Evaluating, Organizing,
and Citing Your Findings

Evaluating Your Findings

Always pay attention to who or what organization produced the information. Ask yourself:

• Is it reliable?
• Does it support my research question?

Organizing Your Findings

As you do your research, it is important to organize your sources and notes. However you take notes, write down the source it is from and the page number while you have the material in hand; this will save you having to find the source later if you decide to use it in your research paper. We'll go into more detail about organizing your findings in chapter 8.

Citing Your Findings

It is very important to document what sources you have used to create your paper or project. This is usually done in an official format required by your instructor, such as MLA format. Another frequently used format is that of the American Psychological Association. Whichever format is required for your instructor, you will need to record the information mentioned on the previous page.