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August 22, 2019
Vol. 14
No. 34

Is the Research Trustworthy? Learn to Think Like an Investigator

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      When I taught middle school students about finding trustworthy sources online a decade ago, internet connections and processors were still so slow that the hunt for multiple sources to confirm a finding took so much effort that analysis and interpretation was a much smaller part of the equation. Students would use yes or no questions to vet sources: Does it list references? Does it contain real data? Is it from a reliable source? The bar for reliability was also lower: Citations or links to peer-reviewed articles within print and online sources seemed enough evidence of authority. Statistics and the name of a university or publisher someone had heard of were good enough indications that the information was not fake or biased.
      Now, we can open 20 tabs in seconds with a few thumb taps and find any number of articles, videos, blogs, and social media showcasing a range of materials, ideas, and advice. A vast amount of information is available to consider, so our strategies for determining reliability need to change.
      For example, when fellow researcher Emily Hodge and I traced each citation in the research addendum to the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy (Appendix A), we found that around 30 percent of the citations are not related to the claim they are used to support (Gabriel & Hodge, 2018). Some citations are clearly incorrect and take you to a completely unrelated source, some are generally—but not specifically—related to the claim, and some overextend or even contradict the claim they supposedly support. Simply including citations and links that seem to point toward validating evidence does not mean the evidence really exists.
      When it comes to statistics, the numbers sometimes do lie. Commonly repeated stats like "1 in 4" or "30 million" spread like wildfire online, and while they may be connected to a person or institution, they are often not directly connected to a study that generated that statistic through science and inquiry. Instead, they are often the product of an informed guess or generalization based on data analyzed from a single perspective. NPR interviewed four researchers about their perspectives on the 30 million word gap, an oft-cited statistic that children in poverty hear 30 million fewer words by age 3. That calculation comes from a 1992 study of only 42 families. Some researchers interviewed said the gap is closer to 4 million, while others debate whether there is a gap at all or whether oral vocabulary is measurable by extrapolation from small samples.
      Because many original peer-reviewed articles are behind pay walls, educators and parents are most often exposed to research in translation: accounts of research summarized in news articles, blogs, tweets, podcasts, and database entries. Precision, context, and evidence often go missing in the long game of telephone that reaches from the findings of researchers to the eyes of most readers.
      Misinformation doesn't have to keep spreading, however. Here, I explore four ways to find trustworthy and relevant research in the age of social media.
      Take social media at face value: Social media allows all of us to connect directly with one another about any number of topics. Some bloggers, tweeters and other writers are also researchers with firsthand or secondhand knowledge of the latest findings and the history of evidence in a given area. Researchers who invest in responsible engagement with social media can serve as translators, as well as curators and informal peer reviewers when they decide what research to "like," link to, and comment on. Because like-minded people form echo chambers of agreement around ideas, social media is a good place to find out what ideas different researchers have embraced, which ideas are controversial, and how new findings relate to accepted knowledge in the field. But, the search for trustworthy research cannot stop there.
      Trace evidence of authority: One of the reasons we trust researchers and experts is that we assume they have the breadth and depth of experience, evidence, and knowledge in a subject to make valid interpretations about it. Therefore, even more important than asking whether there is a citation might be asking who is cited and what their knowledge and evidence base are. Does your blog about summer reading link to a newspaper, which links to a blog, which has no links? Or does your blog about summer reading link to a researcher who has written multiple peer-reviewed articles on the topic? In other words, does evidence to support trustworthiness accumulate when you trace it? Students and educators can follow embedded links and visit reference list items to track where ideas came from and whether the sources they find for the original evidence seem as trustworthy as the sources that led to it.
      Trust your own data: When it comes to a broad evidence base from which to make trustworthy decisions, educators should compare findings from research to the patterns they have observed over hundreds of thousands of teaching and learning interactions. Trustworthiness is not a magical formula of degrees of separation from empirical evidence; it is a judgment about whether an idea or concept is worthy of trust. If a statement does not seem worthy of trust when held up against the accumulation of your experiences and observations, it probably isn't. Reading to see who is for or against an idea may add nuance to what you already know from experience. Additionally, students and educators should always ask themselves whether and how new evidence relates to their existing knowledge.
      Research your research: Now that a superabundance of information is always available, our focus has to shift from searching to interpreting. We essentially have to research the evidence we choose to believe. In doing so, we cross the divide between practitioner and researcher by engaging in the very practices of measurement and inquiry that produce the most trustworthy studies. We have to ask questions, look for patterns, search for instances of confirmation and disconfirmation, and consider mediating factors like source knowledge and convenience for a certain agenda.
      When we ask questions of the field, we also have to ask questions about the field and consider why evidence exists where it does, in the form it does, in the way it does. We have to wonder not only what sources support the ideas in question, but also why, when, and how that support materializes. In other words, we have to gather, analyze, and interpret the research to come to our own conclusions about what matters, what is likely, and what is worthy of translation to practice. Finding out "what the research says" about educational policies and practices is really about analyzing "what people say about the research" by asking yourself:
      1. What ideas and points of view are connected to discussions of the research, and how might they be shaping its meaning?
      2. What is the source for the evidence under discussion, and does the source connect back to evidence you can identify or validate?
      3. How does this evidence relate to my existing knowledge and experience, and why might they be the same or different?
      Researching the research means we identify trustworthy evidence, not by believing the first information we find, but by triangulating, questioning, and synthesizing what we find to draw our own conclusions.

      Rachael Gabriel is professor of literacy education at the University of Connecticut. Her most recent book is Doing Disciplinary Literacy: Teaching Reading and Writing Across the Content Areas (Teachers College Press, 2023). Her current projects focus on neurodiversity inclusion, state literacy policies, and systems for improving literacy instruction.

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