[nabs-l] Fwd: research techniques and assistance

[Karl Martin Adam]

Hi Ashley,

I would actually say that the discussion section of an APA 
article is one of the most important parts.  It explains the 
findings and tells you what the authors think they mean and also 
usually gives hypotheses about what untested variables could be 
responsible for the data.  I typically read the introduction 
which explains what the authors are trying to do, the methods to 
see if I think the research is even valid and accurate, skip the 
actual data (it's usually presented in tables that don't convert 
well from PDF, and I don't have enough knowledge of statistics to 
check the tests the authors ran anyway), and then get the results 
of the experiment from reading the discussion section.  Of course 
humanities articles usually have to be read from beginning to end 
because they consist of a sustained argument not discrete 
sections.  Also, as has been mentioned you don't have to read 
that much of the article depending on your purpose--for instance 
if your writing a review of methodology you just have to look at 
the methods section and maybe the introduction.  ANother tip for 
determining if an article is relevant beyond reading the abstract 
is to use word search to find where in the article what your 
topic is shows up and check the context--I've avoided a bunch of 
irrelevant articles by doing that when I saw that the authors are 
using my keywords to talk about something other than what I'm 
researching.  As for books, the same thing applies.  I read the 
preface and introduction, and then if I don't want to read the 
whole thing, I use word search to find relevant parts.  The index 
can help to, but often something I want to find in a book isn't 
in the index.  Magazine and newspaper articles are often in 
certain databases, and a lot of major papers have online archives 
often even in HTML and free (for example the New York Times).  
Even subscription based archives are often accessible through 
your library if the library has a subscription.  You can also 
often get digital copies of articles your library doesn't give 
you access to both in journals and popular media through 
interlibrary lone, or so I've heard (I haven't actually done 
this, but I know people who have).

best,
Karl

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Ashley Bramlett via nabs-l <nabs-l at nfbnet.org
To: "National Association of Blind Students mailing list" 
<nabs-l at nfbnet.org
Date sent: Mon, 25 Aug 2014 23:08:16 -0400
Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Fwd: research techniques and assistance

Hi Katie,
Thanks for these tips. I will try out your tips for the web 
browsing.
For openbook, I could not follow those instructions. After bring 
up the open
dialogue box and moving the file type to pdf, I could not find 
the file when
I shift tabbed to my file list; I think the problem is the files 
are in the
documents folder, and that's not an option  in that dialogue box. 
Maybe if I
saved the pdf to desktop, it would show up in the dialogue box.
BTW, I have openbook 9.
Wow, I did not know you could save the converted  file to other 
file types;
well, I knew of word, but other than that, I did not know.

I've gotten better over the years at determining if an article is 
relevant.
Yes, as you all confirmed, reading abstracts is key. 
Introductions seem to
help if that's provided.

I know we don't have to read everything in the cited article.
The challenge then, is  what to read? I know it depends on our 
subject
matter, but still, its hard to narrow down which sections to 
read.
Generally, I find the discussion section and implications for 
future
research parts I do not need.
Those articles are very long; sometimes like 20 some pages. It 
gets too hard
to synthesize long articles, so sometimes I limit my search
to a certain page length.

Sometimes I need longer length  information, especially for 
reporting life
history or events. In this case, magazine articles or books or 
ebooks are
best.
This is challenging. I usually need a reader for this. How do we 
know if a
book is relevant? So far, we look at the front material including 
book
jacket and table of contents. But sometimes, the titles of 
chapters are so
vague, they are nearly useless.
Should I just be relying on the index more?

Abstracts are good. But for news articles and magazine articles 
they don't
have that.
I often have not used those since professors need scholarly peer 
reviewed
sources, but if not, these sources can be helpful or better than 
database
information.

I tend to read the beginning to see if it’s a relevant article. 
is that what
you all do?
Headings are helpful too,  but a reader needs to find those for 
me, so
again, that is when that is helpful.
Not all headings are marked so jaws sees them.

I never worked with readers till college, and still am perfecting 
the skill
of directing them to be my eyes.
It seems to me like over half the electronic  sources I need are
inaccessible or  semi inaccessible.
If anyone has used these sources successfully, how did it go?
When I tried, jaws did not read the page and in the gale 
reference thing I
could not enter in the search box.

Encyclopedia britanica
Credo reference
Gale biography in context

I'm impressed you all seem quite independent  with your research. 
I have
used some of the databases independently mentioned here since its
accessible; that is, once the librarian showed me which boxes to 
fill in.
I can usually get to those using keyboard commands.
But databases are only a small part of a library.

Another challenge is the accessibility of the website generally.
Since the library website is laid out in tabs, I cannot even get 
to all the
links I need. I expand the tab, then attempt to click on what I 
want. For
instance one link is facts, reference people; under that you can 
click on
things like britanica, gale biography, and oxford dictionary. 
Those links
are not opening even when I tried right clicking on them.
Oh, and I cannot get into films on demand either; sometimes, 
those
documentaries prove helpful.


Good points all. It confirms I probably am doing most things 
right but
research seems like a time consuming process. So anything to get 
better at
it is a good thing to know.

Ashley
-----Original Message-----
From: Katie Wang
Sent: Monday, August 25, 2014 9:19 PM
To: Ashley Bramlett ; National Association of Blind Students 
mailing list
Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Fwd: research techniques and assistance

Hi Ashley,

Converting pdfs using OpenBook is very straightforward. After you
launch OpenBook, use Control o to bring up the Open File dialog,
change the file type to Adobe pdf, then select the file you want 
to
open. Depending on the file size, the conversion process can take 
a
few minutes (use Insert Page Down to check on progress), and once
conversion is complete you can save the file in your preferred 
format,
such as .doc, .rtf, or .txt. I generally find the results to be 
good
for digital articles (hand-scanned materials vary more in 
quality). I
personally convert most of the pdf articles I use for research; I 
find
it much easier to move around and locate information I need in a 
Word
document than in a pdf, and I also transfer some of the articles 
to my
notetaker for braille access.

As for the web browser commands, the hotkey n can sometimes take 
you
past the navigation links to the main text. Also, you can turn 
off
heading announcements by pressing Insert v then arrow down to 
Heading
and Frame Options.

Like others, I agree that research is something that takes a lot 
of
practice for both blind and sighted people alike. I also believe 
that,
once you are fairly well-acquainted with your topic, you should 
be
able to get a pretty good sense of whether an article is relevant 
by
just reading the abstract. It is important to keep in mind that 
you do
not need to read every word of all your citations; instead, you 
should
focus on parts of each article that are most applicable to your
research topic. If you are using a journal article to support a
theoretical point, for example, reading the introduction and
conclusion sections might be most helpful; in contrast, if you 
are
looking for an example of a particular research paradigm, then 
you
might want to focus on the section describing study methods and
designs. As a psychologist, I primarily work with PsycInfo and 
Google
Scholar, which are both accessible.

Best,
Katie


On 8/25/14, Ashley Bramlett via nabs-l <nabs-l at nfbnet.org> wrote:
 Kirt and all,
 Well, I have found numerous accessibility issues with files from
 publishers.
 Its in pdf. I have my accessibility settings set.
 Still, issues.

 Dss will get  publisher files for me. How do you use 
coursesmart? If you
 have to be online all the time, not a good idea for me as 
sometimes my
 wifi

 at home is spotty.

 The issues with pdfs are the words are smashed together, jaws 
says grapic
 in

 the middle of text, and some words are broken up.

 I've always prefered human readers because although they make 
mistakes on
 occasion, they are not monotone and I can get the material with 
out the
 struggle of understanding a broken worded file.
 I could not live without learning ally.  but with this, I have 
to plan in
 advance to have people look up the index
 for me for certain topics. Then with the pages, I can go to 
those pages on
 my daisy recording easily with the go to page function