Citing fairly common concepts?

cooljammer00

I'm writing a paper and want/need to cite the idea that people without father figures growing up are statistically prone to deliquency. I googled and found articles on "father figures" but who exactly do I cite for coming up with the idea? Do I just cite the webpage? How can I be sure it's a reputable site? How do I bring it about in the body of the paper? So far, I just have "Child psychologists generally preach the idea that...""everyone needs a father figure in their life, or else they will not grow up 'whole'" which is pretty disjointed.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080212095450.htm is one of the sites I was considering using. It's just one of the first hits I got with Google.

Vixx

I don't know what citation system you use, but MLA usually has good guidelines for citing reputable websites

if you can find a similar article published on a .edu or .gov domain, you should be golden

CJTheran

Like Viv said, MLA has a format specifically for website citation, including sites that do not list the author of the article.

Edit: Scroll down to the bottom of the page. It cites itself in MLA for you.

Edit 2: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.. "Children Who Have An Active Father Figure Have Fewer Psychological And Behavioral Problems." ScienceDaily 15 February 2008. 11 May 2009 <http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2008/02/080212095450.htm>.

lifeincognito

I was told by a teacher in high school that you need at least 5 sources to present something as common knowledge. However, a brief Google search indicates that the University of Oklahoma Writing Center goes by the following:

Common knowledge—There is one case in which you do not have to cite outside information. If you are using factual knowledge that is common knowledge to your paper’s audience, then you do not have to provide a citation for it. What counts as common knowledge can change from audience to audience, so be careful when you are presenting a piece of information as common knowledge. For example, most people in the United States know that the colors on a stoplight are red, yellow, and green. You would not need to give a citation if you put this information in a paper.

So I guess the answer it your question is, it depends.

cooljammer00

Ok, well I also found this

http://www.nebraskaprevlink.ne.gov/therightstuff/parents/sectiona/fathers.html

It's a government site (.gov) for Nebraska. I guess that would work?

Vixx

also websites for well-known publications or periodicals or newspapers or organizations would work

generally speaking though if you're concerned about the validity of an article you've found on a website, google the author's name

if you can't find an author, find another article

also that article you found from Nebraska lists some good links at the end, check those out

cooljammer00

Well I'd cite that Nebraska cite, but it doesn't have one guy writing it. And other sites I'd want to use are like, fatheringmatters.com which doesn't sound very scholarly, even though I'm sure it's true.

Elin

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/ was recommended by my friends English professor. I used it instead of the book we were required to buy when I wrote my research paper as it actually did a better job explaining MLA. I was also told that "common knowledge" is a fine line but anytime you quote a statistic you should have a citation for it.

Also, my local library has an academic journal search. Most of the articles are printable, and peer reviewed journals always look better than a web site.

Hahnsoo1

This is one of the most studied links (father figures and delinquency) in social science. This being said, it's certainly not in the realm of "common knowledge" (more like in the realm of "conventional wisdom" which isn't always right and shouldn't be used in a paper unless for the purposes of an amusing anecdote or humor). Common knowledge would be more akin to historical events (Columbus arrived in the new world in 1492, or Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese fleet on December 7, 1941) rather than published studies.

"Child psychologists generally preach the idea that...""everyone needs a father figure in their life, or else they will not grow up 'whole'" which is pretty disjointed.

This is a terrible sentence, and one that I wouldn't use for a scholarly article or even a persuasive paper. If you are talking about father figures and delinquency, then talk about those two subjects, not Child Psychologists (who aren't the main researchers of this link... look for sociologists and criminal sciences), or "growing up whole", which is wishy washy language.

Unless, of course, you are writing a scathing rebuttal of Child Psychology. Or the concept of delinquency.

There are literally hundreds of paper on juvenile delinquency and the effect of either the lack of father figures (in particular) or growing up in an unstable home (in general). Here's a recent one:
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/90511212/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

If you want to say that multiple researchers have found this link to be true, you can use a review article (which generally compiles the information from a lot of other articles) and say "In a 200X review of father figures and juvenile delinquency, an overwhelming positive link blah blah blah (site source)"

Be very careful when researching this topic, because a lot of studies focus on Father - Son relationships (or "Big Brother"-Younger male youth relationships) rather than general Father-Figure relationships among children of both genders.

Wezoin

My rule: Regardless of whether its common knowledge or not cite everything.

This comes after being accused of plagiarism for not citing small things like the fact that Canada is a parliamentary democracy (in a Canadian politics course in a Canadian university - assumed it would be simple enough to be common knowledge.) The prof then insisted that they were going to be "kind" to me, and rather than have me thrown out of the University would let me "take the late penalty" and add the necessary citations. In the end I lost 10% for the late penalty, AND the prof decided that it still wasn't good enough and that I'd wasted his time and gave me a 0% on the citation section (worth 10%, so I lost 20% because of stupid little nitpicky mistakes. It was the first course the prof had ever taught, so she was going "by the book")

Anyway, personally I can't stand the idea that someone could own information at all, and it seems like a waste of time to have to cite things, however in the academic realm it allows you to move responsibility of facts to someone else (if its wrong its not your fault.) That said, no prof would ever excuse you from using a false statement in a paper because it was in one of your sources.

The Crowing One

You need to cite anything concerning Parenting and Delinquency. "Common knowledge" covers things like "The sky is blue" and "Moby Dick is a well-respected English-language classic."

vonPoonBurGer

cooljammer00 wrote: »

So far, I just have "Child psychologists...

Stop right there. If you're going to claim that "child psychologists" espouse a particular view, you'd better cite something that has been actually written by a developmental psychologist, and it should be something with a lot more weight than a website. Developmental psychologists do lots of research, and they publish the results of that research in these things called academic journals. Seeing as these journals contain information as written by the original researchers, they would be much more powerful sources than predigested information turds you're going to find on some random website. Hit up SAGE, search for "father absence", get some journal articles. This is not a job for Google.

Incidentally, this isn't even remotely close to common knowledge. You're ascribing a particular viewpoint to a particular branch of psychology. If you failed to provide sources proving that current research in that field does actually posit what you say, as a critical reader I would infer that either a) you are a bad researcher or b) you are dishonest author engaging in a straw man argument or c) all of the above.