Research Guides: Math 389/ACP 250: Start Your Research

Online Search Tips

Search Shortcuts

	Explanation	Example
Phrase Search (Using Quotation Marks	Looks for complete phrase exactly as it is typed	"human cause for climate change"
Site:	Focuses on specific domain types .com (commercial), .org (organization), .gov (government), .edu (education)	site:.gov 2016 presidential voting statistics
Related:	Finds similar sites	related:put the url of another site
Link:	Finds sites that are linked to a site or have used the site as a reference	link:put the url of another site
Filetype:	Finds information in a specific file format (e.g., .doc, .ppt, .pdf, .xls, etc)	filetype: .xls 2016 presidential election results

Resources for the Research Process

A.Topic Identification & Selection (by Arizona State University). This video will walk you through the process of selecting a topic.

B. "Developing a Research or Guiding Question" (by Arizona State University): This video will help you understand the difference between a topic and a research question. It will also help you develop good research questions.

Check for Understanding

C. "Generating and Using Keywords" (by Arizona State University): This video explains how to determine keywords/concepts. It also explains the importance of finding synonyms or related concepts.

D. Web vs Library Research Databases (by Arizona State University): This video discusses the differences between researching library databases vs. Google Scholar vs. Google

Research Question: How does playing video games affect teenage girls?

	Concept 1	AND	Concept 2	AND	Concept 3
Extract the major concepts from your research question.	teenage		girls		“video games”
List alternatives for each concept: These can be synonyms, or they can be specific examples of the concept Use single words or short phrases. Find additional terms in abstracts and summaries of articles.	Search Terms		Search Terms		Search Terms
	adolescent		female		“online games”
	OR		OR		OR
	teens		“teenage girls”		Nintendo
	OR		OR		OR

	OR		OR		OR

C. Watch "Boolean Logic" (by Pfaul Library"): This video explains how to combine search terms to narrow or broaden your search of library databases.

Reading Laterally

Reading laterally also means going to other websites before fully reading information on the original site. This method involves opening one or more webpages on the horizontal axis of the browser.

See if there is any pertinent information about the website's contributors/sponsors on the "About" tab (Open link to the sponsor in a new window using the keyboard shortcut. Hold down ctrl (command key for Mac) while clicking on the link)
If the website is a legitimate news source, the Trusted Times Google Chrome app will indicate whether the site is rated as liberal, conservative, or somewhere in-between.
Open a new tab to Google about the contributor/sponsor (Use the Digipo Google Chrome app to do this quicker)
Read Google snippets (short explanations of sites) to determine reliable source.
Instead of reading article/source, use shortcut Ctrl/Command-F to search for key words in the article. (A search box will appear and you type in word(s) that you investigating.)
Other search techniques work in Google to find more specific information about a particular site. For example you could search "minimumwage.com" AND reliable? Be careful to make sure you are not looking at what the site is saying about themselves.