Miller Center Fellows

When approaching your research, it's useful to ask yourself these questions:

Who would have an interest in my topic and possibly study it or monitor it? 

Where would they publish the studies or reports that they generate?

Who and Where?

1. Scholars and researchers employed at universities will likely come immediately to your mind.
   • You know that they publish their work in scholarly journals. 
   • These journals are found in databases, which the library pays for.
   • These studies / journals are subject to rigorous peer review processes. 
2. Scholars and researchers may also be employed in other organizations like non-profits, thinks tanks, and government agencies.
   • These groups will also typically publish their research publicly in white papers or reports.
   • These reports can be found in a number of places: databases and the open web (e.g. Advanced Google).
   • While these publications are not peer-reviewed like scholarly journals, they still may offer useful and important insights into your topic and may be considered appropriate to use by your professor.

We recommend two databases through the Library to find these kinds of reports. For ERIC, you'll need to filter your results (ask your librarian for help). The Harvard Think Tank Search - an open resource - is also a good option.

Using a search engine like Google is another way discover these materials. Google’s advanced search menu has a number of options you can use to refine your results.
You can also use the following search tips:

• Put exact phrases you want to search in quotes
  • Example: “smallholder farming"
  • Example: "case study"
     
• Use an asterisk as a wildcard to broaden your search by finding words/phrases beginning with the same letters
  • Example: cooper* (will search for cooperation, cooperative, cooperatives)

• Put a minus sign before words you don’t want in your results
  • Example: “smallholder farming" -poultry (if you’re not interested in results about poultry)
     
• Limit your results to top-level domains (such as .gov, .org, .eu, .int, or your country code) by using site:.domain
  • Example: community mental health site:.gov (will give you results from government agency websites only at both the state and national levels in the United States
  • Example: humanitarian photography site:.int (will give you results on this topic from intergovernmental organizations)
     
• Use Boolean logic to build your searches
  • You can use Boolean logic to build searches in both search engines and in library databases. Use AND to join terms, OR to expand using synonyms, and parentheses to group. See the box below for more detail.

• Use "report" synonyms (e.g., reports, white paper, case study, guidelines, recommendations, analysis) with your topic keywords in a search
  • Example: ("high school" OR "secondary school") AND arts funding AND site:.gov
  • Example: ("food insecurity" OR hunger) AND (report OR "white paper" OR "fact sheet")

You might also consider trying other search engines beyond Google, as they often give different results. Many search engines change the results you see based on your previous searches, browsing history, sponsored content, and other factors. To avoid this, you can try a search engine like DuckDuckGo, which doesn't track your search history.

Boolean operators are terms you can use to narrow or broaden your search in a database, library catalog, or a search engine like Google. The three basic operators are: AND, OR, and NOT.  

Why use them?

• To focus a search when you are using multiple terms 
• To include synonyms for your search terms in order to find all variations  
• To exclude terms not relevant to your search

When using Boolean logic to create a search strategy, use double quotation marks (" ") when you are searching for a phrase (words you'd like to keep together).

Using AND

Use the operator "AND" in a search to: 

• Narrow your results 
• Tell the database that ALL the terms must be present in the search results 

Example: california AND "secondary education"

Using OR

Use the operator OR to: 

• Broaden your search by telling the database that ANY of the terms can be present in your results 
• To include synonyms or related concepts for your search terms 

Example: "high school" OR "secondary education"

Using NOT

Use the operator NOT to: 

• Narrow your results  
• Exclude specific words or concepts from your search results 

Example: student AND "mental health" NOT anxiety

Nesting Operators

• Databases usually default to AND as the primary operator and connect concepts tied together with AND first. You can use parentheses ( ) to indicate to the database how you want your terms to be connected.  
• You can put operators together like an algebra equation.

Example: ("mental health" OR anxiety OR depression) AND ("high school" OR secondary) AND student

The APA has help and examples for citing websites, government reports, and other information you find online through their website, APA Style.

Citing webpages and websites:
•   Webpage on a Website
•   Whole Website

Citing reports:

• Report by a Government Agency
• Report with Individual Authors
• Brochure
• Fact Sheet
• Press Release
• White Paper