Research Methods

1. Research Methods Moving beyond wikis

2. Limit your results • Go for less than 100 results in a search • Achieved through: • Narrowing search parameters • Using exact/proper nouns • Having several search terms • Using an advanced search feature

3. Read abstracts • The abstract is the summary at the beginning of the article. Reading it will save you lots of time. And if you don’t understand what the abstract is saying...

4. Find resources you can use • If a text is so complicated you have no idea what it is saying—ditch it. • Your job is to start a dialogue with these sources in order to form a public space for argument. If you can’t communicate with them, everything will fall apart. • To make this easier...

5. Use a variety of sources • I want half of your sources to be academic, peer-reviewed* sources. • The other half might come from popular culture and can include books, magazines, TV programs (within reason), interviews, etc. *Peer-reviewed sources are most easily found in the library’s databases. (More on that shortly.)

6. Look for corollaries • So you want to write about campus crime at MU and there’s no stats? What do you do? • You want to argue that 9-9-9 will work. How can we test this? • You want to argue against universal healthcare in the US, but there’s no precedent...

7. Tools of the trade... • Academic Search Complete- the largest database in the library website. Always use advanced search. • Google Scholar- most useful after finding a good source because you can backward search. • Other library databases- scroll through the list of databases available through MU library. Many of the articles in a subject-specific database will be cross-listed with ASC though.