PHLT 310 Public Health Writing (Summer 2025)

Finding suitable resources for your research is a process. There are several steps that a researcher can follow to identify strong sources to use in their research, including:

• Conduct literature searches through reputable sources: Using repositories like scholarly databases or the TAMU resource catalog will ensure that the sources you find are credible and of rigorous scientific standing. Avoid looking for scholarly material online, like Google or Bing, as this will often produce non-scholarly sources that will not benefit your research.
• Read the article: Once you have found a potential source, read through the entire thing. Highlight, annotate, or take notes on your thoughts, including identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the article. 
• Assess the author's credibility: A credible author will have experience with the chosen subject matter. Check to see if the author has published other sources on this topic and where their research has been published.
• Identify the main arguments: Has the author sufficiently proven their research? Do these main takeaways support or disprove your own research? Think through the content of the material and try to imagine how it could be used to prove or disprove your research.
• Look at the data: If there is data included, determine if the data was gathered responsibly. Read through the "Methods" section to appraise how and where the author obtained their data. Improperly or irresponsibly gathered data can impact an author's credibility.
• Check for bias: Research articles should always address any concerns of bias and go through a rigorous process to remove as much bias from the findings as possible. If you determine the article to be biased in any way towards the data, you should find another source.

For more information, check out the Evaluating Scholarly Sources guide from the TAMU University Writing Center.

Once you have identified strong sources, go back and look through the article again. Read over your notes and annotations, and add some of your own insight to your notes. This can be a helpful stage to create an outline and plan out the main points and content of your argument. Assess areas of your research that would benefit from additional support, and go through your sources to see how you can use them to strengthen your work. Using data to back up main points, or other important themes, can improve the quality of your research. 

There are several different ways you can choose to interact with the material, including:

• Themes: Identify and analyze any main themes found throughout your sources. These themes can become the main points of your research or can be used to support specific claims made in the paper. This method can be a good way to compare and contrast themes across different sources.
• Methods: Highlight the data collection and interpretation process used by your sources. Explain how these methods are beneficial to your own research.
• Contradictions: Do any of your sources contradict one another? This can be a great point to explore in a paper! Compare both sources, looking at how each obtained and interpreted their data. Avoid labeling one as "better" than the other, but instead use this an opportunity to highlight the different stances on this topic.
• Gaps: Look for any gaps in existing literature. Highlight this as an opportunity for future research, and discuss how these gaps can impact current data or understanding. 

For more information on engaging with scholarly sources, check out the Analyzing Scholarly Articles guide from the TAMU University Writing Center and the Anatomy of a Health Sciences Interactive Guide from the Medical Sciences Library.

Once you have decided what evidence you will use in your research, you must decide how you will use it. There are three different ways that evidence can be introduced into your paper: direct quotes, paraphrasing, and summaries.

Direct Quote

A direct quote is using a chunk of the source material verbatim (or with a few minor word changes) in your research. Direct quotes should be used infrequently in scientific writing, as too many quotes can obscure your own unique voice and detract from the main point of your argument.

• ex: As a former Gryffindor, Professor Dumbledore often valued courage, and claimed that "it takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends" (Rowling, 1997, p.306).

Paraphrase

Paraphrasing is taking a large section of the source material and summarizing it into your own words. This can be a good way to highlight important themes and to demonstrate your knowledge of the source material. Even though you are putting this into your own words, paraphrases must still get a citation.

• ex: Ron Weasley, who had previously been unable to levitate his feather in class, used a Levitation Spell to save Hermione Granger on Halloween night (Rowling, 1997).

Summary

Summarizing is a quick, concise way to establish the main overall point of a source material. This can be an effective way to set up important background information for your research.

• ex: Harry Potter became a powerful wizard because of his courage and support from his friends (Rowling, 1997).

Any content that you use in your research that was not an original thought must be cited. Paraphrases and summaries, while putting ideas into your own words, still belong to the original creator and must have an in-text citation to accompany them. When in doubt if you should cite something, cite it anyway. Failure to correctly cite information originating from another source can be considered plagiarism. 

For more information on citing sources, please see the Citing Sources guide created by the TAMU University Writing Center. 

The following are a few examples of the most common in-text APA-style citations. For more information on APA Citations, please visit the APA Citation Style Guide.

Direct Quote: (author's last name, year, page number)

• ex: (Rowling, 1997, p.306)

Paraphrasing and Summarizing: (author's last name, year)

• ex: (Rowling, 1997).

Two Authors: (first author's last name & second author's last name, year)

• ex: (Pratchett & Gaiman, 1990)

Three or More Authors: (first author's last name "et al.", year)

• ex: (Rowling et al., 2016)

No Date: (author's last name, n.d.)

• ex: (Smith, n.d.)