EdD Dissertation Research

STEP 1: Establish a Search Strategy

Your Research Topic:

Your Disciplines to Search:

Databases You Might Search: (see Finding Scholarly Articles)

STEP 2: Begin Executing Searches

Let's imagine you decided to start your searching in Education Full Text, using this search string (which is limited to peer reviewed articles):

This article strikes you as interesting and relevant to the direction you're interested in going:

Lester, A. M., Chow, J. C., & Melton, T. N. (2020). Quality is Critical for Meaningful Synthesis of Afterschool Program Effects: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. Journal of Youth & Adolescence, 49(2), 369–382. https://doi-org.libproxy.scu.edu/10.1007/s10964-019-01188-8

You can use that article to discover scholarship that is related to it, by 1) looking at who that article cites (pearl growing strategy) and 2) looking at who cites that article ("cited by" strategy)

STEP 3: Use the Pearl Growing Strategy

Open up the "It's not like family it is family" article above.

1) Pearl Growing Strategy

Citation pearl growing uses one relevant source, or citation, to find more relevant sources on a topic. By reviewing the relevant source, you can identify other keywords and citations (that is who published on that particular topic *before* it was published).

Skim through the works cited list at the end of "It's not like family it is family" and identify one additional article you might want to locate. 

Enter the name of that article in "OneSearch" or the name of the journal in the "Journals" tab on the library homepage.

2) "Cited by Strategy"

Some databases of scholarly articles will include a "cited by" feature, to let you know who referenced that particular article *after* it was published. Google Scholar does so as well.  Open up Google Scholar.  Copy & paste the citation in Google Scholar.  How many articles have been published since 2020 that cite that article?