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SE 10 - Research Design - Summer Session II - Prof. Tricic


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Liaison Librarian

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Julia Gelfand
Contact:
Office: Science Library 228

Phone: 949-824-4971

EMail: jgelfand@uci.edu

Conducting a Literature Search

To find journal articles, you can utilize several methods and databases that will retrieve sources for you to use and cite in your paper:

1. Search UCLS - the Library Catalog for the UC - can be searched by topic and refined using the left side-bar to restrict to journal articles and other content.

2. Check out other Subject Guides for topics such as News & Media coverage, films/video & streaming media, data sources, visual images, and other information resources.  The Social Ecology Guides are listed here.

3. General hints to retrieve more focused outcomes are:

  • to restrict to a time period (ex, 2019+)
  • search topically
  • consider research methodology practice and enter ways to search that as part of your search strategy
  • remember to define your subjects as humans and disclose the specific population - by gender, age, medical condition, mental health state, etc - remember that you can restrict PsycINFO to empirical data
  • use specific customizing methods of each database
  • use truncation marks to permute spelling forms and expand terminology
  • read several examples of research studies before you select one to model
  • consider value of the rubric and follow and as this outline responds to how most social scientist's organize information
  • include all elements of article - hypothesis / research question; research methods; analysis; findings; conclusions and contextualize for each area
  • try and be non-subjective
  • remember to be true to the data - empirical evidence is critical
  • can you generalize the data to larger question - is sample size sufficient, and other such questions are important

   4.    Read some introductory passages in order to compose a relevant introduction - DON'T CITE FROM AN ABSTRACT

  5.    Use the following databases and search by topic:

Outline of Research Paper

The final paper requires you to identify a research topic, perform a brief literature review and identify a research question.  It is a final paper, but you should get an early start and ask your TA for comments on an early draft.  It should include the following components:

  1. Introduction - "briefly provide some background/framing for your proposed research. This short description of your topic should be ~200 words."
  2. Literature Review - "include a brief literature review that follows the guidance of the lecture on literature reviews - it is important that you do not simply list article summaries, but rather integrate them to frame the research question.  Provide no fewer than five references of which four must be from scholarly sources (peer0reviewed articles, papers or books - i.,e. avoid web sites as references in almost all cases - check with a TA if you are unsure about your references - ~500 words."
  3. Research Question - "identify a research question that makes sense given your topic and literature review. ~50 words."
  4. Body of the paper - "must be written in narrative form with full sentences (avoid bullet points and listing), proper grammar and punctuation.  The paper should be about 850 words in length, excluding references, double-spaced with 12 pt. font size, in Times Roman script with 1-inch margins all around.  You must have page numbers and put your name and student ID # on the first page of the paper."
  5. References - Use APA style for citations and references - see section on this guide.