ISS 305 - notes from spring 2021 PDF

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notes from spring 2021...

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Week 2 Blooms Taxonomy Survey - Analytical thinking – provides an opportunity to analyze course requirements in relation to the different levels of blooms taxonomy - Blooms taxonomy outlines 6 levels or types of learning: create, evaluate, analyze, apply, understand, and remember Remember: at the base of the pyramid meaning to be able to recall or memorize information and concepts Understand: being able to explain a concept to someone, which is more advanced Apply: to use the information in a new situation Analyze: starts the top half of the pyramid and we are moving from working with information provided to us into considering the information itself. This is to consider connections Evaluate: justify an action or choice Create: to produce original work and the action we do the least which is why it’s at the top o The actions near the bottom of the pyramid are the ones we engage with more frequently which is why they are at the bottom of the pyramid o The actions at the top are less common and they also build on the actions below them making them more advanced methods for engaging with materials and concepts Information - Information can be thought of as the resolution of uncertainty it is that which answers the question of what an entity is and thus defines both its essence and its nature of characteristics - Information is 1. Facts provided or learned about something or someone a. Indicated information is true or accurate but we know all information isn’t accurate 2. What is conveyed or represented by a particular arrangement or sequence of things - Information - Misinformation which is false or inaccurate information - Disinformation which is false information which is intended to mislead - Not all information is factual - 7 types of mis and disinformation o Satire or parody – no intention to cause harm but has potential to fool o Misleading content – misleading use of information to frame an issue or individual o Imposter content – when genuine sources are impersonated o Fabricated content – new content is 100% false designed to deceive and do harm o False connection – when headlines visuals or captions don’t support the content Fast context – when genuine content is shared with false contextual information o Manipulated content – when genuine information or imagery is manipulated to deceive

Week 3 - The framework for information literacy has 6 frames, the first one we will be discussing is Information has Value o Information possesses several dimensions of value including as a commodity a means of education as a means to influence and as means of negotiating and understanding the world. Legal and socioeconomic interests influence information production and dissemination - Information has value as a commodity which means it can be bought and sold o What leads you to buy textbooks or subscribe to newspapers essentially you are paying for information - Information has value as a means of education means that information is used to increase knowledge and skills o Schools are a place used to help students become more educated - Information has value as a means to influence which means information can be used to persuade or change others o This is shown in the article by Potter he describes the organization he worked for used information that may have been weak biased incorrect or not properly evaluated to influence discussions related to enactment of healthcare policies in the United States. - Information has value as a means of negotiating and understanding the world means that the information available to us helps to shape our perspectives and our choices o Because not everyone has access to the same information this can lead to differences in our experiences and viewpoints S tate E laborate E xemplify I llustrate - State – to restate the concept or definition - Elaborate – restate in your own words - Exemplify – to provide an example of the concept - Illustrate – demonstrate a picture or image of the concept

Week 4 - Data are characteristics or information usually numerical that are collected through observation. In a more technical sense data are a set of values of qualitative or quantitative variables about one or more persons or objects white a datum (singular of data) is a single value of a single variable o Data and information are used interchangeably - We can think of data as the raw elements of information - Information is data after it has been organized and assigned meaning - Quantitative shares a root with quantity and are expressed in numbers, it is things that can be counted and measured o How many of you are there? o How much do you weigh o How many of you are orange? - Qualitative shares a root with quality and it interested in understanding the charterictsa or qualities of something o Can be expressed in text, narrative descriptions, images o What do you do in your free time? - Neither types of data are more trustworthy even though we value quantitative data over qualitative data - The data that is best is the one that will best answer your question - Information creation as a process is the second of the 6 frames that indicates that information simply does not appear fully formed o Information in any format is produced to convey a message and is shared via a selected delivery method the iterative processes of researching creating revising and disseminating information vary and the resulting product reflects these differences o Information is produced therefore it is the result of a process not something that exists independently o Information in any format – emails textbooks postcards memes videos which is produced to convey a message (efforts may or may not be successful) o Information is shared via selected delivery method – - Iterative – something that is repeated and that is adjusted and improved with the repetitions (playing a video game, practicing sport, playing a instrument) - Disseminating – the best type of dissemination depends on the information and your goals for it - Open ended questions do not offer response choices they allow respondents to answer in their own words which result in qualitative data o Used most commonly when not many people will be responding because the resulting data will take more work to analyze - Closed ended questions do offer a response they limit respondents to a set of specific responses they can choose from they’re like quiz questions and result in quantitative data o This is useful when there’s a narrow set of options for responses and when there’s a large sample of respondents because the resulting data is easier to work with and analyze. These are harder to write because they present error in the question and response choices

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A leading question contains a judgment or assumes direction over another o Look for adjectives o Rewrite to make the question more neutral

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A loaded question assumes information we do not have Double-barreled questions are two questions in one which would result in muddled responses if respondents have differing opinions of the two categories o Look for the “words” and or “or” o Rewrite as two questions Questions that contain jargon mean that the question uses terminology or abbreviations that may or may not be familiar to the respondent o Remove the jargon to fix it Mismatched response choices which means the available response choices do not match the question o Change the question to match the responses or change the responses to match the question Overlapping answer choices Unbalanced answer choices The best way to find errors or identify confusing questions is to field test your survey before administrating it o Field testing involves admistering the survey to a limited amount of people and asking them for feedback  Have them complete the survey on their own and then follow up with an interview how they interpreted and answered each question It is important to get survey questions just right so that we get reliable and valid data to generate good information Reliable means consistent Validity means accuracy o Usually achieved through multiple questions not just one

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Week 5 Searching as strategic exploration - Analytical thinking - Searching for information is often nonlinear and iterative requiring the evaluation of a range of information sources and the mental flexibility to pursue alternative avenues as new understanding develops - Linear moves straight like a-----b------c------d - Nonlinear everything is scattered - Our search is also strategic - None of these frames can be learned in one day - CRAAP stands for currency relevance authority accuracy and purpose

Week 6 - Authority is constructed and contextual o “information resources reflect their creator’s expertise and credibility”  anyone can create information and the information resources they create will reflect their expertise and credibility likely in multiple ways such as the content the dissemination and the reception of the information. The resource can reflect a lack of expertise and credibility or it can reflect the presence of expertise and credibility o “and are evaluated based on the information need and the context in which the information will be used  This part is key, the standards applied to information resources will depend on the need of the information and context (ex, the pandemic) it is when the information is not urgent we are able to evaluate the information from non experts and accurately determine their value. Our conceptualization of authority and the dunning kruger effect o “authority is constructed in that various communities may recognize different types of authority”  Adherents of different political ideologies. Another example of authority differences is related to religion. Adherents of religions grant authority to certain positions within their communities. People who are not members of that religion would not recognize the authority of people in those positions and those who do not have religious beliefs in general would likely not recognize the authority of any of those positions o “is contextual in that the information need may help to determine the level of authority required”  And that the information needed may help to determine the level of authority required I mentioned earlier that at the beginning of the pandemic we needed information from the most authoritative sources because of the urgency of the issue another example of context in authority is professors within the classroom whether it's a virtual classroom or in person I have a high degree of authority as your professor but that does not transfer to every situation for instance if I'm at a football game I should not have the same level of authority as I do in the classroom because I cannot provide the best information or advice o

Week 7 - Researcher degrees of freedom o Researchers’ ability to look at many different aspects of their data in a search for statistical significance - For your reconsideration o First people developed a new method of political canvasing that they thought was particularly effective in order to know for sure they wanted researchers to study it Donald green becomes the primary investigator on this study which relies on two primary forms of data collection the canvassers collect data while conducting their door to door work in the field and Donald greens associate Michael lacorte conducts an online survey to see if the canvassing lead to lasting changes in people's opinions of policy's the data is used as the basis of a research paper which is peer reviewed and then published in science one of the top academic journals another group of researchers tries to replicate this study which is a valuable part of the academic process as I mentioned last week they find that they cannot get the same response rate on the online survey as the corded so they contact the survey company he said he worked with and found out he invented the online survey results this leads to the retraction of the original study so does this o Does not illustrate researchers degrees of freedom o No not really this was not about the search for statistical significance within legitimate data this story is actually about fraud and lies and invented data note that this story does relate to many aspects of the framework for information literacy in particular it includes every step of information creation as a process from research to creation to revision to dissemination and back again with several references to the iterative or repeated nature of the process note also that includes information about the peer review process the paper with the false information was accepted for publication through a peer review process which you've likely been taught is the most authoritative method of information verification while that process is meaningful it is obviously not perfect as this story shows although this story illustrates many of the ways that information creation can go wrong it does have some positive points a replication of the study was conducted which is a valuable part of the research process the fraudulent data was recognized relatively quickly after publication the primary author of the study requested a retraction which illustrates integrity on his part and a new study was done which found positive results in which employed transparency because authors made the data publicly available for analysis let's take a look at the article about analysis of data from soccer games a quick recap the authors gave the same data to 29 different research teams and ask them to answer the question are dark skinned players more likely to be given red cards than light skinned ones the answers from the 29 teams varied widely from showing no bias and penalties to showing extreme bias is this an example of researcher degrees of freedom yes it is the research teams provided different results because they independently made decisions about what data to include how to code the data and how to analyze the data there was other degrees of freedom again information creation is a process and this is an example of the multiple paths that process can take note that the proposed solution to the problem of researcher degrees of freedom is a form of wisdom of the crowds the authors

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recommend having research teams work together to develop plans for data analysis related to important policy questions finally let's bring in the article Nick Brown smelled Pol in this article Nick Brown becomes suspicious of a popular finding and positive psychology called the positive iti ratio which states that approximately 3 positive emotions to everyone negative emotion will result in human flourishing Brown recruits two others to work with him on a paper debunking this concept they do not necessarily find problems with the theory or with the data used in the paper but they do find that the math is inaccurate with the math errors accounted for the theory and data no longer hold up the authors engaged in a protracted struggle to get the paper published finally succeeding but not getting the opportunity to respond to criticisms that they had requested is this an example of researcher degrees of freedom in action yes the original researchers fredrickson in losada were able to conduct an analysis that supported the findings that would earn the most attention whether accurate or not combined with the study discussed on the previous slide we can see that research researcher degrees of freedom can lead to numerous problems all of the examples discussed in this video illustrate that information has value as we see that it can make or break careers in addition to serving as a form of education they also illustrate various aspects of information creation as a process as noted earlier the story of Nick Brown also illustrates a reality described in the article about the soccer study once a finding has been published in a peer reviewed Journal it is remarkably difficult to retract it let alone to change people's minds about it because it has been given authority Nick Brown and his colleagues struggled to publish their study in many ways because of the threat it posed to an individual with great authority in the field related to the idea of authority as constructed and contextual this is an example of the power of those social constructs to influence academic disciplines so there's a lot of bad news in this article including that the math in the original study went wrong the Journal did not want to publish Nick Brown's paper several people had concerns about the positive iti ratio that were not taken seriously and as a public we want to believe neat findings like this so we don't look at them too closely on the bright side the Journal did accept a paper criticizing the mouth eventually and we read this article about it so now we're better informed despite some bright sides this is pretty much a bad news video I apologize but remember that although there are problems with research most researchers are actively trying to contribute accurate and meaningful findings to the overall conversation but let's keep focused on bad news for just a little bit longer as part of the activity for this module you will explore their retraction watch database and report back on what you find and we'll show you pictures of the steps here they will also be outlined in text form in the task step one is to go to the retraction Research as inquiry o The elaboration of the frame research as inquiry that is offered in the framework is research is iterative and depends upon asking increasingly complex or new questions whose answers in turn develop additional questions or lines of inquiry in any field let's take that piece by piece research is iterative there's our favorite vocabulary word again iterative that's the 3rd frame that the term has appeared in indicating it's important to information literacy in general as a reminder iterative

means something that is repeated and that is adjusted an improved with the repetitions we now know that information creation is iterative searching is iterative and research is iterative that means that all of those processes are not one time events they are things that are repeated on honed overtime through the process of iteration researchers develop increasingly complex or new questions as noted on this slide these questions are what move research processes forward rather than asking the same questions repeatedly researchers identify new areas of inquiry to explore or new ways to conduct their explorations answers in turn develop additional questions or lines of inquiry in any field this indicates that the research process does not have a natural endpoint instead the results of research naturally lead to new research questions through this process researchers are building structures of information about their topics of study imagine it like trying to build a Castle the researchers represent the many workers who are making bricks and fitting them together some of the bricks will be better than others some of them will be poorly made and cannot be used occasionally they may find an area that is too weak or is missing a brick and that area needs to be reinforced no single brick is able to support the entire structure instead each brick plays a small role in making up the Castle if you think of the bricks in that analogy as published articles you have a good sense of the overall research process researchers want to find answers to big questions in order to do that they conduct research and published studies about smaller questions those studies contribute to the knowledge that will lead to the overall answer sometimes there are problems with those studies and they have to be removed but overtime the researchers build a solid structure an example of this that might be familiar to many of you although not directly related to social science in most ways is research on climate change overtime the weight of the evidence indicates that climate change is real and that humans are contributing to it while a few studies may have conflicting findings the larger collection of research on the topic provides a clear answer that is something that nose thing single study could achieve on its own l...