Critical Thinking Skill: Information Seeking - Assignment Example

Critical thinking, therefore, fosters fair-mindedness and intellectual integrity. It also equips the user with skills that can be learned, mastered and used in life (Huhn, 2013).

Primary Sources of Information

One of the most widely used critical thinking skills is information seeking. The other critical thinking skills include analyzing; logical reasoning, predicting and transforming knowledge obtained through useful practical application. Leist, Woolwine and Bays (2012) point out that information seeking as a critical thinking skill involves searching for evidence, facts or knowledge through the identification of the relevant sources. It also involves the gathering of information that is objective, subjective, historical and current. There are many information sources. The five primary sources that I utilize in my information search include online and print journal articles, internet websites, books, newspaper articles and past research notes and published research findings.  Print and online journal articles are the main sources of information. This is because apart from providing up to date information they are also peer-reviewed ensuring that the information published is accurate and objective (Eagleton and Guinee, 2002). My choice of sources of information has not significantly changed over the past year because they are the same ones that were utilized even then. However, I have become more pragmatic with deploying internet sources so that only the most credible ones are utilized. For example, I lookout for the author’s credentials and contacts to see whether he or she is an authoritative source.

Information Input Format

The format of information input that I prefer the most is through seeing. This is because my comprehension is significantly enhanced through reading and observation as opposed to hearing. The combination of the two usually provides a better understanding of the message communicated, but if I were to choose, input utilizing the sense of sight is the preferred option.

Process of Data Search

The internet is a rich source of information that I utilize significantly in the process of data collection. Due to this immense collection of information, data searching and retrieval utilizing the internet is one of the trickiest undertakings in information searching (Eagleton and Guinee, 2002). My typical search starts with the identification of the knowledge gap where the information to be searched is identified. This stage can take around five to ten minutes depending on the complexity of the topic. The next stage in the process is conceptualizing that information which in turn should help me identify which questions I need in order to query the databases.  According to Henry (2005), conceptualizing is the most important stage since if one gets it wrong here then the whole data search will be in vain; this usually takes around five to ten minutes. The third step involves framing the questions into search terms which are then combined with the several search operators. Some of the search operators utilized include the Boolean search operators (AND, OR and NOT), the proximity operators (NEAR and ADJ) and the truncation (*) functions to adequately probe the database for the right answers (Henry, 2005). Lastly, I would perform the actual search which provides the results at the very moment because it is real-time. After obtaining the answer the rest of the process corresponds with other data searches and retrieval processes and involves critically evaluating to sort the useful information from the irrelevant, then synthesizing that information to answer the initial question and fill the knowledge gap (Henry, 2005).