Where's Your Evidence?

Emma Coonan

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781352009620
• eBook ISBN: 9781350315075
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Studienhilfen
• Subtopic: Studienführer

This engaging guide will equip students with the knowledge, skills and tools to find and evaluate academic information in a critical, informed and thoughtful way. It begins by encouraging students to think about the purpose of their information search, before taking them step-by-step through the process of searching for information, from sifting through search results to critically evaluating information. The final part of the book explores finding and evaluating information in the wider world, and shows students how to put the skills they've learned into effect in the workplace and in daily life. This will be an essential resource for students of all disciplines who need to master the fundamentals of finding information.

WHY GOOD EVIDENCE MATTERS

In 1854 a serious epidemic of the fatal disease cholera broke out in Soho, London. Nearly five hundred people had died when the physician and epidemiologist John Snow traced its source to a communal water pump shared by dozens of families. However, neither the authorities nor the community believed him – until Dr Snow had the pump handle removed to prevent its use, and people stopped dying.

In order to demonstrate a connection between drinking the contaminated water and cholera, Dr Snow had first to convince people that their assumptions were wrong. Often facts may be at odds with, or more complicated than, our perception of reality. We need reliable, verifiable evidence, not only to increase our understanding of the world but also to correct our misapprehensions. With strong evidence, you can create arguments that are convincing enough to challenge your readers’ (or listeners’) assumptions and change their minds.

1	What do we mean by ‘evidence’?

The example below shows how evidence can be presented to help people recognise their assumptions and gain a deeper understanding of a complex topic.

In the first paragraph, the writer describes a commonly held belief and explains why it seems so convincing. In the second paragraph, they bring forward unusual and compelling evidence that compels the reader to think again about the assumption that ’seeing is believing’.

Introductory paragraph outlining commonly held views and assumptions

For most people, the evidence of our own eyes is highly compelling and determines what we believe and how we behave. Eyewitness testimony carries high credibility in court, and visual information is often considered to take precedence over input from other senses, such as hearing or touch.

Evidence that challenges the popularly held view

However, the ‘Monkey Business Illusion’ study (http://www.theinvisiblegorilla.com/videos.html [accessed 30 October 2019]) suggests that people often fail to see significant or unusual phenomena, even when they are right in front of their eyes. Researchers found that half the participants in their study did not notice a person wearing a gorilla suit walk through the middle of a basketball game on which they were concentrating (Most et al., 2001).

Some of the evidence you’ll use in your academic work may be derived from original observation and testing, like Dr Snow’s research on cholera or the ‘Monkey Business’ psychology study. Original research includes activities such as conducting interviews or surveys, experimenting with cultures in a lab, or studying conditions on a field trip. More often, however, when you write assignments at university you’ll be relying on research carried out by others and reported in journal articles or books.

What makes evidence convincing?

When you draw on research done by other people and use it to support your own point of view, it’s crucial that the research carries conviction – your whole argument, however well constructed, is only as strong as the weakest part of your evidence.

Your lecturers will be looking for evidence that is:

Relevant	Each source you cite must have something useful to say about the topic that deepens the reader’s understanding.
Authoritative	The author needs to be qualified in some way to make meaningful statements about the topic (see the box below).
Timely	There is no hard-and-fast rule about how recent your references must be. Some decades-old studies are still cited because they made major breakthroughs that remain relevant today. However, you should be up to date with recent trends in how your topic is being studied and what is known about it.
Rigorous	How the evidence you use was collected and analysed also matters. Research must be based on a well-designed study to ensure that the researchers don’t make false claims about what the data mean.

These four points together help to establish the validity of a work – and that in turn gives it credibility. In other words, valid evidence will make your argument stronger and more convincing.

What does authority look like?

What makes a writer ‘authoritative’ – that is, qualified to say something meaningful about a topic – can be different in different circumstances. Consider these three examples:

An eminent sports scientist runs a large-scale quantitative study on how athletes recover from injury. Here, the authority arises from how the scientist designed the study, the sophistication of how the data are manipulated statistically, and to a smaller extent the experience and reputation of the author.

A qualitative researcher in the social sciences interviews athletes to find out how they feel about recovering from injury. In this case the authority lies in what the athletes themselves say: although they are not professional researchers, they are the experts on their own lives and feelings.

A student who goes on place...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Titlepage
• Seriespage
• Titlepage
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part 1 Why good evidence matters
• Part 2 Choosing your evidence
• Part 3 Exploring your evidence
• Part 4 Using your evidence
• Part 5 Evidence in everyday life
• Conclusion
• References
• Index