JUST ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONS THE RIGHT WAY. Suppose the air-quality people and the Highway Commission want to know something about local trucking, called "drayage," from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to warehouses and manufacturing establishments in the Los Angeles Basin. If you're Long Beach State's Kristen Monaco, you take a box of donuts and a stack of questionnaires to the port gates before the dockers report, and you learn all sorts of interesting things about a business in which the truckers own their tractors and act as subcontractors for the shippers or for the consignees. Beats another pass through a panel study or getting the security clearances to use the Census data. Today's Clever Research Tip for aspiring dissertators: don't treat the terms "source" and "Government web site" as equivalents.