that one can use in one’s speech.
2. A survey is a canvassing of people to get information about their ideas and opinions.
Surveys may be conducted in person, over the phone, via the Internet, or in paper-and-
pencil documents.
3. Like media reporters, a person may get some of the best information from an
interview—a planned, structured conversation where one person asks questions and
another answers them.
4. Sometimes the information one needs has not been published. Rather, it may exist in
an original unpublished source, such as an ancient manuscript, a diary, personal
correspondence, or company files. Or one may need to view an object to get the
information one needs, such as a geographic feature, a building, a monument, or an
artifact in a museum.
5. One can design an experiment to test a hypothesis, which is an educated guess about
a cause-and-effect relationship between two or more things. Then he or she can report
the results of the experiment in his or her speech. Experiments take time, and one must
understand the principles of the scientific process to be able to trust the results of a
formal experiment. However, sometimes one can conduct an informal experiment to
test the results of a study one learns about elsewhere. REJ: Please see the section
“Locate and Evaluate Information Sources” for more information.