Another research question portandlemonaid, welliemum, anyone?

[WethreebobKings]

Firstly thanks for your help on my other thread - I now have some research which will tie in okay with my research, and one of them is by my examiner which is a nice bit of ego stroking (and actually pretty interesting too).

Now my question:

When I am talking about something that a music educator has mentioned in their article, and it's say something by a neuroscientist that they have referenced, but I obviously don't want to get hold of and read the whole neuroscience paper because the music educators bit was only moderately relevant at best. Do I

1. Just reference the music educator's article.
2. Reference both, even though I haven't actually read one of them. If so how?
3. Something else entirely.

Ooh, this sound like good progress. Referencing an examiner is very good.

Strictly, you need to reference the neuroscience article if it's mentioned in the bit you're quoting from the examiner's article. You could get extra brownie points for knowing about the neuroscience article too, even if not in great detail.

You can look up most science/medical-type papers online using PubMed and read a summary for free, but would usually have to pay for the whole article (not always).

If you like, tell us the author's name and publication details, and I'll look it up cos I know my way around PubMed. There might be a snippet of info you could use there but in any case it shows that you're being careful to quote from correct sources.

The sentence I would like to use is from Levinowitz 1998 General Music Today Fall pg 4-7 and is;

"even the youngest infant is wired to receive music and discriminate among differences in frequency, melody and sttimuli (Bridger, 1961; Trehum et al. 1990; Standley and Madsen, 1990; Zentner and Kagan, 1996)"

So I list all the references - but presumably I also list Kevinowitz as well. (She's not my examiner BTW, I'm using original thinking from her!)

But really, I just want to say that if it's been well proven that this is the case, the best place for a baby is next to mum and older sibling in my class - not with a babysitter! Do I have to plough through 4 more articles to make that link.

It's not that I'm not interested in the brain - it's really just a time thing for me now.

Levinowitz even. Can't even type now!

Sorry, have porridge brains - I see now that your examiner and the other one are 2 different people.

I agree with you that it would be a bit much to quote all that neuroscience research just to make a simple point.

You could say something like:
"in her review of the literature on innate music ability, Levinowitz (ref) found widespread evidence that ..."

... ie making the point that you realise Levinowitz didn't do the basic research, but has brought a lot of research together and drawn a conclusion. An interested reader would then be able to read Levinowitz's article and look at her references if they wanted to check out the original research.

That's the essence of referencing, really: making sure there's always a clear trail back to the sources.

Does that sound more appropriate to your paper?

Yes, that sounds more the thing. I think adding 6 people to my bibliography to make a 1 sentence point was overkill - but I didn't want to be accused of missing everyone else out.

I actually found the article by accident when looking for something else - and it was the most relevant. Google can be very random.

I'm glad term has finished because all this academic hoop jumping would frustrate me totally if it was preventing me from doing my job!

Can I say (Wylie 2006 citing some other dude 1998) or something when it's only the one reference?

Yes, I don't see why not, although ideally it's best to quote the original source rather than "Peter said that Paul said that..."

But I don't think it's a problem as long as you make it clear who said what.

Hi. I've just written a research proposal and I've done secondary referencing. In my uni referencing guidelines (they use Harvard, 2005). Secondary referencing is useful when you mention something that's THE big piece of research that everyone talks about, but which is actually quite old and hard to get hold of. In the text you would write: e.g. according to x, 1958 (in Y, 1997, p123), "writing research proposals is a real pain in the xxxx". But in the reference list you only quote Y.

I hope this is helpful. I did this and got a B, so it is OK if you do it correctly. Of course it all depends on what your tutors like you to do and how they want you to write your things.

Success

Yes, some of the things are 1971 and I was born in 1972, so it wouldn't be something I collected along the way. They (experts, examiner etc.) are all in their 60s and so probably it was the hot research when they were my age!

Okay, I think I've done it now. Trouble is it's now twice the length! However the examiners guidelines don't mention length - and she did ask for all that extra stuff.

I've taken out things i can't substantiate, or can't be bothered to substantiate as they don't really move on my argument any.

Tis finished and is printing out. It is much better than the original version (only IMO of course as I don't have any research to prove it.)

Am now hoping that examiner will just pass me because she can't face it all again after Christmas.

I reckon I did around another 20 hours on it.

Well done!

Grrr at having to do 20 hours' extra work in the week before Christmas.

Now you can forget about it! Well, until the results anyway - but I'm sure it'll be fine. It sounds really interesting.

Is it's not what she wants now - well, I think I can live without another Diploma!

It's what she wants. Great Christmas Present - and as I said on the other thread - thanks to you all.