BUSI 220: Persuasion with Data: Home

This research guide curates research tips and information tools to support your work in BUSI200: Persuasion with Data.

Want guidance?

1. Email a business research consultant/librarian.
2. Schedule a consultation meeting.

These are common types of business information sources:

• Industry Associations (e.g. newsletters, blog posts, member directories, press releases)
  • every industry has an association who cares about collecting information and data about that industry.
• Government Data
  • the U.S. government is the single largest collector of data about the U.S. economy and industries
  • Examples:
    • U.S. Census Bureau
    • Bureau of Labor Statistics
    • Bureau of Economic Analysis
    • Small Business Administration
• Newspapers and News/Opinion Magazines
  • tend to contain investigative journalism as well as commentary/editorials. They often explore current events or ongoing debates in society. Some showcase a variety of perspectives, while others tilt in an ideological direction. Others are intensely ideological or partisan, but they still fall into this general category.
  • reputable & specialist publications (like The Economist and The Wall Street Journal) will report on market conditions, policies and regulations affecting industries, and more.
  • Learn about Evaluating News Sources
• Industry Reports
  • comprehensive accounts of a particular industry, containing a depth of information, facts and statistics (source).
  • emerging trends, financials, major companies, market share, and supply/demand chain are examples of information that can be found in industry reports.
• Trade Publications
  • these keep professionals up to speed on a given industry’s trends, debates, news, professional development opportunities, and best practices. Under-utilized source type.
• Scholarly or journal articles
  • articles about research written by scholars that are reviewed by other scholars before they're published in academic journals.
  • Learn the best way to read a scholarly article: Anatomy of a Scholarly Article.

What is SIFT?

SIFT is a quick strategy for evaluating online content, developed by Mike Caulfield.

SIFT stands for:

STOP

INVESTIGATE THE SOURCE

FIND BETTER COVERAGE

TRACE CLAIMS, QUOTES, AND MEDIA BACK TO THEIR ORIGINAL CONTEXT

STOP

Questions to ask yourself:

• What kind of content is this?
• Who wrote or created it?
• When was it published?
• Who published it?

INVESTIGATE the source

Sometimes, after you investigate the source, you'll find that the source is sufficient for your needs. However, this is not always the case. Maybe the quality of the source is low or it doesn't adequately answer the questions you have.

This is when you would find better coverage. If you can't determine the reliability of the source and you want to get an accurate story on the subject or claim, your best strategy is to start searching elsewhere.

FIND better coverage

Sometimes, after you investigate the source, you'll find that the source is sufficient for your needs. However, this is not always the case. Maybe the quality of the source is low or it doesn’t adequately answer the questions you have.  

This is when you would find better coverage. If you can’t determine the reliability of the source and you want to get an accurate story on the subject or claim, your best strategy is to start searching elsewhere.

TRACE claims, quotes, and media back to their original context

A lot of things you encounter online have been stripped of context. This could be due to inaccurate or misleading re-reporting, edited sound and video, images being shared with inaccurate captions, etc.

In some cases, stories or claims can get better as they pass through intermediaries. However, in most cases the more a story circulates, the more it becomes warped and you’re presented with a radically wrong version of an event or piece of research. This is when you investigate further and start tracing back to the original source for full context.

Note: This SIFT method guide was adapted from Michael Caulfield's "Check, Please!" course and from the Wayne State University LibGuides summary. The canonical version of this course exists at http://lessons.checkplease.cc. The text and media of this site, where possible, is released into the CC-BY, and free for reuse and revision. We ask people copying this course to leave this note intact, so that students and teachers can find their way back to the original (periodically updated) version if necessary. We also ask librarians and reporters to consider linking to the canonical version.

As the authors of the original version have not reviewed any other copy's modifications, the text of any site not arrived at through the above link should not be sourced to the original authors.

Read the lit review excerpt in your group’s doc.

Then respond to these questions in the doc:

• what do you notice?
• how do you see the authors using the literature?
• What strategies/best practices can you derive?