: - 56 -  Finally... Remember that the Internet is not the only source of information. It is very useful for some topics and almost useless for others. Use a variety of sources, both Internet and traditional sources Always question the validity of the information that you find. Remember the important evaluation criteria to consider. How to Cite Internet Sources: Citing Your Sources:  Citing your sources means telling people where you got your information. Just as you list books and encyclopedias in your bibliography, you must also include the sources of information you got from the Internet.  Citing your sources is important because it shows others how to find the same information you found. - 57 -   To cite a source on the Internet, you need to have a written record of the following information for each website that you actually use in your report or essay: o The name of the site and the author (Who made the website? A company? An organization? An individual?) o Date you found the information o The web address or URL o The copyright date for the website (usually found at the bottom of the homepage)  Use the format below to add Internet resources to a bibliography: o Author o Title of Website. o Web address or URL. o Copyright date. o Date you found the information. - 58 -   Example: look at the following website on Vasco da Gama and compare it to the information below. (http://library.thinkquest.org/4034/dagama.html) Author: There is no specific author listed Title: Think Quest: Explorers of the Millennium Web address: http://library.thinkquest.org/4034/dagama.htl Copyright date: 1998 (this is found by clicking on “About this Site” Date found: April 30, 2006  a bibliographical citation for this website would look like this: Think Quest: Explorers of the Millennium. http://library.thinkquest.org/4034/dagama.html. 1998. Found on April 30, 2006. 12. TRY IT: Go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/gama_vasco_da.shtml  Fill in the information listed on your worksheet. How would you cite this source in a bibliography? And you’ll be a... Happier, Smarter, More Successful, Researcher!! - 59 -   Now you’re ready to start your owN research project.  Happy Internet searching! Search Engines Internet Searching Citing Sources Internet Regular search engines vs. Recording Using Advanced important Metasearch engines Search information Search engines that will categorize the information Using words and Putting your symbols to narrow information into Search engines that your search correct format for will allow you to ask a a bibliography question - 60 -  Scientific Method of research Science…  A body of established knowledge, it is the observation, identification, investigation, and theoretical explanation of natural phenomenon  usually the ultimate goal is theory generation and verification Science Vs. Belief Belief: is knowing something without needing evidence. Eg. The Jewish, Christian and Islamic belief that there is a single God rather than multiple gods or no God. Science: requires that beliefs be continuously tested against evidence from the real world. Eg. The knowledge that living things require water can be tested by withholding water from a living thing to see if it can survive. Scientists over the centuries found they faced the same problem when it came to sorting out the truth from non-truths. To solve the problem, they devised a methodical framework within which to work. This framework is called the scientific method, and it's extremely important to solve a problem. Scientific Method is a way to solve problems, it is a tool that helps scientists and the rest of us to solve problems and determine answers to questions in a logical format. It provides step-by-step, general directions to help us work through problems. Who uses it? Everyone uses it every day. Even YOU!!! - 61 -   A scientist often credited with being the first to employ the scientific method is Francesco Redi, an Italian physician who lived from 1626 until 1697. Scientific method requires intelligence, imagination, and creativity. Do you have any problems to solve?  Where are My Shoes?  What should I have for lunch?  What class do I have next?  Did I do my homework for that class?  What is the cure for cancer?  Which deodorant works the longest? There are seven steps to the scientific method: 1. Identify a problem (Ask question) 2. Research the problem (Observation) 3. Formulate a hypothesis. 4. Conduct an experiment. 5. Data analysis/Results 6. Reach a conclusion. 7. Communicate the result - 62 -   1- Identify a problem: Scientists develop a question about a problem. They need to be very specific in defining what they are trying to explain or solve (empirically observed experiences, i.e. from the five senses). 2- Research the problem: (Research Information): Gather information about the problem/question and obtain facts and ideas from books, journals, internet, etc. that provide insight regarding your problem/question. Cite these resources. 3- Formulate a hypothesis: - 63 -   Hypothesis: An explanation for an observation, phenomenon, or scientific problem that can be tested by further investigation. Once you have possible answers from your research, you need to pick one answer that you think is most accurate. You then need to explain why this is, using your scientific research. what you think the answer is based upon your gathered information and prior knowledge-an educated guess It begins with: I think … “Disappointment is when a beautiful hypothesis is destroyed by an ugly fact” Newton  What Makes a Good Hypothesis? Is the hypothesis based on information contained in the Research Proposal? Yes / No Does the hypothesis include the independent and dependent variables? Yes / No Have you worded the hypothesis clearly so that it can be tested in an experiment? Yes / No (For a Good Hypothesis, You Should Answer "Yes" to Every Question) Hypothesis: Not Supported  If your results did not support your hypothesis, don't change or manipulate your findings to fit your original hypothesis. Simply explain why things did not go as expected.  Scientists often find that results do not support their hypothesis.  They use their unexpected results as the first step in constructing a new hypothesis. - 64 -    Inventions discovered by mistake: ◦ Penicillin (antibiotic) ◦ Slinky ◦ Potato Chips ◦ Microwave Oven  Scientific research is an ongoing process.  By discovering that your hypothesis is not supported, you have already made huge advances in your learning process.  This will lead you to ask more questions and guide you towards to new experiments. 4- Conduct an experiment: The next step scientists take is to create and conduct an experiment to test their hypothesis. This should include a materials list and a procedure with step-by-step directions.  Every experiment has variables! A variable is anything that changes or could change in an experiment.  Variables: A variable is any factor, trait, or condition that can exist in differing amounts or types: 1. Independent 2. Dependent 3. Controlled - 65 -   1- Independent variable: is the one that is changed by the scientist. As the scientist changes the independent variable, he or she observes what happens. 2- Dependent variable: The scientist focuses his or her observations on the dependent variable to see how it responds to the change made to the independent variable. 3- Controlled variables: experiments also have controlled variables. Controlled variables are quantities that a scientist wants to remain constant, and he must observe them as carefully as the dependent variables. Example : Independent Variable Dependent Variables Controlled Variables Question (What I change) (What I observe) (What I keep the same) Does an electric motor Speed of rotation Voltage of the electricity Same motor for every turn faster if you measured in revolutions measured in volts test increase the voltage? per minute (RPMs) 5- Observations and Data analysis: Observation: To look at and record what you see. Data analysis: Determine whether your data/results from the experiment supports (or not) your hypothesis; if not, it may be necessary to review your information /research and revise your hypothesis.  Once a scientist completes an experiment, they often repeat it using the exact same materials and procedure to see if they get the same findings and results. Once you have completed your experiment, look at the results, and comment on any patterns, observations, findings. You may include graphs, pictures, and/or recordings. A key to experiments is observing what happens and writing it down. - 66 -   It may be charts, graphs, or written work. This is WHAT HAPPENED!!!!! Gathering information or data and documenting it so it is readable and makes sense to others is really important. 6- Reach a conclusion. What did you find the answer to the question was? It is OK if it turns out that your hypothesis was not correct. You learned!!!!!!!!! 7- communicate your results :  Scientists share their experiments and findings with others.  Because they share their experiments and findings, scientists can learn from each other and often use someone else’s experiences to help them with what they are studying or doing. - 67 -   Example (1): problem ??? pen torch doesn't work:  You think back to the last time your pen torch didn't work, and you remember that it was because of worn-out batteries.  You guess that worn-out batteries is the reason this time as well  So you get some new batteries and replace the ones in your pen torch.  You’re faced with the problem of not being able to read because your pen torch doesn't work, and you’re not happy about it.  You think back to the last time your pen torch didn't work, and you remember that it was because of worn-out batteries.  You guess that worn-out batteries is the reason your pen torch isn't working  Now, so you get some new batteries from the drawer next to your bed and replace the ones in your pen torch.  A conclusion is a written summary of the results from your experiment.  You will use the data table(s) and graph(s) you created in your experiment to help write a conclusion. - 68 -   Example 2: 1. According to my experiment, the Energizer battery maintained its voltage (outcome variable) for approximately 3% longer period of time (test variable) than the Duracell battery in a flashlight. 2. My hypothesis stated that the Energizer battery would last longer in the flashlight than the Duracell battery. 3. Therefore, my results supported my hypothesis. 4. I think the tests I performed went smoothly. I experienced no problem. However I noticed the batteries seemed to regain some of their voltage if they were not being used. Therefore, I had to measure the batteries voltage quickly. 5. An interesting future study might involve testing the batteries at different temperatures to simulate actual usage in very cold or very hot conditions. Oh! Your pen torch works. - 69 -   Example (3): 1- ASK A QUESTION The question can relate to a Specific observation (eg Why is the Sky blue?) or open ended question (Which spot cream works best?) There are so many questions, look at the world around you. What are you Interested in? 2- Do background research (Question: Why is the Sky Blue?) Once you have your question, research it using the internet or a textbook. It may generate more questions, or give you a possible answer. Possible Answers:  Because the sky reflects blue.  Because it is made up of blue matter.  Because particles in the sky refract and scatters the blue wavelength of light. 3- Construct a hypothesis “I think that light is made up of different colors, one of them being blue. Particles in the sky refract and scatter blue light making it appear as the sky is blue.” 4- Test your hypothesis: My hypothesis is that the sky is blue because it refracts and scatters blue light from the light spectrum. I will test my hypothesis by seeing if light can be separated into different colors. If it can this would help prove this hypothesis. - 70 -  My Experiment: 1. Materials: prism (to separate light), light ray box, 2. Method: (What will I do) i. collect equipment and set up using the diagram ii. Shine light into the prism iii. Record your results 5- Analyze your data “From my experiment you can see in the photographic evidence that light can be separated into the 7 colors of the rainbow. 6- Conclusions This proves that Blue is a part of white light and that it could be separated and scattered across the sky, making the sky look blue.” 7- Report your results Produce a poster board, PowerPoint, Scientific Journal, Website, Video or booklet of your experiment and findings. Was your hypothesis correct? If your results supported your hypothesis you were correct, if they did not, you may want to carry out some further research, and possible conduct another experiment. This could be expressed in your evaluation. - 71 -  Subject Page External Environment 73 SWOT Analysis 79 Decision Making 89 Group Decision Making 103 Importance Of Finding Relevant Data 111 - 72 -  WHAT IS THE EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT AND WHY IS IT IMPORTANT? The term external environment refers to factors, forces, situations, and events outside the organization that affect its performance. As shown in Exhibit 2–1, it includes several different components. The economic component encompasses factors such as interest rates, inflation, changes in disposable income, stock market fluctuations, and business cycle stages. The demographic component is concerned with trends in population characteristics such as age, race, gender, education level, geographic location, income, and family composition. The technological component is concerned with scientific or industrial innovations. The sociocultural component is concerned with societal and cultural factors such as values, attitudes, trends, traditions, lifestyles, beliefs, tastes, and patterns of behavior. The political/legal component looks at federal, state, and local laws, as well as laws of other countries and global laws. It also includes a country‘s political conditions and stability. And the global component encompasses those issues (like a volcano eruption) associated with globalization and a world economy. HOW DOES THE EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT AFFECT MANAGERS? Knowing what the various components of the external environment are and examining certain aspects of that environment are important for managers. However, understanding - 73 -  how the environment affects managers is equally as important. We‘re going to look at three ways the external environment constrains and challenges managers—first, through its impact on jobs and employment; next, through the environmental uncertainty that is present; and finally, through the various stakeholder relationships that exist between an organization and its external constituencies. 1- JOBS AND EMPLOYMENT. As any or all of the external environmental conditions change, one of the most powerful constraints managers face is the impact of such changes on jobs and employment—both in poor conditions and in good conditions. The power of this constraint became painfully obvious during the recent global recession as millions of jobs were eliminated and unemployment rates rose to levels not seen in many years. Economists now predict that about a quarter of the 8.4 million jobs eliminated in the United States during this most recent economic downturn won‘t come back and will instead be replaced by other types of work in growing industries. Other countries face the same issues. Although such readjustments aren‘t bad in and of themselves, they do create challenges for managers who must balance work demands and having enough people with the right skills to do the organization‘s work. Not only do changes in external conditions affect the types of jobs that are available, they affect how those jobs are created and managed. For instance, many employers are using flexible work arrangements with work tasks done by freelancers hired to work on an as-needed basis or by temporary workers who work full-time but are not permanent employees or by individuals who share jobs. Keep in mind that these approaches are being used because of the constraints from the external environment. As a manager, you‟ll need to recognize how such work arrangements affect the way you plan, organize, lead, and control. - 74 -  2- ASSESSING ENVIRONMENTAL UNCERTAINTY. Another constraint posed by external environments is the amount of uncertainty found in that environment, which can affect organizational outcomes. Environmental uncertainty refers to the degree of change and complexity in an organization‘s environment. The matrix in Exhibit 2–2 shows these two aspects. The first dimension of uncertainty is the degree of unpredictable change. If the components in an organization‘s environment change frequently, it‘s a dynamic environment. If change is minimal, it‘s a stable one. A stable environment might be one in which there are no new competitors, few technological breakthroughs by current competitors, little activity by pressure groups to influence the organization, and so forth. For instance, Zippo Manufacturing, best known for its Zippo lighters, faces a relatively stable environment. There are few competitors and little technological change. The main external concern for the company is probably the declining trend in tobacco usage. In contrast, the recorded - 75 -  music industry faces a dynamic (highly uncertain and unpredictable) environment. Digital formats, apps, and music downloading sites have turned the industry upside down and brought high levels of uncertainty. The other dimension of uncertainty describes the degree of environmental complexity, which looks at the number of components in an organization‘s environment and the extent of the knowledge that the organization has about those components. An organization that has few competitors, customers, suppliers, or government agencies to deal with, or that needs little information about its environment, has a less complex and thus less uncertain environment. How does the concept of environmental uncertainty influence managers? Looking again at Exhibit 2–2, each of the four cells represents different combinations of degree of complexity and degree of change. Cell 1 (stable-simple environment) represents the lowest level of environmental uncertainty and cell 4 (dynamic and complex environment) the highest. Not surprisingly, managers have the greatest influence on organizational outcomes in cell 1 and the least in cell 4. Because uncertainty is a threat to an organization‘s effectiveness, managers try to minimize it. Given a choice, managers would prefer to operate in the least uncertain environments, but they rarely control that choice. In addition, the nature of the external environment today is that most industries are facing more dynamic change, making their environments more uncertain. 3- MANAGING STAKEHOLDER RELATIONSHIPS. What has made MTV a popular cable channel for young adults year after year? One reason is that it understands the importance of building relationships with its various stakeholders: viewers, reality show participants, music celebrities, advertisers, affiliate TV stations, public service groups, and others. The nature of stakeholder relationships is another way in which the environment influences managers. The more obvious and secure these relationships, the more influence managers will have over organizational outcomes. - 76 -  Stakeholders are any constituencies in an organization‘s environment that are affected by that organization‘s decisions and actions. These groups have a stake in or are significantly influenced by what the organization does. In turn, these groups can influence the organization. For example, think of the groups that might be affected by the decisions and actions of Starbucks—coffee bean farmers, employees, specialty coffee competitors, local communities, and so forth. Some of these stakeholders also, in turn, may impact decisions and actions of Starbucks‘ managers. The idea that organizations have stakeholders is now widely accepted by both management academics and practicing managers. Exhibit 2–3 identifies the most common stakeholders that an organization might have to deal with. Note that these stakeholders do include internal and external groups. Why? Because both can affect what an organization does and how it operates. Why should managers even care about managing stakeholder relationships? For one thing, it can lead to desirable organizational outcomes such as improved predictability of environmental changes, more successful innovations, greater degree of trust among stakeholders, and greater organizational flexibility to reduce the impact of change. For instance, social media company Facebook is spending more on lobbying and meeting with governmental officials as lawmakers and regulators look at sweeping changes to online privacy law. The company is ―working to shape its image on Capitol Hill and avert measures potentially damaging to its information-sharing business.‖ Can stakeholder management affect organizational performance? The answer is yes! Management researchers who have looked at this issue are finding that managers of high performing companies tend to consider the interests of all major stakeholder groups as they make decisions. Another reason for managing external stakeholder relationships is that it‘s the ―right‖ thing to do. Because an organization depends on these external groups as sources of inputs (resources) and as outlets for outputs (goods and services), managers should consider the interests of stakeholders as they make decisions. We‘ll address this issue in more detail in the next chapter when we look at corporate social responsibility. As we‘ve tried to make clear throughout this section, it‘s not going to be ―business as usual‖ for organizations or for managers. Managers will have hard - 77 -  decisions to make about how they do business and about their people. It‘s important that you understand how changes in the external environment will affect your organizational and management experiences. Now, we need to switch gears and look at the internal aspects of the organization, specifically, its culture. - 78 -  SWOT analysis for different alternatives What is a SWOT analysis and why should you use one? The SWOT analysis is a useful technique for understanding all sorts of situations in business and organizations. SWOT is acronym for STRENGTHS, WEAKNESSES, OPPORTUNITIES and THREATS. A SWOT analysis guides you to identify the positives and negatives inside your organization (Strength & Weakness) and outside of it, in the external environment (Opportunity & Threat). Developing a full awareness of your situation can help with both strategic planning and decision-making. For business it is important to know your surrounding environment from internal and external point of view. Therefore it is important to evaluate environment opportunities in relation to the strengths and weaknesses of the organization's resources, and in relation to the organizational culture. SWOT analysis is one very effective tool for the analysis of environmental data and information– for both, internal (strengths, weakness) and external (opportunities, threats) factors. It helps to minimize the effect of weaknesses in your business, while maximizing your strengths. SWOT analysis can help you gain insights into the past and think of possible solutions to existing or potential problems — either for an existing business or new venture. A scan of the internal and external environment is an important part of the strategic planning process. Environmental factors internal to the organization usually can be classified as strengths (S) or weaknesses (W), and those external to the organization can be classified as opportunities (O) or threats (T). Such an analysis of the strategic environment is referred to as a SWOT analysis. The SWOT analysis provides information that is helpful in matching the organization's resources and capabilities to the competitive environment in which it - 79 -   operates. As such, it is instrumental in strategy formulation and selection. The following diagram shows how a SWOT analysis fits into an environmental scan: SWOT Analysis Framework The SWOT Matrix: To develop strategies that take into account the SWOT profile, a matrix of these factors can be constructed. The SWOT matrix (also known as a TOWS Matrix) is shown below: SWOT / TOWS Matrix S-O strategies pursue opportunities that are a good fit to the company's strengths. W-O strategies overcome weaknesses to pursue opportunities. - 80 -  S-T strategies identify ways that the organization can use its strengths to reduce its vulnerability to external threats. W-T strategies establish a defensive plan to prevent the organization's weaknesses from making it highly susceptible to external threats. SWOT analysis can be used for: Business planning, Strategic planning, Outsourcing a service, activity or resource, Explore possibilities t