I’ve gotten some questions about the Week 13 feedback. A number of students discussed whether or not a search resulted in one potentially useful source and why that source was useful. However, that does not help you remember whether there were other potentially useful sources. Whenever you do research over a few weeks’ time or more, I encourage you to focus your diary on how well each search works and not the utility of individual sources found in each search.
When I create my diaries, I discuss what kind of sources I got in general and how pertinent they were. I keep any details about found sources, other than an abbreviated in-text reference elsewhere. Because of this, when I am a few weeks into a search and not finding much, I can review my previous searches to determine what worked well and what didn’t. If I had a search with 75 results that were promising, but only got to really examine the first 30, I might redo that search and look again.
Luis’ post exemplifies this, and his post will provide him with a useful map if he needs to find more resources. The post talks generally about Luis’ topic and the utilized databases in the first paragraph. It then goes into more detail for each of the searches. Here is what he said about each search:
- “I managed to find useful sources backing up my point on why Artificial Intelligence needs to be regulated.”
- “Not a single one of the results is something I can use for my research. “
- “None of the results will be used for my research proposal. “
- “The sources are that came up are not necessarily on the regulation for Artificial Intelligence. “
He only shared two sources found from his first search. When he discussed saturation at the end of his post, he noted: ” I have enough sources to back up my point on why artificial intelligence needs to be regulated. If I do end up needing more sources I think EBSCOhost [the first database he used] is the place where I can find more.”
I would argue that saturation is when you know you haven’t missed anything important. However, that is more essential for a master’s thesis or research that you want to publish. It is not as essential for an undergraduate research paper.