BUS-010 / BUS-110 Introduction to Information Literacy

M04: Evaluation and Use of Information

In thismodule, you will learn:

  1. The criteria in information evaluation.
  2. The extraction, summarization and analysis of information.

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BUS-010 / BUS-110 Introduction to Information Literacy

W

e have learned about the access of information in the previous weeks. One can always makeuse of the resources in the library and the Internet to accessthe required information. However, how can one tell if the information collected is ofone’s need in tackling the problems which one is facing? How can one make good use of the information? It turns out that the evaluationand use of information form a vital stage after information search.We would therefore consider the evaluation and use of information in this module.

  1. Criteria in information evaluation

Acquiring appropriate information from information sources is one of the very important activities in your academic study. Useful information is very important in academic study as well as other investigation, since it definitely affects your findings as well as outcomes of your study. Therefore, critical evaluation of the information found is essential to conducting quality investigation. Listed below is a collection of suggested criteria which you may consider as you sort through your sources for useful information. However, the relevance of these criteria will depend on your investigation topic and the focus selected.

  • Authority/ Credibility

To help you identify the authority or credibility of the source of the information, you may need to consider the following questions:

Can you clearly identify the author of the information? Who is the author of the information?

What are the author’s credentials and background? (You may look up the author’s biography to see his occupation, position, andlevelof expertise, etc.)

Has the author published any other related work? (You may check up the author’s bibliographies if he has published any other works, including books and periodicals.)

  • Reliability

Information is said to be reliable if it is trustworthy. The following questions can help you determine the trustworthiness of the source:

Who is in charge for publishing the information?

Is the source sponsored or published by an institution, an organization or association?(The source may be a well-known trade publisher, a university press, an organization, or an individual, etc.)

How stable is the information? (Some source provides information that remains more accessible and valid (i.e. legitimate) over time than other information. For example, The New Encyclopedia Britannica (consisting of fifteen editions) gives us information more accessible and valid over time. In contrast, information printed on the Web frequently changes and may disappear in certain cases.)

  • Accuracy[1]

To identify the accuracy of information, first you need to determine whether the information is fact, opinion or propaganda, and then follow the guidelines listed as below:

If the information is presented as fact, how can you verify the accuracy of the information? (First, you should look up the documents to determine if footnotes or citations have been used within the information to confirm data or factual statements. Second, you may check up if the information has obvious errors (e.g. inaccurate information in citation), omissions, or any facts misquoted (i.e. quote some words out of context from another source) or misrepresented.)

If the information is presented as opinion or propaganda, is there any evidence of bias?(You may check for bias by looking at the author or publishing source. Is there a particular point of view advocated in the source? What kind of language is used in the information: an objective and impartial language or an emotionally charged language?)

Others: Does the information provide sufficient evidence to support its claims or conclusion? Were conclusions appropriate, based upon the information presented?

  • Relevance/Appropriateness

To determine the relevance of information found for your specific assignment/topic, you may need to consider the following questions:

Is the format (i.e. printed format, video, audio, or electronic format, etc.) of the information appropriate for your assignment?

Does the information provide primary information (facts or original work) or secondary information appropriate for your needs?

What is the purpose of the information?

(The author or creator may make an argument for personal benefit, express a personal view, promote and/or sell products or services, or provide a factual report, etc.)

(Note: You may check up who would make use of the information, and how it would be used.)

Who will be the target readers of the source of information?(Some sources (e.g. popular magazines) are directed toward a general public; while scholarly/professional/trade sources are directed toward an audience with expertise or special interests)

What is the level of the presented information? (Depending on the intended target readers, the information may be written at an elementary level using simple language, or it may contain highly technical vocabulary for sophisticated readers.)

  • Completeness/Comprehensiveness[2]

The completeness of information is expressed in terms of coverage of the topic in question. A good way to get a general idea of the coverage of information can be done by browsing the material. Furthermore, table of contents, index, or abstract/summary of the information source, if available, may provide additional information to your selected topic. In general, you can check up the completeness of an information source by considering how extensively the source covers the topic in terms of:

Time -- determine if the source provides historical information, current information, or both.

Geography--determine if the source provides you information that is local, regional, national, or international.

Specificity -- determine if the source provides detailed information or general information.

Point of view--Determine if the source presents a single point of view, opposing points of view, or a range of viewpoints.

Full version or abridged version

  • Timeliness

To identify the timeliness of information, check whether the information found is current or out-of-date for your selected topic. As a general rule, areas with constant and rapid changes, like sciences, medicines, etc., require more current information; and for topics in other areas, like the humanities, older information may still be valid. Check up the following questions to determine whether the information is timely:-

When was the material published/created/compiled?

If the information is from a web site, can you determine how often the web site is updated? (The source may be updated continuously (daily), regularly, or irregularly.)

Is the information still valid for the selected topic?

  • Quality

You can identify the overall quality of information as indicated in the following questions:

Are the ideas and thoughts clearly presented?

Is the information well organized?

Is the style of writing clear and understandable?

Is the information valid, well-researched, and provided with good documentation?

Is the quality control process of the publisher stringent?

The above criteria can be used in the following activities during extraction and summarization of the information found as presented below.

  1. Extraction of information

In this stage, the primary goal is to locate the information that we are looking foraccording to the tasks which we are given, the assignments which we have to do or theproblems which we are facing. Therefore, we first need to define what information weactually need. In the case of a student working on a project on “Ancient China”, forinstance, China is the first term that the student should keep in mind. After an intensivesearch from the Internet or the library (refer to the previous section for details), a pile ofinformation on China might be gathered, among which may contain different aspects ofChina such as its history, philosophy, architecture, geography, population, etc. Since it is the ancient China that is actuallyrequired, the pile of information must now be divided into two categories, namely, ancientChina information and non-ancient China information. By doing this, we have imposed a scope on the informationfound. Scoping of information is the first step in information extraction after thedefinition of our actual need.

After scoping, we have probably eliminated all information unrelated to our definition ofactual need. The information left, however, might be too much or too little to fulfill our needs. In the latter case, we canalways return to the sources of information which we have used before in order to gather moreresults, which are then followed by scoping. On the other hand, if we still have too muchinformation after scoping, we probably need to perform information sub-categorizationand focus selection. Reasons for these two steps vary among users. Time is always theprime concern. Another major reason could have been limited human or capital resources. Referring to the project on Ancient China, the student has found thatafter scoping, there isstill much information left but he / she needs to rush for the deadline ofthe project submission. As a result, the student now needs to sub-categorize the information remainedaccording to its nature and then choose one or two focuses to be the topic of his/herhomework.

Figure 1. The information extraction process

As an example, suppose that the student has found the following after sub-categorization of information:

  • Ancient Chinese history (some information)
  • Ancient Chinese invention (some information)
  • Ancient Chineselandscape (little information)
  • Ancient Chineseliterature (plenty of information)
  • Ancient Chinesearchitecture (plenty of information)
  • Ancient Chinesephilosophy (plenty of information)

Among which, the student finally decided to put focus on Ancient Chinesephilosophy because of his/her interest and, much more practically concerned, becauseof the information amount being manageable by him/her. If the focus which the studentselected (e.g. Ancient Chineseinvention) does not contain enough information forhis/her project but he/she still wishes to work on it due to personal preference, anotherinformation search becomes inevitable. However, the search criterion must be modifiedas “Ancient Chinese Landscape”, instead of “Ancient China”.

The processes of sub-categorization of information and focus-selection form thesecond step of information extraction. After this step, our criteria of information will alsobe refined due to our focus on a particular aspect of information. Figure 1 summarizes the entire information extraction process.

  1. Summarization of information

After the extraction of information, we should be much more certain of the scopeand the direction of our needed information. However, among what we gathered so far,there might be duplication of ideas, or there might be many similar ideas. Our need toeliminate all those similarities pushes us to set information summarization to be our nextgoal.

In the case of the Ancient China project, after the student has established the focus onphilosophy, he / she will start reviewing all the articles concerning this aspect.The student can make use of a sheet of paper to jot down the ideas (in the form of mind maps, for example),recording just once for all similar ideas. If there are two or more articles mentioning the same idea,the student needs to record the name of those articles as well. After the summarizationprocess, the student will have a generalized piece of information on top of his/her pile ofarticles on philosophy. As the pile of articles after summarization might still berequired before an assigned task ends, one should keep the information for possiblefuture references.

After all, in the end of most tasks or academic work, we will often berequired to provide a list of references. If we dump our searched results once thesummarization process is over, we will not be able to construct a list of references in theend. Details on how a list of references should be presented will be introduced in thenext topic on “Communication and Presentation of Information”.

  1. Analysis of information

Upon what has accomplished in the previous session, we now take a much more detailed look at our information, attempting to gain a much deeper understanding of what it is all about. We do this by analyzing the information. This means the following tasks:

  • Find out the relationship between the component parts of the information; and
  • Find out any implied meanings of the information.

How we actually analyze the information, however, depends highly on the nature and topic of the project. For example, if your research topic is to analyze the trend of your GPA over the last few semesters (a very real problem indeed!), then you probably need to perform some quantitative analysis by plotting your GPA data against time, and perhaps also forecasting your GPA in the next semester. On the other hand, if your topic is aboutthe Octopus card, you probably need to studythe history of development of Octopus and think why it has been so successful.

Finally, as a reminder, one should bear in mind the objectives of the project during information analysis. All the analysis should be conducted towards achieving the objectives of the project. Failure to do so may most likely produce results which are of no use to the project.

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