The Educational Search:

The Educational Search: A Journey into the realm of Scholarly searches and their relevance amongst Search Engines

By Jim Ernst

If you attend College, at some point you will be asked to write a research paper. During your research paper experience you will be asked to look up “scholarly articles” and use those refereed sources as material. Most colleges offer some sort of database system on their libraries’ website to help you with this task. But Google offers a little search engine called Google Scholars.

I personally use Google for everything, and have always been curious of their power of what information I see and what I dont. Since they are now breaking into this academic field and giving me the option to use them for scholarly searches, I really want to see if their are any similarities between what information I find out on three search services. First I am going to run my search term on Google, then on Google Scholars, and finally on Academic Search Premiere. Also, I will run a search on Bing.com to figure if they really stop useless searches like they claim. I will save the top 5 results of each search and see if I have any similarities and how useful they were for what I was looking for.

I really want to use this as a start of a conversation. Especially since the cluetrain started out as a conversation, I want to begin the conversation on what is considered relevent in Academia. Is the top five articles on Academic Search Premiere more useful to me than on Google Scholars, and where does a normal Google search fit in with all of this.

I used the same search terms for all four search engines. “Web use and age groups”.  I choose this search term because I needed to find information for my #17 post.

First with Google:

With the top five Google results, I received some pretty useful results. The first site gave me some good graphs and figures about what percent of people in different age groups regularly used the internet. Not really what I was looking for but it was factual. The next two results came from the same site and they were decent. I got good information on how different groups used the internet, my only issue is that it gave too big of a range for me to work with. 25 – 60 years of age is a pretty big gap and their is a lot of difference in there. The fourth site was great. It gave me detailed descriptions of what each age group used the web for and what their capabilities were. Unfortunatly, they stopped at age 18 and I really needed the later end of the spectrum for my discussion. Getting to the fifth and final link I looked at was an actual study but it focused more on what technology needed to be changed to really allow older adults to get the maximum use out of the web. I was looking for a discussion on what they used it for and how it differed from the younger generation. But still it was a study.

Overall, I received information from the Google search that wasn’t helpful but was at least on track with the topic genre I was looking for. If I would have expanded my search to the top 10 results or top 20 I would probably have received at least one recommendation that would have helped me gain more information.

Going to Google Scholars:

With Scholars, I got a journal article in the number 1 spot that really helped me get information I wanted. The study was the actual study I used for my #17 post, and it gave me descriptions on what each group typically used the web for. The only downside was that I had to pay for the article to receive anything other than an abstract. The second site just gave me information on groups of people who booked trips on-line, not all that important for me. The third journal article I received was one about how different ages could handle navigation on the web. It was related to what I wanted to find but I didn’t really want information on how quickly different groups could navigate websites and find answers. The fourth suggestion wasn’t even a link, it was a citation, not much help there. The fifth link was to a study that talked about how different age groups effectively used the web and what could be changed about a site to better suite their target audience. Close to what I was looking for but not exactly. It did have a link to a full PDF version and I got excited because I felt that I could dwelve deeper and maybe find a useful fact for my project. It was a trick though, it brought me to a site where I had to sign up and pay to view it.

With Scholars, I did get results that were close to what I wanted, but I didn’t really get the option to view what they were linking me to without having to pay. I’m sorry but I don’t feel like paying even a dollar for a document that may be of no use to me. Plust the abstracts don’t really help much either. They were all journal articles, which was a little more trusting than just a Google search. Except I wasn’t able to tell if they were peer reviewed, that doesn’t help much in the academic setting where that information is very valuable.

Academic Search Premiere:

I’ll start with the good first. I was able to search by Peer-Reviewed only, which was great if I was looking for a College research paper. I can trust that all the information that I am getting is approved and is written with a good standing in the academic field. The bad news is that not a single search in the top five got me even near a possible source. One article was about the Economic implications of Binge Drinking, no where near age groups using the internet. One was about phone counseling and it’s effect on weight management. I have no clue why that came up. Then I got a result on a study on Anxiety and one on Adults getting Social. The only one that really delt with the web was the article about how parents could manage their childs internet use. I guess that is somewhat related to age groups and the web but it didn’t help me out at all.

I have used this engine and many others and they all give information that has nothing to do with what you want. For one research paper in College, I spent a good 30 hours looking for peer-reviewed articles that I could use for my topic. Most of the time I had to scroll to the 20th page before I got anything that I could possibly tie into my paper. It is great that I can find peer-reviewed sources with this type of search but the possibility of finding anything dead on is really slim.

Bing

I was really interested in seeing what I could dig up with Bing.com. Considering that they have had a massive Ad campaign talking about how they are the end of search overload syndrome.

I really wanted to know if I would get better results than other engines that I have tried.

Here are my results:The first and third search results led me to the same 1 paragraph blog post. It wasn’t really helpful. Also seeing the same result in two places didn’t really sell me on the idea that this was the “Decision engine”.  The second result gave me somebodies powerpoint project. It was well designed but I couldn’t  use it because I dont know how credible the source is. The fourth result was promising. It was an actual journal article but it talked about how University students in Israel worked with the web and how their age and social class affected their ability with the web. It was in the right direction but it really didn’t help what I was looking for.  The fifth result was a Gallup poll summary that talked about what percentage of different age groups used the internet for what tasks and how long they used the web for each day. It was useful but was kind of short and didn’t really offer anything more than a few categories. But still it was more useful than any other result.

I wouldn’t call Bing the “Decision engine” because I was unable to really come to a decision on what would be more effective for me to use in my post. It was another search engine that gave far more useless results than useful.
Conclusions:

If I had to rank the usefullness to my topic, I would go with:

1. Google Scholars

2. Google

3. Bing

4. Academic Search Premiere

If it was ranked by credible sources:

1. Academic Search Premiere

2. Google Scholars

3. Bing

4. Google

This makes me a little uneasy when it comes to judging what should be used and not when writing an academic paper. Google Scholars looks like the best overall choice based on my small sample groups. But you still can’t be sure that what you get is peer-reviewed. Bing and Google may be good starting points, but from a credibility stand point they don’t really give you good options. Finally, Academic search engines like A.S.P. give you great credible results but it will take you hours to get useful information and then you will probably have to pay. I don’t know what the future holds for academic searches, other than plenty of headaches for college students pressed for time while writing a paper.

Lets just hope that Google teams up with Academia to create a more credible (and free) version of Google Scholars.

My best advice to all of you writing those research papers this semester, find it on Google Scholars and check to see if it is credible through your school’s academic search engines.