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Marcus Search Strategy Worksheet

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10 views3 pages

Marcus Search Strategy Worksheet

.

Uploaded by

moneymarc08
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Search Strategy Worksheet

Name: Marcus Robinson

 Select a topic
If you need ideas for a topic, check out one of the library’s research guides in your subject area, do a broad search in
a subject related database (for instance ERIC for Education or Issues and Controversies for current issues), look
through your textbook or talk to fellow students.

 Summarize your topic


Once you have a topic, summarize it into a question to form your initial thesis statement. What do you want to find
information on? Use your own words and be as specific as possible. For example instead of saying “I want
information on cars.” Say “Are hybrid cars really better for the environment than cars using gas.”

Does poverty have more of an impact on a student’s chances of


succeeding academically than work ethic?

 Identify the main concepts


Take your thesis statement and highlight the main concepts. Concepts are the different elements that make up your
search topic. Most thesis statements can be broken down into two or three main concepts to start with. Concepts in
the example thesis statement above would be hybrid cars, environmental impact and gas cars.

Concept 1 Concept 2 Concept 3

Impoverished Students
Work Ethic
Direct Impact 

Select your search terms


For each concept, write down any synonyms and related terms that you can think of; they can be words, phrases or

Financial Lack Sway Diligence


AND AND
Economic Hardship Influence Personal Drive
OR OR
Needy Students Difference Discipline
NOT NOT
Destitute Effect Commitment

acronyms. A thesaurus is a great tool to use if you need help.

Concept 1 Concept 2 Concept 3

 Combine the search terms (Boolean)


When you use more than one search term you need to tell the database or search engine how to look for them. Use
the word AND between search terms for different concepts – it will to find items that contain all the terms. Use OR
between terms within the same concept to find items that contain either search term. Use NOT to find all of the
items that contain your first search term while excluding those that contain your second term.

 Other criteria to consider when searching in a database


Most databases provide search limit options to narrow down your results list. Two you might find useful are:
o Date Range – use this feature to only get items between a certain date range, such as the current 10 years
o Peer-Reviewed or Scholarly Journals – you need to find academic level, empirical research articles. This limit
removes any newspapers, magazines, trade publications, etc. which are not scholarly journals.

 Select the resource to use


Now you are ready to try your search strategy. Select a database based on the type of material you want to find:
subject specific, articles, etc. Most of the databases and the Library Catalog have an Advanced Search option that
provides multiple boxes where you can input one concept in each row.

 Document your search strategies


As you search, document your search strategies and search results for your research project using a Research Log
like the one below. Some databases let you print or save your search history.

Search Log
Searc Search Terms used Database # of Results Comments
h# Used
This comparison was far too broad to actually gain a
1
Impoverished
Students
ERIC 2,581 lot of useful info from it. But I did find one article
that did a study to explain the impact of 100
students living in the housing project of Harlem and
& having just one parent in the home who is on food
stamps as well as section 8 housing. This should be
Direct Impact very helpful to this excersice.

17,026 This was way too many results for my study and I
2
Impoverished
Students
ERIC believe that I will find it hard to have much help
completing this exercise with all those studies to
analyze.
&
Work Ethic

This was a lot of results but I found 3 articles that


3 Influence ERIC 250 will be very helpful to me. One in particular
analyzed the grades of 500 poor immigrants in Los
& Angeles to see how good their grades were for 12
straight months. This is very interesting & insightful.
Personal Drive

The amounts of results that I got from this search


4 Direct Impact ERIC 17 are just perfect. I found a 4 month study about
students who spent more than 20+ hours per week
& devoted to study homework and preparation after
school and what were their grades and overall GPA
Work Ethic after this 4 months of analysis.

This is the perfect amount of results because there


5
Impoverished
Students
ERIC 2 usn’t that much data to poor though and I can
clearly analyze each paper to learn and apply the
& information available.

Personal Drive
&
Financial Lack

 Revised Research Thesis Statement (Based upon search results, you may tweak or completely change your original
statement/question.):

Which factor has more of an influence on a student’s


academic success, financial lack or personal drive?

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