Research Concepts and Methodology in Nutritional Science

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Research Concepts and Methodology in Nutritional
Science

• H. Singh PhD
• Fall 2006

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NTRS 511

• Syllabus
• Website www.calstatela.edu/faculty/hsingh2
• Timing 420 -6.00pm
• 610 - 1000pm
• What are we going to do? learn what is involved
  in research.
• Different issues and steps involved in research
• A project and research thesis
• Research proposal

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Syllabus contd. What are you going to work on?

• You will select a topic for research and justify
  it on the basis of present data available
• Find a review article and present - 10
• Take home Midterm to critically analyze an
  research article from your topic with instructors
  consent ---- 20
• SPSS Workshop ----- 20
• Group discussion, submitting the suggestions and
  reviewing others proposal - 10 10

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Steps of Research

• Problem
• Hypothesis
• Factors
• Experiment
• Collect Data
• Analyze data
• Conclusion

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Syllabus contd.

• Final paper presentation after taking care of all
  the comments 15
• Final proposal submission 15
• using NIH guidelines

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• SPSS workshop
• http//www.calstatela.edu/its/training/sstp/
• timing
• Pick up very interesting topics
• I will be here and will help you at every stage
• You are suppose to read and work yourself and
  meet the deadlines

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Presentations

• For Review articles
• General Introduction to the concept.
• What scientists have found in last five to ten
  years?
• What is gap area and how you intend to solve it?
• Generally
• Clearly define the topic
• Background - What has been done
• What methodology was used
• Clear
• Audible
• Interactive
• Fonts, color combination and flow

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Library Search and Plagiarism

• H. Singh

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What is Research?

• To answer a question
• To apply a new idea
• To check a hypothesis
• But sometime we
• copy ideas plagiarism is a big problem
• Let us discuss this in a bit detail why people do
  it ----

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Plagiarism

• What is plagiarism?
• Difference in west and east
• In West ideas can be owned
• Chinese or eastern culture, ideas belong to
  culture and society
• In west writing is visible, concrete
  demonstration of knowledge insight and academic
  skills so you cannot represent or use others
  writing

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CSULA Plagiarism policy

• Plagiarism is direct violations of intellectual
  and academic honesty
• Plagiarism refer to representing somebody elses
  words or ideas as ones own
• Most extreme form of plagiarism is copying paras
  or lines from a paper
• Citation should be done
• May end up failure, probation, suspension or
  expulsion.
• SO BE CAREFULL

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Type I plagiarism

• Turning on someone elses paper
• Why students do it?
• Lazy
• Do not manage there time well
• Do not know how to do it but do not ask for help
• Language problem but avoid getting a bad grade

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Where do students get paper

• Internet
• Buy from research services
• Friend taken course before
• Copy materials

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Why it is wrong?

• Undermines the entire educational system
• Learning is important

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Will you get caught?

• Instructor feel insulted and uncomfortable
• If suspected it is easy to find the source
• Instructor has lots of experience
• In reality the work is clumsy and obvious
• Forget to change the gender
• Copying the samples
• Unable to answer any question
• www.turnitin.com
• http//www.calstatela.edu/academic/aa/ess/elps/tur
  nitin/Recommendations.htm

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Solution

• Manage your time
• Ask for help

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Types II Plagiarism

• Assembling the article from other text
• Can be caught from the style clash
• no original wording
• but is this wrong
• it should be presented in quotes and cite the
  source
• It is still not acceptable

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Type III plagiarism

• Writing information in your own words
• Understand the information very well
• Mostly just try to substitute some words
• Changes and reorganization is step in the right
  direction
• Getting familiar with the concepts and subject
  matter happens with time and writing skills
  improve

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Avoid plagiarism

• Document sources
• Note concepts on cards
• Understand concepts
• Write in your own words
• Organizing and writing in own word is most
  challenging
• Can only be mastered with practice

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How to Cite

• Modern Language Association (MLA)
• American Psychological Association (APA)
• Many other

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Other important starting point

• Literature review to find what has been done
• Where to go and what to find?
• Traditional ways were going to the library and
  spend days in there
• Chemical abstracts
• Biological abstracts
• Note down the references and look for the
  journals
• But now it has changed and is very easy -

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Library Search

• CSU LA web site
• Google Scholar
• Pub Med
• Medline

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Library Search

• http//www.calstatela.edu/library/tutorial/new/map
  .htm
• http//www.aaccnet.org/cerealchemistry/default.asp
  
• http//www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/
• http//www.nlm.nih.gov/
• http//scholar.google.com/
• www.ift.org
• www.fda.gov

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Finding a review article

• Review articles are published as apart of regular
  journals
• Or there are specialized journals publishing
  reviews
• These are peer reviewed
• News paper articles or Web pages are not
• Where to find
• Look for critical review journals
• http//www.calstatela.edu/library/opac/periodicals
  .html