Shirley Courson
Research in the 21st Century
Research Process
1. Introduction
Title: How does obesity lead to adverse health?
Topic Focus: What health issues are direct results of obesity?
Scope: I will cover the diseases obesity causes and how.
2. Topic Analysis
Academic Disciplines
• Medical Science
• Cultural Science
• Biology
• Chemistry
Library of Congress Classification (LC) Areas:
R5-920: Medicine (General)
R702-703 Medicine and the humanities.
RC31-1245 Internal medicine
RC71-78.7 Examination. Diagnosis
RC86-88.9 Medical emergencies
RC581-951 Specialties of internal medicine
RC633-647.5 Diseases of the blood and blood-forming organs
RC705-779 Diseases of the respiratory system
RC952-1245 Special situations and conditions
Useful Keywords and Subject Headings
• Obesity
• Obesity and Disease
• Obesity and Illness
• Disease or Illness Caused Obesity
• Obesity Result Disease
• Type 2 Diabetes
• Hypertension
• Dyslipidemia
• Coronary Heart Disease
• Stroke
• Gallbladder Disease
• Osteoarthritis
• Sleep Apnea
• Respiratory Problems
• Cancer
Databases and Periodical Indexes
• ProQuest: Seattle Central Community College Library Database
• HealthSource: Walla Walla Community College Library Database
• Encyclopedia Britannica Online
Identifying Keywords and Subject Headings
I have drastically changed by keywords and subject headings since the beginning of this project. For example I have narrowed my focus from “the definition, causes, effects, and cures of obesity” to just “how does obesity cause adverse health”. I have removed the definition, causes and cures of obesity because all of these together with the health effects and diseases resulting from obesity was far to broad. I was getting information overload.
3. Research Process
Some of my strategies for finding information include searching the World Wide Web (including databases and periodicals), and the college library. At first I was getting way to much information. I was getting too many websites from too many sources including websites about pet obesity. The most effective method for narrowing this information was using the Google Advance Search site. This advance search helped greatly with all of the filters available. Even after you run the search and get the results you can still run additional filters to further narrow the results.
The reason I chose this topic is because obesity is a big problem right now in not only America but in the world. This topic is very current and always evolving. Medical knowledge and understanding of obesity is growing all the time. New information and articles on the subject are popping up all over the place. It is hard to keep up with the fast pace of it all. Another factor that makes this topic easy and complicated at the same time is the variety of media reporting on it. This topic is in magazines, newspapers, websites, periodicals, books, radio and television. I have found all sorts of information on diseases caused by or worsened by obesity. Some of them I had heard of but did not know was so common, Type 2 Diabetes. And some of them I had never heard of, Dyslipidemia.
The information I have found through all my searching was pretty much what I expected to find except for the quantity. The Internet has proven to be both useful and cumbersome. Mostly useful because of the vast amount of information that can be found. There is plenty of information at a public or education library it is just not as easy to search through and filter. Information can be put on the Internet by anyone and from anywhere and can be updated much more quickly than publishing a book or article on paper to be put into a library. This of course is also part of the problem. The keys is to put in a lot of time and effort, do not trust every source, look for biases, and make sure you get view points from both sides.
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2 comments:
VERY articulate. Your annotations are detailed and contain a lot of information. The only criticism I have is that the annotations almost contain too much of the information. You include research info in the notation rather than just evaluating the source. I think it might actually discourage people from looking at the source because the info they think they want is already included. Your research process was good too. I can imagine the info overload that happened when you started. Obesity is such a LARGE topic in the world. Even after narrowing it down, I'll bet that you still had to slog through a bunch of information. Very thorough with the classifications also.
You look like you've got everything under control here. Especially your keywords, you really have some great ones. Your research process is great too, and I think your subject was a good choice, I'm sure you're finding a whole lot of useful (maybe even scary) information out there. I bet the statistics are far more frightning than anything else...Anyway, good luck and I really hope everything goes great with your pathfinder.
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