secondary data

Hanoi UniversityEnglish Department

DIFFICULTIES WHEN FINDING AND USING SOURCES FORSECONDARY RESEARCH AND SOLUTIONS

Supervisor: Do Thi Thu TrangStudents: Vo Ngoc Anh

Nguyen Minh ThuClass: 4A11

Hanoi, May 2013

DIFFICULTIES WHEN FINDING AND USING SOURCES FORSECONDARY RESEARCH AND SOLUTIONS 1

Acknowledgments

We would like to express our very great appreciation to Mrs. Do Thi Thu

Trang, our research supervisor, for her patient guidance, constructive suggestions and

useful critiques of this research work.

We wish to thank second-year students of English Department for their

support and contribution to our questionnaire.

Finally, our grateful thanks are also extended to our classmates for their

enthusiastic participation in our pilot survey.


Abstract

We conducted this survey in order to determine the difficulties students may

face when conducting secondary research and how they overcome them. The subject

we focused on was second-year English majors at Hanoi University. To get the result,

a questionnaire was designed and fifty copies of it were delivered to students in about

a week. The data collected showed that the majority of students considered

Availability of printed materials and Reliability of online sources their biggest

difficulties. However, the responses suggested that the participants did come up with

some solutions to deal with these problems which were similar to those provided in

the questionnaire and they appeared quite effective. In particular, most of the students

chose Scheduling research tasks and Examining the reputation of publisher and the

author to be the best ways to cope with difficulties related to finding sources.

Additionally, the results pointed out that Paraphrasing was the most effective solution

to avoid making mistakes related to plagiarism.


Contents

Acknowledgments 1

Abstract 2

Contents 3

I. Introduction 4

II. Methods 4

III. Results and analysis 5

1. Printed sources 5

1.1. Level of difficulties 5

1.2. The greatest difficulties with availability and relevancy 7

1.3. Solutions 8

2. The greatest difficulty and evaluation of electronic sources 9

3. Methods to avoid plagiarism 11

IV. Conclusion 12

References 14

Appendix 15


I. Introduction

Secondary research is an integral part of writing. It is stated that “in the

information age, learning often involves research” (Dietsch, 2006, p. 422). However,

many students still face a number of difficulties while collecting information for

secondary research and therefore, it is important to understand more about these

difficulties as well as how to resolve them. A book by Peterson (2000) introduced the

methods to obtain, evaluate and organize information for secondary research. Another

researcher, Dietsch (2006) offered a quite complete study on the same subject.

Nonetheless, these researchers only gave a general background of finding and using

sources in secondary research and did not focus on investigating the practicality of

these methods to university students. In our research, we mainly concentrate on

second year students of English Department at Hanoi University to find out what

difficulties they have when finding and using sources for secondary research and how

to overcome them.

II. Methods

In order to collect the data for our research, a questionnaire was considered as

the best tool to obtain a large amount of information in a short length of time. Our

questionnaire contained nine questions divided into three parts. The first part was to

identify the types of document that students use in their research. The second part was

to find out the difficulties as well as solutions to the difficulties students had while

finding sources for secondary research. Finally, the third part was to learn about the

methods used to avoid plagiarism, which was considered an ever-present problem at

universities (“The problem of plagiarism”, n.d.).

Before doing a real survey, we had a sample survey in our class for one day.

As we collected the questionnaires back, we realized a number of issues in part two


and three. After making several modifications, we had a complete questionnaire and

then conducted a real survey. In one week, we delivered questionnaire to fifty

students from three different classes. All of them are second-year English majors at

Hanoi University. Fortunately, all questionnaires returned were appropriate.

The next step is analyzing data. For every question with the exception of

question number 2, we counted the number of students choosing each option. This

number signified the popularity of an answer among the students. For question

number 2, we recorded the ranking each student gave to a number of options. Based

on the ranking, we would find out the level of difficulties.

III. Results and analysis

1. Printed sources

1.1. Findings of the level of difficulties students have when finding printed sources

Table 1

Level of difficulties

Difficulty

Rank

Time management Availability Relevancy

1 14% 61% 25%

2 11% 33% 53%

3 75% 6% 22%

Table 1 represents the level of difficulties that students faced when finding

printed materials. As can be seen, 61% of students working on printed sources agreed

that Availability of published documents was the greatest difficulty and Relevancy of

materials was chosen to be the second factor that hindered the process of gathering

data with 53% of the respondents. It is possible to infer that the majority of Hanoi

University students had trouble acquiring useful physical documents and were often


unable to obtain a sufficient amount of printed material needed for their research. On

the contrary, despite the fact 89% of students stated that they had spent two weeks or

more on gathering data when asked, Time management was the most popular choice

for the least difficulty, being chosen by 75% of the subjects. However, this result

contrasts to a previous study by Walker (1984), which deemed limiting the amount of

time spent on finding and reading articles and books to be the greatest difficulty.

Overall, it seems that students could well manage the time to complete the

assignments and meet the deadline.

1.2. Findings of the greatest difficulty with availability and relevancy of printed

sources

Figure 1. Greatest difficulty with availability of printed sources

As revealed in the Figure 1, the combination of an insufficient amount of

material and material being borrowed was the greatest difficulty with availability of

printed sources, making up 48% of the total percentage. This response seems to

contradict Peterson’s statement that there was a wide range of physical documents

accessible to researchers in public places beside the library in the campus (2000).

While most of the students met both obstacles, 5% of them had to deal with only one

A: Insufficient amount of materialB: Material being borrowedC: Excessive amount of material


problem that was the materials needed have been borrowed by others. The situation

may commonly occur when several groups conduct research on the same topic.

There were 42% of students found that they could not develop their arguments

in the research further because of the shortage of materials. On the other hand, 5% of

the students pointed out an excessive amount of material as their main concern. These

two opposing ideas may be resulted from the chosen topics or different ways of

searching for information. Specifically, it would be more difficult to find suitable

materials for topics which are too general or related to unfamiliar matters.

Additionally, relying only on the sources of the library in campus without considering

other outside sources may be one of the reasons that students cannot find enough

information for their papers. Hence, students should apply proper methods so as to

keep the process manageable.

Figure 2. Greatest difficulty with relevancy of printed sources

Figure 2 displays the greatest difficulty that Hanoi University second English

majors had with relevancy of printed sources. It can be observed that 44% of the

students using printed sources found materials oversimplified and too technical. Such

documents providing unclear details, as suggested by Dietsch (2006), should not be


counted as reference. Furthermore, 28% of the students responded that the

information collected was no longer valid and, consequently, was not likely to be

included in those papers whose topics require updated data. In addition, unreliable

data made up 20% of the total percentage and finally, biased material came last with

8%, which might not strongly support Dietsch’s point that most articles showing the

opposing viewpoints about one issue often slanted in favor of one side (2006). In

short, the results show that many students had difficulty collecting proper and detailed

information to sustain their papers and they are likely to enhance Dietsch’s opinion

that several sources could be inappropriate for academic papers (2006).

1.3. Findings of the solutions for difficulties with printed sources

Table 2

Solutions to difficulties with printed sources

Strongly Agree

Agree

Neither agree nor

disagree

Disagree

Strongly

disagree

Scheduling research tasks

Find topics that make it easier to access available sources

A brief overview in the library

Ask the librarians for help

25%

22%

14%

0%

50%

47%

50%

14%

25%

31%

19%

36%

0%

0%

17%

39%

0%

0%

0%

11%

The table indicates students’ opinion about some solutions to the difficulties of

finding printed sources. As can be seen, scheduling research tasks and finding topics

with accessible sources were likely to be chosen as the effective ways to avoid getting

trouble in the gathering data process, with 75% backing up the former and 69%

agreeing and strongly agreeing with the latter. Surprisingly, both of the solutions did

not face any disagreement, which probably defends the suggestion that a schedule

should be made in order to have time spending on doing research well managed as


well as organize the works thoroughly to stay on track with the deadlines (Clouse,

2008). Moreover, Clouse (2008) also stated that there were some topics which were

not suitable for a research paper and should have been avoided.

On the other hand, while being supported by 64% of the students, 17% of the

total percentage did not consider a brief overview in library as a solution against

obtaining irrelevant material. Therefore, it can be assumed that although this

suggestion was helpful to the majority of students, there were still some who did not

share the same sentiment. In addition, there was not any student who strongly agreed

that asking librarians for information was helpful, whereas about 50% of them

showed disagreement including strong opposition (11%). The students’ opinion,

however, is not the same as one of Axelrod and Cooper stating that experienced

librarians were able to answer questions related to accessing materials (1991).

2. Findings of the greatest difficulty with electronic sources and methods

to evaluate electronic sources


Figure 3. Difficulties in collecting online materials

Figure 3 includes information about the greatest difficulty students have with

electronic sources. As be shown in the figure, Reliability was the most students’

concerned factor which accounted for nearly 40%. A large number of people, 28%,

thought that Instructor’s limitation on online materials made it difficult to pick up

data, and less than a third took Quality factor into consideration. A study by Dietsch

(2006) suggested that the primary concerns for researchers were reliability and

quality. While it was true about Reliability, Quality only ranked third in this research

(approximately 23%). Furthermore, students may have trouble obtaining online

sources as some databases charged money in exchange for information (Dietsch,

2006). The results and findings, however, prove that the majority of students did not

meet this trouble as there were only about 10% of the total students who believed

Costly subscription to be their greatest difficulty.


Figure 4. Online sources evaluation

Several methods to evaluate online sources are demonstrated in figure 4. As

can be seen, 39% of students examined the reputation of the publisher, which backs

up Clouse’s suggestion on inspecting the author’s grade of position (2008). There

were 33% of students compared the online contents with that gained from scholarly

sources in the library. Moreover, Noticing the tones and Noticing the dates made up

of 14% of the total responses each. Overall, it seems that though the evaluations are

not various, HANU students still could manage to keep the quality of online materials

under control.

3. Findings of methods to avoid plagiarism


Figure 5. Methods to avoid plagiarism

As appeared on the chart above, many students chose to paraphrase the

information taken from the references, which took up nearly a half of the total

percentage. This was followed by Quotation, which was used by 28% of the students

and was Summarization, which stood at 25%. Additionally, there were surprisingly no

extra solutions to avoid plagiarism provided when students were asked, which

inferred that most of second- year majors may find the three ways above were

effective enough to help them prevent plagiarism. In short, the result collected, to

some extents, illustrated the solutions chosen by HANU students when documenting

the materials as well as backs up Roig’s statement that there were often paraphrasing

and summarizing of others’ work in scholarly writing (n.d.).

IV. Conclusion

On the whole, the majority of second-year students faced certain difficulties

when carrying out secondary research. Surprisingly, although Time management was

believed to be the greatest difficulty by previous researchers, it was actually


Availability which affected Hanoi University students the most. It was also indicated

that Reliability was the most challenged extent for those who chose to use online

materials. Moreover, most of the solutions suggested to deal with those obstacles as

well as to avoid plagiarism seemed to be effective. Nevertheless, it should be noted

that this study has examine only fifty students of English Department and we, the

researchers, were short on time and experience. Under the said circumstances, the

results might not be appropriate. Despite these limitations, our study has partly shown

current difficulties and ways of coping with these difficulties while conducting

secondary research of Hanoi University students. From these results that we have

found, another research of the effects of these difficulties on the students’ writing

processes and final products is necessary, since this point was not explained in our

research.


References

Appendix

Questionnaire

We are students of English Department, Hanoi University. This questionnaire

is being conducted as a part of our primary research. The purpose of this

questionnaire is to investigate the difficulties that second- year English major

students face when finding and using sources for the secondary research as well as

the ways they overcome them. We would be extremely grateful for your honesty in

answering these questions. All responses will remain anonymous. Thank you for your

cooperation.

I. Section 1:

1. What kind of sources do you use when conducting secondary research?

Please check the appropriate box(es). You can choose more than one option.

Printed sources (e.g. books, magazines, etc.) (answer questions in 2A)

Electronic sources (e.g. online articles, etc.) (answer questions 2B)

Others (please clarify:

………………………………………………………………..)

(skip section 2)

II. Section 2:


2A. Printed Sources

2. Please indicate the level of difficulty by putting 1 next to your greatest

difficulty through to 3 for your least difficulty.

____ Time management

____ Availability of the documents

____ Relevancy of materials

3. How much time do you need to gather data?

A. 1 week

B. 2 weeks

C. More than 2 weeks

4. What problem do you have with availability of the documents?

Choose one of the following answers.

A. There are not enough materials on your topic.

B. Materials have already been borrowed.

C. Both answers A & B

D. Others (please clarify:

………………………………………………………………..)

5. What is the greatest difficulty that you have with relevancy of the documents?


A. They are outdated.

B. They are overly simplified, or too technical.

C. They are not reliable.

D. They are biased.

6. How do you do to overcome those difficulties related to finding printed

sources?

Put a tick () on the agreement scale for each solution.

SolutionsStrongly

AgreeAgree

Neither agree nor disagree

DisagreeStrongly disagree


Scheduling research tasks

helps overcome difficulty

with time management.

Find topics that make it

easier to access the

available sources.

A brief preview in the

library will avoid lugging

home irrelevant materials.

Ask the librarians for help.

2B. Electronic Sources

7. What is the greatest difficulty that you face when collecting data from electric

sources?


A. Reliability

B. Quality

C. Costly subscription

D. Instructor’s limitation for online materials

8. How do you evaluate your online sources?


Examine the reputation of the publisher and the author

Compare the contents with that gained from scholarly sources in the

library

Notice the tone

Notice dates


III. Section 3

9. What do you do to avoid plagiarism?


Paraphrase

Summarization

Quotation

Others (please clarify: …………………….)

This is the end of the questionnaire.

Thanks for your participation!

secondary data

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