Hello SOCW 2363 students!
Megan Hopwood here to talk to you about searching
with Political Science Complete.
Political Science Complete is a database that
contains many academic journals that focus
on Political issues worldwide.
The articles found in Political Science Complete
can be found in LibSearch, but by searching
this database on its own, you can bypass many
articles that are unrelated to your topic.
Political Science Complete has 3 search field,
with the Boolean AND in between them.
Putting your different search terms in the
different fields can make it easier to manipulate
your searches and make changes to your terms.
In the search options – search modes and
expanders box, you might want to try checking
the “apply equivalent subjects” or “Apply
related words” boxes.
This will search for synonyms of words you
are searching for.
If you want to see what words the database
considers related, try looking in their Thesaurus.
This can give you new ideas or new terms to
try in your search.
In the search options – limit your results
box, you can limit your search to full-text
only.
This means that all of the articles that you
find will be immediately available to read
online.
IF you find an article that is not available
in the database right away, you can see if
other UHD databases have the article.
If the article is not available, you can try
requesting it through interlibrary loan.
With interlibrary loan, the library will request
the article from other libraries around the
United States.
This process can take several weeks, so make
sure to do your research early.
There is also a check box for Scholarly (Peer-reviewed)
journals.
Checking this box will weed out more popular
sources such as magazines and newspapers.
By checking this box the database will only
search for academic, scholarly, or peer-reviewed
journals, which your professor may require
you to use in your research.
As we talked about in basic searching, putting
your policy in quotation marks can help you
find more detailed information about your
policy.
Let’s search for “National School Lunch
Program”.
Since this is my first search, I am not going
to add any additional terms.
It can help to start with a broad, general
search, then add search terms as your information
needs become more specific.
Now that we have a list of search results,
I am going to look at this second one, because
the title sounds interesting and helpful to
me.
I can also look at the subject terms to see
if they are relevant to my research topic.
When I click on the title and look at the
record, I can find all of the information
I need to make my APA citation up at the top
of the page.
Below, I can read the abstract, which is a
paragraph summary of the article.
I can learn about the articles thesis, their
hypothesis if they are focused on scientific
research, what they found in their studies,
and what some of their conclusions are.
Reading the abstract first is Always a good
idea- you can learn a lot about the article,
and decide if it is relevant to your research.
If the abstract fits with your research- great!
Invest the time to read through the article
– this one is 27 pages.
But, if the abstract doesn’t sound like
it fits your research, move on.
Don’t waste your time reading 27 pages that
are not relevant to you.
Reading the abstract will save you time in
the long run.
To read the full article, click on the PDF
full text link, or scroll to the bottom of
the page if it is available as an HTML text.
Let’s say you found this article, you liked
the abstract, and want to save it to read
later on.
You can save the PDF.
Or, using the options on the right side of
the screen, email the document to yourself.
You can also save the permalink.
This link, not the link at the top of the
page, will get you back to this ex document.
The last helpful thing on this page that I
want to show you is the Cite button.
You can click on this and it will show you
any different citation styles.
Find the style that you are using- probably
APA for this course.
Now, these citations are NOT always correct-
check them against the APA guide to make sure
they are accurate and correct them if necessary-
don’t just copy and paste them into your
paper.
