Topic: Incorporating Primary Research

Article

Primary Sources

Primary sources can be difficult to incorporate into your writing. You may have a lot of data from your research, and you can't share everything with the reader. That is why organizing and analyzing your data is important to do before you write it up! See the Ball Point section onorganizing primary datafirst.

In this section, we'll be looking at the interview and survey data that Ball Point contest winnerKristen Chambers collected when she studied "The Effects of Music on Study Habits and Productivity." Be sure to see Kristen Chambers's whole paper and what her assignment asked for in theSample Paperssection of Ball Point.

Attributing Your Primary Sources

Since you have conducted your own research, you won't need to cite someone else the way you did for your secondary research. However, you will need to make it clear where your research comes from throughout your paper.

The biggest question to ask yourself is if you conducted primary research that involved talking to an expert who you will refer to by name or by talking to participants who will remain confidential informants in your write-up. See what your assignment asks for and most importantly, stick with what you tell participants on the consent form you use when collecting your data! For more information, see our section onEthics in Primary Research.

If you interviewed an expert, be sure to explain their credentials when you write up your paper. For example, if you interviewed Dr. William Betts from the Ball State Counseling Center like we did in our sample interview, then you'd want to give him credit for his knowledge and expertise.

Director of Ball State's Counseling and Health Services, Dr. William Betts, stated that there is a strong group of university counseling centers that "do research together to really target students' needs."

Notice that just like quoting from a secondary source, you can combine paraphrase and quotation, and use attributive tags.

However, let's say that you interviewed several students who went to the counseling center. Since this is a sensitive topic and they might not want others knowing that they go to therapy, you agreed to keep their identity a secret. Therefore, you would come up with pseudonyms, or fake names, for your participants. You still might want to show that they are credible, though, by providing some information about them. Consider the following example:

Sarah, a senior at a small college in West Virginia, said that going to the counseling center was the best thing she had ever done. "I noticed that my grades improved as I learned to control my anxiety and study more effectively," Sara said.

You should put a footnote or a sentence in your methods section that explains that all names are pseudonyms.

Notice that neither of these examples used traditional in-text citations. There are no page numbers needed for an interview that you conducted, even if you type up a transcript because no one can readily find and go back to that source. (A published interview you found would be a secondary source.) In addition, in APA there is no entry for interviews or primary data in the Reference page. For MLA, you would put a reference in your Works Cited, but only if you cite an expert interview, not if you are doing primary research and keeping your interviews confidential.

Quoting Interviews, Surveys, or Observations

You will most likely use direct quotes from interviews. However, you may record specifics from observations or have open-ended survey questions that you wish to quote. The above section talked about how to attribute those sources, but how do you know what to quote?

Even in the social sciences, directly quoting participants is common. It is important that their voice gets represented in your write-up of the research. However, you can't quote everything they said. Your write up shouldnotbe a transcript of their interview!

In addition to her secondary research, student author Miranda Minnick interviewed Marina Keers from the Hendricks County Center about the accessibility of their facilities. In this case, Minnick uses Marina's first name to refer to her. However, another author might use a pseudonym or fake name to refer to a participant who wanted to stay confidential. In her paper,"Universally Accessible: Accessibility in the Delaware County Senior Center,"Minnick does a lot of summary of the interview, and takes time to introduce her interviewee:

Marina's role in this organization is to oversee all programming and functions at the center as well as the physical aspects of the building and upkeep of the facilities. Many of her duties are delegated to volunteers and other employees as she has a "big picture" role in the company; however, she is also very down to earth and one of the most active people in the center despite not yet being considered a senior citizen due to her young age.

Later, however, Minnick also uses a direct quote from her interviewer:

Marina (2020) even mentioned, "we have a lot of fireproof doors...so we had to install automatic door openers between the admin side and the open side...but because of how our HVAC system works, it wasn't ideal to keep them open all of the time due to air flow" (personal communication, March 6, 2020).

You'll notice that this isn't the entire interview but is just one quote about the airflow in the building. Rather than a section that is only about Marina, this quote comes in a section about the importance of proper doors for accessibility in emergencies. Just like with secondary research, think about connections between your sources and subtopics. Don't just list what you asked and what was said by your participants.

Representing Quantitative Data

In the paper"They Psychology Behind Cheating,"student Kasidy Yeley used an assessment of attachment style created by psychologists to find out more about the participants. This information is represented both through text and through visuals.

Here is how this information was presented in the paper:

Upon completion of the Attachment Style assessment, the most prevalent attachment style was mistrusting (on edge-avoidant) with 40% of participants (see figure 3). Following mistrusting, ambivalent (on edge-engaging) was most popular, with 30% of participants. Dismissive (relaxed, avoidant) contained only 20% of subjects, and only 10% of subjects tested secure (relaxed-engaging). In terms of male subjects, mistrusting and dismissive accounted for 50% of the subjects, with only one male placing ambivalent. For female participants, ambivalent was most popular, with 50% of subjects. Mistrusting and secure accounted equally for the following 25%.

Figure 3. Breakdown of each Attachment Style and test scores

The reader then has two ways to view this data, either in the text or in the visual chart. Colors are used to show which participants have the same attachment style by representing them in the same color. You'll notice here the author does not identify the participants by name, rather initials are used to keep the names confidential.

Also, pay attention to the way the author signals the visual using "Figure 3" and a caption.

Below are some common ways of using visuals to present quantitative data.

Pie Charts

Pie charts are best for representing percentage data. Be sure to make each piece of the pie stand out with a unique color. Don't go too flashy with 3-D or shadow effects that add nothing to the meaning of your chart. Also, be sure to show the numbers on your pie chart, which is not always built into the software that generates pie charts but can greatly clarify your visual. Finally, be sure that your pie chart has a descriptive title. Let's try it out with some data from student author Kristen Chamber's paper on listening to music while working.

Chambers asked her participants if they thought multitasking helped their productivity. This question is a good one to represent in a pie chart as we have done below:

Another example of this is from student Caitlyn Perny's paperThe Pressing Issue of Sleep Deprivation among College Studentsseen below:

This pie chart represents an anonymous survey conducted by Perny through Qualtrics; 90% of students that took the survey reported that theywant to learn more about the effects of sleep from their collegethrough an assembly or in a unit of a generaleducation class.

Bar/Column Graphs

When you have a lot of categories, bar or column graphs can be helpful to show your data. Chambers had a question on her survey that involved a scale. It asked participants to what degree they agreed or disagreed with a statement. While Chambers did not originally separate that data into which class the student belonged to, the purpose of this example is to show how a more nuanced graph might look. (In other words, don't go quoting these statistics!) We've made up some additional numbers to show what Chambers datamighthave looked like if she had wanted to show the differences between the level of students and how much they agreed or disagreed with her statement.

The column graph provides a different type of data for the reader to look at. Notice, though, that the colors and labeling are clear and easy to read. Furthermore, writing about the data in your text helps the reader interpret your visuals.

Other Data Representations Options

There are many other ways to represent your primary research in the write-up of your paper. You could use tables or insert screenshots. For example, if you were analyzing artifacts, you might want screenshots to show what the original documents look like. You may have data where it is important to stress the dates, so a timeline might work in your project.

Question

Write: a brief summary (100-125 words)