Planning Research Using the Internet - Essay Example

Planning Research Using the Internet The internet is a worldwide network consisting of smaller networks, which carries diverse information and services that may be accessed by the public (Internet). It is referred to as the information highway because it provides a fast means to acquire information or data on a lot of topics if not practically all of the topics under the sun. In just one click, you will be able to find data that you need for different purposes. The internet now is an educational tool more than a means of entertainment. It is considered a virtual library comparable to that of the actual physical library structure. It is even easier and more economical to a certain extent to surf the internet than to go to a public library to search for books. The internet allows you to search and use information at the safety and comfort of your own home or office. The internet also offers a wide array of means to search for data. There are a variety of search engines available for use to cater to whatever your need is. For the purpose of determining if internet research is really very helpful and sufficient in acquiring data for a specific study or topic, I have employed internet research as the primary and the only data gathering methodology for answering the question: Is the population of the UK healthier than it was 5 or 10 years ago. The initial part of my research plan is to come up with topics or questions related to the health of the UK population. These topics would help me find answers to the main question. I then chose three search engines: www.Google.com for the web-crawler type, www.Dogpile.com for the meta-search type and www.UKwizz.com for the one category based type. I had a difficulty with the one category based search engine because I was not able to immediately figure out the better choice between a health specific search engine and a country or geography specific search engine. I finally decided to use www.UKwizz.com which is a country based search engine because most of the health search engines are consumer based and with little focus on general health information or statistics of different countries. My next move was to test the questions or topics I chose to check whether these search topics will help me filter the information I need. I know that the search results are heavily dependent on the search topics or criteria. The way in which the subject is entered in the search box has a lot of weight because the search engines are also greatly dependent on key words in order to search for accurate matches. I had scrapped topics like the increase or decrease of insurance health claims in the UK, and the increase or decrease of pharmaceutical medicine sales in the UK. The insurance health claims subject returned useless sites where most of the sites involved insurance companies and their policies. On the other hand, the medicine sales search subject resulted to consumer sites offering medicines and websites of pharmaceutical companies. I came up with four reasonable topics which I used to search for information I needed to check whether the UK population now is healthier than five or ten years before. The topics were: UK Population Health Trends, UK Health Campaigns, UK Mortality rate and New Human Diseases in UK. I initially planned on using questions as search subjects but decided not to after a certain number of tries. I discovered that the more words you include in the statement you put in the search box, the less accurate the results generated are. This is because the engine looks at every word in the statement entered and generates hits involving the most number of words, which it saw in the statement. These words may not be in order. It is the most number of word combinations that the engine looks for. Since the words are not in order, then the essence or meaning of the statement relating to the generated result is oftentimes not related to the topic being searched for. I chose Google as my web crawler search engine mainly because of its popularity and reliability. It was voted as the most outstanding search engine for four times by the readers of Search Engine Watch (Sullivan). The coverage of Google is both comprehensive and relevant. For the meta-search engine, I chose Dogpile being one of the most popular meta-search as well. Several search engines can be searched with just one click when using Dogpile (Dogpile). I chose Ukwizz for the one category based search engine because it covers a wide array of facts about the UK. It is a search engine emphasizing British content and its information base is relevant to the UK (UKWizz is a new breed of UK search engine). Based on my research logs, the most useful search engine was Google. It gave me the most number of successful hits. By saying successful, I meant I got useful information which is connected to the topic or subject I am researching on. Some information may not be directly about the search subject or statement, but the facts presented gave me additional information which I can use to answer the main question. The category based search engine UKwizz was not consistent. It was successful in giving me relevant information for some search subjects but it also generated websites with useless contents. The contents were in no way connected to the topic. The least reliable search engine is Dogpile. I based it on the criterion of going into the needed page and information the fastest and easiest way. Dogpile may be the most comprehensive search engine among the three because it has access or it searches all the other search engines to give the most relevant result, but it provides inaccurate and very general information. It takes more time to access the needed information in Dogpile. It is better to get more direct or specific information because it makes researching easier and faster. I expected to get the most relevant and useful results from UKwizz because the base that it covers is smaller. It is just searching websites based in UK or websites with focus on UK content and is not going through the hassle of searching the World Wide Web. It turned out that Google was more efficient in returning relevant sites. In evaluating the results of the research project, I saw that the questions formulated or topics used for researching the internet were not enough to come up with sufficient information as to whether UK is healthier now than it was five or ten years ago. I wanted to include the time element in the search, but including the words five or ten years ago in the statement, confuses the search engine and gave me irrelevant results. I also tried to include the word now, present or current but these words also created a kind of confusion in the search because the engines generated sites with only the words present, current and now. I should have formulated more topics to search on to get more detailed information as to the current health status of the UK population. It is also better to research on the components of health or what are the factors involved in considering a population as healthy, before formulating the topics or questions. This way, all the factors will be accounted for to come up with the most comprehensive and accurate report of the UK population's health status. The research plan also has its strengths. For one, it is very systematic. The research logs provided a system for carefully analyzing usefulness of the sites generated by the search engines. The topics or questions served as the framework in organizing information or thoughts to be used in creating a research paper. This is more efficient than doing internet research without any formal steps or procedures to be followed. Limiting the information gathering to three search engines has its strengths and weaknesses. Having only three search engines makes the search narrower, the information base is smaller. Though technically speaking, most of the search engines go to the same reference sites anyway. On the other hand, having many search engines to choose from will provide clutter due to the barrage of information. The internet may contain all the necessary information needed, but it is not always sufficient. It is a very progressive means to do research. Not to mention, the easiest way to do research. But it is not always accurate. First to consider is the way that the search is conducted. Since the internet heavily relies on key words, then the success or failure of the research would rely on the correctness or aptness of the statements or words entered in the search box. It is very hard to find the correct key words especially when looking for topics, arguments or issues in articles. A second hindrance to getting information is the access to books and other journals. There are cases when the information, because of copyright laws can only be found in the actual books or journals. Some online journals require membership and fees to be paid. Internet research may prove to be very productive but is not as productive, accurate, relevant and comprehensive as doing the actual legwork in research. Research involves action and a lot of hard work. If you want to succeed in producing a scholarly and dependable research work, several methodologies should be utilized and not just surfing the internet. Group discussions, surveys, interviews and reading of books are effective means of doing legwork in research. As what we often hear from our elders, you will not cherish and will not get the feeling of having accomplished something great if it was given to you in a silver platter. It is always very rewarding to see the fruits of your labor. Works Cited "Dogpile." Infospace. 10 June 2007 . "Internet." Wikipedia. 11 June 2007 . Sullivan, Danny. "Major Search Engines and Directories ." 28 March 2007. Search Engine Watch. 10 June 2007 . "UKWizz is a new breed of UK search engine." UKwebseek. 11 June 2007 . Read More