Success of Web Research Depends on Who’s Asking the Questions

A researcher at Ohio State University has finally taken a scientific approach to finding out something many already know: The Web, more often than not, is a reliable source of information, but sometimes it’s almost impossible to find what you’re looking for.

Tschera Harkness Connell, who began her work while at Kent State University, took a series of 60 questions posed to a suburban library and tried her luck with the search engine Alta Vista. She picked Alta Vista because she uses it most frequently, and it is one of the most popular search sites.

Connell found the correct answer 27% of the time and the wrong answer 9% of the time, indicating that users are more likely to find the right answer than the wrong. But 64% of the time, the Web pages listed by the search engine either contained no answer or were out of service.

The research suggests that working the Web is no different from any other kind of research. Reliability depends upon the expertise of the source, and that can only be determined by additional research.

But as one who has been a professional researcher for decades, I must add that even clear evidence that the source is reliable doesn’t guarantee that the answers are correct. I could fill a book with misinformation that has come my way from people who should have known better, or publications that were thought to be authoritative.

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For whatever it’s worth, I find that the people actually doing the work--the grunts in the trenches--are usually more reliable than the people they work for when it comes to providing detailed information. But all too often they lack perspective.

In science, nitty-gritty research usually falls on the shoulders of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. These people are usually the best source for basic information on the research, such as the physics or chemistry involved in solving a problem.

But quite often they have no idea how important, or how original, their work may be. They are more concerned with reaching the next level--such as finishing the research so they can write a dissertation--and surprisingly often they underestimate the potential impact of their own work.

Moving on up the ladder, the faculty advisor may have a good overview of how the work fits into the broader picture, but the advisor is further removed from the actual research and is more likely to have outdated information or be somewhat out of touch with the work in the lab.

Which brings us back to the value of the Web. If I’m interested in a particular line of research, I can usually find Web sites that detail the work. But those sites can be horribly out of date or arcane. To find out what’s really going on, there’s no substitute for a device we now take it for granted: the telephone.

A one-on-one discussion is indispensable for getting at the facts, and it is usually possible to find the researcher’s phone number by looking at the directory for the site. If that fails, e-mail may serve the purpose.

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Some people may be reluctant to call researchers directly, believing they are too busy to be bothered. But the fact is that most people love to talk about their work. And a true researcher would prefer that the correct information get out. Sometimes it’s harder to get them off the phone than it was to get them on.

As a librarian, Connell believes the best way to authenticate data from the Web is to compare it with other well-established sources, such as encyclopedias or books. That’s the way she arrived at the results of her study.

She took a series of questions that should have simple answers, and could be verified by standard reference books. The questions included:

* Who was Annie Oakley, and for what was she known?

* What is the population of Columbus, Ohio?

* Why do leaves change color in autumn?

* How do you spell Deion Sanders’ first name?

She concluded that the choice of key words was critical to success. For example, when she deliberately misspelled Sanders’ first name as “Deon,” she found more than 100 sites on the Dallas Cowboys star where the author of the Web page had also spelled the first name incorrectly.

But one has to wonder, if you want to know how he spells his first name, why look up Sanders at all? If you listen to sports commentators too much, you probably think his first name is “The Amazing” anyway.

A better route is to go to the home page of the Dallas Cowboys, where you will find a photograph of Amazing, so you can be sure that’s the correct guy, with his first name below it, spelled Deion.

So like any research tool, the instrument is no better than the person using it. A little common sense, and lots of practice, can usually turn up the right answer.

Lee Dye can be reached at leedye@ptialaska.net.