Research+Paper+9

=**Selecting and Integrating Evidence**=

In order to develop an effective and persuasive argument, a writer must slect evidence that will be convincing to the audience and relevant to the context. Each writing situation is unique, and there may be specific circumstances that a writer must consider in choosing evidence and developing reason for his or her argument. As you constructed your argument previously, you developed specific reasons for your position that establish your claim. For each reason, you need to provide evidence to convince your audience that the reason is valid, and the evidence will be most convincing if it comes from sources the audience values and respects.

=**Developing Project-Specific Evaluation Criteria**=

To choose the evidence you will incorporate into your argument, you need to evaluate the resources you have found and select the ones that are most appropriate to your **rhetorical situation**. Because each writing and research situation is distinct, you need to develop evaluation criteria that re specific to your project. You must consider what evidence your audience will find most convincing and what is most appropriate to the topic and argument you are making. You must also consider issues such as audience and purpose, but you might also consider timelines and relevance, as well as other criteria applicable to your project.


 * Audience and Purpose**

Consider the audience for your argument. Do you have one explicit audience? Is there also an implied audience (or audiences) that you need to consider? What kinds of evidence will be most convincing to your audience(s)? In order to answer this last question, you might think about what your audience values. Understanding the audience's values will help you choose evidence that will be persuasive to them, and it will also help you determine the best way to construct and phrase your argument and reasons. In addition, consider what your audience already knows about your topic. What do you know that they already believe about your topic?

As you consider the way your audience shapes the kind of evidence you you choose, also consider your purpose. What do you want your argument to accomplish? What are your hoping your audience will do in response to your argument? Will the evidence you have found persuade your audience to accomplish your purpose?


 * WRITE: Are you addressing your audience's wants and needs? **

As you begin to think about which evidence to include in your argument, start by reflecting on your audience. Try responding to the following questions to help you determine which evidence might be most useful and persuasive to include in your argument.

1. Who is/are your audience(s)? Think about who your primary audience is, and then consider whether there are other audiences that you are also addressing. You might have an explicit audience that is more defined and also an implicit audience. For example, if you are writing a paper for a class, you might address an explicit audience that would be appropriate for your topic, but then you always have the implied audience of your teacher to consider as well.

Now answer each of the following questions for each audience that you identified in item 1.

2. What does your audience value? What is important to them?

3. What will your audience be expecting in terms of evidence? What types of evidence are you required to include (if any)? Have you found evidence that would be undoubtedly convincing to your audience?

4. What does your audience think about your issue? Do they already have well-formed opinions in response to your research question? Do you know whether they already agree or disagree with you? Your response to this question will help you determine not only which evidence to include but also how much. If your audience disagrees with you, then you may need to include more evidence. If your audience is open to different ideas or already agrees with parts of your argument, then you might use less evidence in certain parts of your argument.


 * Timelines, Relevance, and Other Criteria**

Several additional criteria might help you determine which evidence to choose. First of all, consider the timeliness of the evidence that you are considering. Does this matter for persuasive effect in your argument? For example, doctors doing cutting-edge research on how to replace worn-out hip joints need to know what other doctors are doing. How will a research doctor's paper on a "new" method for hip replacement be received if the readers (other orthopedic doctors) realize she does not know about a successful method that was published in the past two years? What will lack of knowledge, or lack of acknowledgement, do to the research doctor's credibility? To sustain her credibility, the research doctor must know the most up-to-date information. Similarly, eco-friendly arguments about recycling and global warming often depend on the most current research both to set the stage for the crisis and to provide evidence that the proposed solution will help.

Research projects about literature or a historical topic, however, may not require the most "timely" research. Instead, such research usually requires that the writer demonstrate and extensive knowledge about what has already been written on the topic. For example, if an undergraduate English major is writing about Shakespeare's play //Romeo and Juliet//, his professor will probably not expect him to focus on the most recent research, nor will he expect him to read everything ever written about the play. Instead, his professor will expect that the student read enough scholarship on //Romeo and Juliet//, and incorporate it into the course paper, to demonstrate a broad understanding of the play and how other scholarship fits into the paper's argument.

While some research may require the most current information and other research may not rely as much on timeliness, certain research projects may require research from a specific time. Instead of defining "timeliness" simply as "current," "timeliness" may refer to specific historical information. If a movie reviewer want to comment on the reception of the //TRON// sequel, //TRON: Legacy// (2010), she may have to do research comparing the reception of the first //TRON// film (1982). Since the two films cover a three-decade span, the reviewer may need to know not only how the different films were received but also what was going on historically when each film was released.

Relevance is just as important as timeliness. How relevant is the evidence you have found to the purpose and scope of your argument? A student doing research on Shakespeare's //Romeo and Juliet// may have found a recent article about dialogue between the female characters in the play, but if he is writing about symbolism in the play, the article is probably outside of the purpose and scope of the project.

What other criteria should you consider for your topic/project? Look to elements of your **rhetorical situation** to develop more criteria. For example, a child care agency that is researching methods to help parents get involved in reading to their young children might have to consider evidence that takes into account the radically different socioeconomic backgrounds of the children and their families.


 * WRITE: Develop evaluative criteria **

To help develop criteria to use while constructing arguments and selecting evidence, write your answers to the following questions.

1. Who is the audience(s) for this research project? What do they want to know? What do they need to know?

2. What is the purpose of this research project? What must be conveyed for that purpose to be achieved?

3. How timely is this research project? What types of contemporary information must you address? What types of historical inforamtion must you address? How recent must information be to be relevant and persuasive?

4. How did you continue to narrow and focus your research question? What type of information must you find to fit within that scope? What information may be only tangentially relevant?

5. What other elements or issues about your topic must be covered?

6. What elements or issues about your topic might be interesting but not useful since they do not fit the purpose or scope of your project?

Use these criteria to start reevaluating your research. Based on these criteria, divide the results of your research into three piles.


 * information you must include in your project


 * information you might include because it is tangentially relevant


 * information that you will not include because it is not useful or relevant

Put the information that is not relevant in an envelope, shoe box, or separate computer file. Tuck it safely away somewhere. Although you will probably not use it and do not want to be distracted by it any longer, do not throw it away yet. Depending on the direction your project takes, the information might be useful later.


 * Resources as Evidence**

Evidence can emerge from any type of resource; however, different types of resources often need to be evaluated in different manners. For example, you may find expert testimony in a variety of resources: individually published blogs, edited trade publications, or peer reviewd journals. However, since these three types of publications have different processes of editorial review, a researcher needs to evaluate appropriately. We're not claiming that a researcher shouldn't evaluate a peer reviewed journal article, but he or she knows that other scholars in the same field evaluated the article before it was published. Similarly, an article in a trade publication was reviewed by an editor who likely knows a lot about the particular industry the publication represents. However, the researcher may need to do a littel bit of extra research to check the validity of the blog posting. Unless it is noted on the blog, it is highly unlikely that anyone edits and individually published blog; therfore, the researcher must verify the blog author's identity and credentials for publishing on the subject. This means that it is important to evaluate some of your evidence based on where you locate it.

With the invention of the Internet and the resulting relative ease with which individuals could publish their ideas, opinions, histories, and other information on the Web, many scholars started to distinguish between paper or hard-copy resources and electronic or soft-copy resources. In other words, secondary resources could suddenly be found outside the library; however, many times these resources were less authoritative and trustworthy. To be more specific, scholars were worried that much of the information found on the Internet did not have an editorial review process. For example, although popular books, magazine, and newspaper do not necessarily have resident experts on all subjects, they do have knowledgeable editors that help to filter the information that goes into print. What made scholars wary of electronic resources is that so many people could publish to the Internet without any form of editorial evaluation or review. Many people who write textbooks distinguish between library and Internet resources, often stating that the Internet resources are not to be trusted without a critical and thorough evaluation.

However, with the turn of the century and the proliferation of Internet-based electronic resources of originally printed materials, we can no longer easily dismiss electronic, soft-copy, or Internet-based resources. For example, many school libraries no longer subscribe to the paper copies of many scholarly journals; instead they subscribe to various databases that provide electronic copies of those journals. And students access these databases through web browsers on the Internet. Likewise, new types of solely electronic resources, such as blogs, wikis, and listservs, can be scholarly, authoritative, edited, and even peer reviewed. Similarly, the technologies that have helped proliferate numerous self-published electronic resources have also contributed to a larger number of authors self-publishing in hard-copy media as well, especially books.

Your audience will want to know that you critically evaluated your evidence in an appropriate manner, regardless of where you found it. It is important to carefully evaluate Internet-based resources because of the fluidity of the Internet and because of the ease with which information can be changed, especially when that information is self-published. To evaluate a self-published resource, it is helpful to answer the following types of questions:


 * What is the purpose of the self-published resource? How can you tell? How might its purpse bias the information being presented? Who is the primary audience? How can you tell?


 * How detailed and thorough is the information being presented? Is ther documentation of the information? What other methods can you use to evaluate the credibility of the information presented? How does the information in the self-published resource cross-reference with information in edited or peer reviewed resources?


 * Who has the authority to publish or update the self-published resource? Who is paying for or hosting the publication? If it is an Internet-based resource, what is the suffix on the end of the URL? Where does the site link from? Where does the site link to? Are there advertisements on the site? If it is a hard-copy resource, who is the publisher? What other types of resources does that publisher produce?


 * When was the self-published resource las printed or updated? How can you tell? Can you contact the author or the webmaster?