This article, which draws on examples supplied by previous studies involving fifty articles in the psycholinguistic literature [ 4], [5], [6], explores how the choice of terminology used in database records and in searches may actually impede retrieval, and it suggests compensatory measures

Dehart, Florence E.

Pauls, Leo W.

English

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Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy andLanguage ArtsVolume 27Issue 3 April 1987 Article 84-1-1987Computerized Searches on Articles ReportingReading Research: A Closer LookFlorence E. DehartEmporia State UniversityLeo W. PaulsEmporia State UniversityFollow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/reading_horizonsPart of the Education CommonsThis Article is brought to you for free and open access by the SpecialEducation and Literacy Studies at ScholarWorks at WMU. It has beenaccepted for inclusion in Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy andLanguage Arts by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks at WMU. For moreinformation, please contact maira.bundza@wmich.edu.Recommended CitationDehart, F. E., & Pauls, L. W. (1987). Computerized Searches on Articles Reporting Reading Research: A Closer Look. ReadingHorizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts, 27 (3). Retrieved from https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/reading_horizons/vol27/iss3/8COMPUTERIZED SEARCHES ON ARTICLES REPORTING READING RESEARCH: A CLOSER LOOK FLORENCE E. DEHART LEO W. PAULS EMPORIA STATE UNIVERSITY EMPORIA, KANSAS Like other scholars, college professors of reading educa-tion rely on the journal literature to report their research and to incorporate other research results into their own teaching and research. Reports on computerized databases have been appearing in reading journals. Thus, specialists in reading have become familiar with the computerized retrieval counterparts of the traditional print services which abstract the relevant journal literature. They take advantage of search services in their area of interest, such as the follow-ing (print format in parenthesis): ERIC/CIJE,[ 1] (Current Index to Journals in Education), LLBa!Online[2] (Language and Language Behavior Abstracts), and PsycINFO[3] (Psycho-logical A bst racts). When establishing the originality of a proposed research project, reading researchers may believe that the thorough-ness of thei r literature search has resulted in ret rieval of the articles relevant to their interest. This article, which draws on examples supplied by previous studies involving fifty articles in the psycholinguistic literature [ 4], [5], [6], explores how the choice of terminology used in database records and in searches may actually impede retrieval, and it suggests compensatory measures. Field Structure of Bibliographic Records Before discussing database records and the search pro-cess, it will be helpful to review the field structure of the records. Bibliographic records that act as surrogates for articles in computerized abstracting services are composed of an accession number, abstracts, bibliographic citations, and terms signifying a study's subject content and design. These manually-composed records in the machine-readable 209 READING HORIZONS, Spring, 1987 databases of the abst racting services are organized by fields which vary from one database to another. A designated field, several fields, or the entire bibliographic record may be accessed in a search, depending on the desired compre-hensiveness of the ret rieval output. The bibliographic record in Figure 1 shows the location of the index fields included in the ERIC/CIjE database: (a) item accession number, (b) bibliographic citation including author(s), title, journal, volume, issue, pages, and date, (c) major descriptors (distinguished by an asterisk) and minor descriptors (access by computer only), with both sets taken from an identical thesaurus of terms, (d) bracketed identi-fiers, which is another type of descriptor reserved for proper names and concepts not yet represented by approved descrip-tors, and (e) annotation, or abstract, supplied either by the author of the article or contributed by the database service (" abst ract" will be used in this art icle). FIgure 1 Location of the index fields included in the ERIC/CIjE ~ ~b--'( c , I -e 'I EJ ISH 908 FL 509 951 The Acquisition of the Passife Voice Baldie. Bnan J. Journal of Child Language:. v 3 n3. pp33l-348. Od 76 ·Chlld Language. -Language Development. ·Verb~. • Language Research. - Psychohngul~­tiCS. Language Learning Levels. Syntax. Verbal Devell)pmen:. Sentence Structure, [-Passive ",-__ .d~ VOice tlanguage)) This study .limed to determine the average eges at which children imitate, produce and compre-hend passive constructions. Previous findings that imitation precedes comprehenSIOn. which pre-cedes pro •. Hction. are confirmed in this study for children aged 3-8. (CHK) a Item acceuion number b Bibliographic citation c Major and minor deacripton d Bracketed ·identifier e Annotation ------------------------------210 READING HORIZONS, Spring, 1987 ----------LLBA/Online and PsychINFO also include a broad content classification, or "section heading," such as "psycholinguist-ics," at the bottom of the record. In addition, the indexers provide a phrase field describing the research. The phrase field is located below the descriptor field and consists of phrases or word strings that indicate major independent and dependent variables, as well as sample population, study sites, and type of reseaarch. For example, the following phrases, separated by a semicolon, appear as shown in LLBA/Online for an article on the acquisition of deictic verbs: Index Phrase: acquisition of deictic verbs of move-ment, location; 15-33 month olds. Following are the phrases for the same item as shown in PsychINFO, separated by commas and introduced by "Identi-fiers. " Identifiers: movement & location contexts, spontaneous use of verbs "come" & "go," 2 year olds. There is no corresponding phrase field in ERIC/CIjE. However, the descriptor field in this database does incorpor-ate some study design features, such as education level of a study's subjects. Excepted are proper names which appear in the identifier field. These ERIC/CIjE identifier terms are not to be confused with PsycINFO's "Identifiers," a word used to introduce its phrase field, as shown above. Database Records and the Search Process With the bibliographic field structure in mind, termin-ology problems that impede ret rieval and which are inherent in the database records and in subject search statements will now be considered. The bibliographic record displays subject content on three levels, exemplified below, each providing greater specificity of approach than the previous: section headings, the descriptor field, and the phrase field. Subject search statements applied to the desired fields may use Boolean logical operators (and, or, not) to combine concepts, like the following four-set statement: COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT (first set) and LANGUAGE ACQUISITION or READING PROCESSES (second set) and ELEMENTARY SCHOOL STUDENTS (third set) not ELEMENTARY SCHOOL CURRICULUM (fourth set). "Section headings," assigned by LLBA/Online and Psyc-INFO, represent the broadest grouping of subject deslgna-__________________ 211 READING HORIZONS, Spring, 1987 ----------tions. The use of section headings focuses the sccr:e of a search on one or more of the determined categories to the exclusion of other section headings. The technique may be combined with the use of more specific approaches. Each article in the databases that assign section headings is placed in at least one major category. Table 1 exemplifies the section headings assigned by LLBA/Online and PsycINFO to two articles on the acquisition of comparative adjectives. Table 1 Section Headings Assigned by LLBA/Online and PsycINFO to Two Articles Section Headings LLBA/Online PsycINFO Art. 1 Child language acquisition Art. 2 Child language acquisition Developmental psychology Cognitive and per-ceptual development Problems arise, however, when the indexer and searcher do not think in similar fashion concerning the appropriate category for an article. With reference to the studies cited above, only twenty-seven articles, or 54%, of the fifty on the application of psycholinguistics to the teaching of reading and language arts were assigned to section headings in LLBA/Online that both the search€ r and a reading specialist judged to be most appropriate to the content after studying the articles. In the case of the same fifty articles also present in the PsychINFO database, the result was twenty-three articles, or 46%. Reading specialists who desire to obtain articles in the area of a section heading should remember that not all relevant articles may have been assigned to that section heading. Additional searches under one or two other related section headings may be in order. Descriptor field In contrast to the broad groupIng provided by section headings, the descriptor field identifies the content of an article through vocabulary terms assigned from a thesaurus at the article's judged level of specificity. Table 2 shows the descriptors assigned by ERIC/CIjE, LLBA/Online, and PsycINFO to the two articles mentioned above on the acqui---------------212 READING HORIZONS, Spring, 1987 ----------sition of comparative adjectives. Table 2 Descriptors Assigned by ERIC/CIjE, LLBA/Online, and PsycINFO to Two Articles ERIC/CIjE PSYCHOLINGUISTICS LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT CHILD LANGUAGE COMPREHENSION LEARNING THEORIES EXPERIMENTS COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT TABLES (DATA) Article 1 LLBA/Online ADJECTIVE CHILD LANGUAGE COGNITIVE PROCESSES CONCEPT FORMATION AND IDENTIFICATION Article 2 PsycINFO PRESCHOOL AGE CHILDREN SCHOOL AGE CHILDREN LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT COGNITIVE DEVELOPMEN~ CHILD LANGUAGE LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT ADJECTIVES PSYCHOLINGUISTICS ADJECTIVES LANGUAGE RESEARCH PSYCHOLINGUISTICS COMPREHENSION DEVELOPMENT VOCABULARY SKILLS SEMANTICS WORD RECOGNITION PRESCHOOL CHILDREN CHILD LANGUAGE PRESCHOOL ADJECTIVE AGE DIFFERENCES IN LANGUAGE AGE CHILDREr\ WORD MEANIN LANGUAGE DEVELOP-MENT Problems arise, however, from terminology chosen when abstracts are prepared, insufficiency in number and kind of descriptors assigned by indexers, and the nature of psycho-linguistics itself. With respect to the articles in Table 2, terms available in the thesaurus for each of the three ----------- 213 READING HORIZONS, Spring, 1987------------databases were not necessarily assigned. For example, the term "adjectives" is in the thesaurus of both ERIC/CIjE and PsycINFO. Failure on the part of these databases to assign this term as a descriptor may have resulted from the fact that the author of the first article used the word "adjec-tives" in the first sentence of the article but did not use it in the abstract. Indexers depend on abstracts for assist-ance in assigning descriptors. The abstract of the second article included the word "adjectives," and all three data-bases selected it as a descriptor. This example points out the problems of abst racts that miss key concepts. It illus-trates how a searcher could have failed to retrieve the first article in the ERIC/CIjE AND PsycINFO databases if a search had been conducted on the term "adjectives" in the descriptor field. Insufficiency in number and kind of descriptors assigned by indexers may explain the fact that identical terms as-signed to an article by all three databases were few in number. A total of only eight descriptors was assigned in common to the same article by all three databases: READ-ING MATERIALS, VERBAL LEARNING, SEMANTICS, SYN-TAX, VOCABULARY, PHONETICS, COGNITIVE PROCESSES, and WRITTEN LANGUAGE. To compensate for descriptor assignments that may insufficiently represent articles, the searcher would be advised to use a variety of Boolean sets in a series of searches. Consequences of problems in match-ing search terms with assigned descriptors are more serious for the researcher who seeks as comprehensive an output as possible in order to establish the originality of a proposed research project. Searchers should access the term PSYCHOLINGUISTICS with special caution. Authors of psycholinguistic research studies often fail to make explicit use of this word in their own articles. In regard to the fifty articles studied that dealt with psycholinguistics, ERIC/CIjE assigned the term PSYCHOLINGUISTICS to twenty articles, thirteen times as a major descriptor. Twelve times it was the only database of the three to assign the term. LLBA/Online assigned the term to eleven articles, three times uniquely. Interestingly, although the term appeared in its Thesaurus, PsycINFO did not assign the term PSYCHOLINGUISTICS to any of the fifty articles. 214 -----------READING HORIZONS, Spring, 1987 -----------On the other hand, assigning the term PSYCHOLINGUIS-TICS to a large number of articles may burden the searcher with unmanageable output. The term would appropriately be applied to those articles that deal explicitly with psycholin-guistic theory and research findings. However, it did not appear at all in the bibliographic record of two articles in which the authors did make the psycholinguistic nature of the content explicit. The first author placed the article in the context of "a growing body of psycholinguistic research," but the term PSYCHOLINGUISTICS did not appear among the descriptors. Neither was it found in the abstracts of the three databases, nor within the phrase fields supplied by LLBA/Online and PsycINFO. The second author began with a statement that psycholinguistic research workers in the early 1960s reached a consensus that children's gram mat-ical competence is mostly acquired before age five. The author placed the article in the context of that psycholin-guistic research and the research that followed. However, the term PSYCHOLINGUISTICS was entirely absent from the bibliographic record as in the previous example. Adverse effect on retrieval is obvious from these ex-amples of practices by authors and indexers regarding use of the term PSYCHOLINGUISTICS. Searchers desiring articles on this subject should avoid the use of PSYCHOLINGUISTICS as a required component of Boolean search statements. The reason is that they may avoid missing a number of articles that rightly fall under the term but which have not been assigned the ter m. Phrase field In cont rast to both the section headings and the descrip-tor field, the phrase field permits retrieval, as noted above, on a study's independent and dependent variables and design features through the use of word st rings on a more specific level. It is a valuable field that tends to be overlooked in the search process. Along with the title and abst ract fields, the phrase field may be accessed in what is called a free text search using natural language provided by the searcher. Table 3 displays the phrase fields supplied by LLBA/Online and PsycINFO for the two articles mentioned above on the acquisition of comparative adjectives. (see next page) Problems arise, however, when searchers approach a phrase field at what they consider to be an appropriately ------------ 215 READING HORIZONS, Spring, 1987 ----------specific level, whereas the indexer has provided instead a still more specific level. For example, the first article, Table 3 Phrase Fields Supplied by LLBA/Online and PsyclNFO for Two Articles LLBA/Online Article 1 language comprehension; understanding of more, less; three to seven year olds; replication children's difficulty with "marked" comparative adjectives; children ages 2.6-4 years Article 2 PsycINFO comprehension of "more" & "less," 3-7 yr olds interpretation of marked comparative adjectives, 2-4 yr olds which treats the adjectives "more" and "less" throughout, explicitly refers to them as "comparative adjectives," but the broader term "comparative adjectives" does not appear in the phrase field. It is also lacking in all other fields of the bibliographic record provided by LLBA/Online and Psych-INFO for that article. Thus, a search on the adjacent words "comparative adjectives" would retrieve only the second article. This would occur only through a "phrase field" search that would reveal the presence of "comparative adjectives" imbedded in the specific term "marked compara-tive adjectives." On the other hand, the level of specificity expected in the phrase field may not be found in the phrases that have been assigned by the abst racting service. With respect to the earlier example of a phrase field concerning an article that treats the verbs "come" and "go," a search on these specific verbs in the LLBA/Online phrase field would not have ret rieved the article. Searchers would be advised to approach their subjects at various levels of specificity to compensate for possible inadequacy of indexing at anyone ---------------216 READING HORIZONS, Spring, 1987level.ConclusionAlthough the items retrieved from the computerizedservices located on various campuses may appear to be veryadequate, a simplistic conception of what is adequate doesnot further the purposes of scholarship. Further explorationis needed concerning whether researchers would assigndifferent section headings, descriptors, and phrase fields totheir articles than do the indexers of computerized databaseservices. Although terminology problems may never be fullyresolved, results would undoubtedly influence indexing practices and database retrieval.References[l] National Institute of Education, Educational ResourcesInformation Center. ERIC/CIJE (Machine-readable datafile). Washington, DC: Author. 1969.[2] Sociological Abstracts, Inc. LLBA/OnLine (Machine-readable data file). San Diego: Author. 1973.[3] American Psychological Association. PsycINFO (Machine-readable data file). Washington, DC: Author. 1971.[4] DeHart, F. E. (1982). Topic relevance and BSO switchingeffectiveness. International Classification, 9, 71-76.[5] (1983). Topic relevance and retrieval effectiveness. International Classification, 10, 9-14.[6] DeHart, F. E. & Glazier, J. (1984). Computer searchingon PRECIS: an exploration of measuring comparativeretrieval effectiveness. International Classification, 11,3-8.(Authors' footnote— We acknowledge the assistance of Mary-louise Meder, Publications Specialist, School of Library andInformation Management, Emporia State University.)217

Computerized Searches on Articles Reporting Reading Research: A Closer Look

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Computerized Searches on Articles Reporting Reading Research: A Closer Look

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