Urban Planning & Public Policy: Subject Coverage

Other Subject Guides will help inform user on many topics.  Recommended examples include:

• Orange County Subject Guide
• California Subject Guide
• US Government Subject Guide
• International Government Organizations Subject Guide
• Demography and Social Analysis Subject Guide
• Civil & Environmental Engineering Subject Guide
• Sociology Subject Guide

Other academic guides that are helpful include:

Environmental Design Library, University of California, Berkeley

MIT Research Guide on Urban Planning & Design

Specialized sites to find specialized information on:

Coverage of today's session includes:

1. How to evaluate information - Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, Purpose - to reduce unreliable information, contributing to fake news
2. Framing the Research Question - focus on what you want to know and how information will be collected - start from an outline; state the hypothesis so it can be accepted or rejected by the evidence you collect (Sage Research Methods Online)
3. Consider how you account for gender, other population criteria such as age/lifespan, race,ethnicity, sexuality, socioeconomic, legal status, refugee; geography - where is the work being studied; what about any bias
4. Analytical methods - quantitative or qualitative approach
5. Theoretical constructs to contextualize ideas - what social theories define purpose; social underpinnings; chronology / dateline
6. Classic works - summaries (Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences,
7. Spatial relationships - depending on data in a specific location, environment - GIS generated?  Examples may be to include concepts of neighborhood, framework, incorporate census data for population, education, housing, incarcerated, employment, etc
8. Noting core literature - adding how it was applied in different settings - use Research Guides
   1. Books and authors
   2. Theorists and movements
   3. Key journal literature - Journal Citation Reports - part of WoS (SCIE, SSCI) - ranking & impacts
   4. Conference papers/proceedings
   5. Working Papers & Technical Reports
   6. Case Studies
   7. Theses & Dissertations -Proquest Dissertations & Theses Global
   8. Grey Literature - white papers
   9. Data sets
   10. News & Media sources, blogs - social media coverage
   11. Video & multimedia
9. Managing your research - Bibliographic Management Software - Zotero, Mendeley, EndNote & Endnote Basic (web)
10. Annotated works, compilations
11. Register for an ORCID ID - https://orcid.org
12. Research Impact
13. Specific to the Dissertation
14. Government Information