Blog Reflection # 7

A person is researching the topic “Crashes Caused by Driving while Texting.”


They are texting whilst asking for help on researching said topic. 


You ask them a question, they say, “I’m sorry, what did you say? I was texting my friend.”

Just kidding, but I bet something like that happens all the time. People are addicted to texting, but I guess that I am lucky to be addicted to older, more traditional things. Again, I am just kidding.

So, I would first try to find out what the scope of the research project is. Are they writing a short one- or two-page paper on the facts available on texting while driving, or something longer? Do they need to cite their sources, and if so, how many sources? Do they need to have statistics for their paper/project?

After finding out about the scope of their project, I would have better idea of how “in-depth” their research needed to be. For me, the importance in making this determination is to not inundate or overload the student with resources or materials they are not going to use.

To get a basic understanding of the issue and its effects in the real world, I would start off with a database search, looking for general interest magazines and newspaper articles. A good one is the EBSCO Host Newspaper Source Plus, which will return tons of stories on the perils of texting and driving.

From there, if needed, I would go to usa.gov, which provides a lot of studies on the subject backed with statistics, provided by the CDC, FCC, OHSHA, and other abbreviated agencies. There is even a government website dedicated to this issue, http://www.distraction.gov/. Which in turn will lead users to still more sites and resources.

Bottom line: When driving, don’t do ANYTHING but drive. If you need to sneeze, just don’t think about it. You can sneeze after you’ve reached your destination...or you may face the consequences.

If the student needed more formal or academic resources, I would suggest something like ProQuest, or additional scholarly journal articles through a similar database.

Because of the recent development/ phenomena of the topic, I would try to utilize the most current resources available, and would not recommend Encyclopedia.com or Encyclopedia Brittanica.com. (I check these online encyclopedias; they didn’t have anything)

So, the general order of resources would be:

a) ProQuest or another electronic journal/newspaper index such as EBSCO

b) Government sponsored (.gov) data and information websites

c) Searching via their favorite search engine

d) Encyclopedia.com (NOT RECOMMENDED)

e) Encyclopedia Brittanica.com subscription offered through library access (NOT RECOMMENDED)

f) Wikipedia (NOT RECOMMENDED)