From your assignment instructions:

1. a minimum of three academically-accepted sources
2. a list of all sources (including pictures)
3. causes and effects

Before you begin to search

• Steps to choosing your topic and research question

  • Choose a more general question or topic
  • Do some background research to find out a bit more and see how others have discussed that topic.
  • Develop some more focused questions that you might want to focus on
  • Further define your topic - avoid being too broad (or you will never be able to cover it all) or too narrow (you may not find enough information)
  • Not sure if your topic is too broad or too narrow? You might have to do a bit more searching and reading to find out. 

• Some ways to narrow a topic:

  • Place (geography, location, setting, etc.)

  • Population (Age, demographic, etc.)

  • Timeframe (year, decade, etc.)

  • Relevant issue or challenge (eg. difficulty finding work, learning disability, etc.)

• Let's Practice!  

How to Save this File to Google Drive:

1. Open Google Drive - you can get here through MyMRU or you can also access through your own personal gmail
2. Right-click on My Drive
3. Choose Upload a File (find your file on the computer)

When writing academically, your are expected to use the best sources available to you.  Academic sources are often harder to understand (from an English language perspective) than non-academic sources.  You need at least three academic sources for the presentation assignment.  Here are some important sources that meet the requirements of the presentation.

1. Encyclopedias
2. Books (print and ebooks)
3. DVDs and Streaming Video
4. Newspapers
5. Magazines
6. Journals

Encyclopedias
Strengths: short, contains background information on a topic, normally a great starting point when you are just learning about a topic
Weaknesses: too short, print encyclopedias are out of date quickly, Wikipedia has reliability issues

Books and Book Chapters
Strengths: Provides an in-depth investigation into a topic
Weaknesses: too long, sometimes hard to tell whether it is scholarly

Scholarly Journal Articles
Strengths: often based on research findings or extensive review, written by experts, reviewed by experts, provides evidence
Weaknesses: Sometimes written using discipline-specific language or terminology, hard to understand,

Media Sources (news, online magazine articles)
Strengths: Good for current information
Weaknesses: Sometimes biased, sometimes written to entertain, often not written by experts, often not reviewed by experts

Quality

1. Quality refers to how trustworthy your source is.
   1. Purpose: Why did the authors write it?  How do you know that?
   2. Audience:  Who did the authors write it for?  How do you know that?
   3. Authority:  Who wrote the source?  How do you know that?
   4. Currency:  How recently was it written?  How do you know that?
   5. Reliability: Does your source provide details about where they got their information - such as references?
   6. Relevance: What does this source have to do with my topic?  How do you know?

Accessibility:

1. Accessibility refers to your ability to understand and summarize the ideas presented in your source.
   • For example, can you tell a classmate what your source is about without reading directly from your source?  Think about a movie you've recently seen and a friend asked you what was it about?  What would you tell them?

Less is more: Start with one or two words and then add one additional term at a time

• stress coping
• stress coping meditation

Phrase searching: Use "quotation marks" around key ideas made up of multiple words

• "coping strategies" and depression
• "time management" and stress

Search limits: These refine (narrow) your search using different restrictions

• Date (last 10 years)
• Type of source (like books, articles, video, reference entries)