LibGuides: Business, Management & Marketing Research Guide: Starting Your Research

How to Search

1. Review your assignment to determine what types of information you will need.

2. Do some background reading. This preliminary research will help you to...

select a topic, if you haven’t already done so
see what is being said about a topic
get an overview of what and how much information is available in various databases

3. Create a list of keywords to search with. Take note of what search terms and specialized vocabulary are used when discussing your topic, as well as for each aspect of your topic including broader and narrower terms, synonyms, historical terms, and possible cultural terminology.

Narrow your topic by deciding what aspects of the topic you will be investigating.

Research Question: What serious challenges did companies face in 2020?

Search terms to try:

company, business, corporation, enterprise, or specific business names
challenges, crisis, reorganization, impact, litigation, regulation, public relations
2020, recent years, quarterly, annual

4. Conduct several searches using keywords. Look for results that work, and also make note of terms that don’t work. This will help you modify your search.

Try different combinations of your keywords in different collections.
If you get stuck, chat with a friendly librarian. They are standing by and ready to help you.

5. Select your sources along with its premade citation (when available). Cite sources correctly by using the citation guides.

Where to Search

The library provides quality information in many formats, including

Database sources, which include scholarly research, magazine articles, news, ebooks, and more
Books and ebooks, found in the library catalog
Streaming videos, some with search features and transcripts available
Websites and organization pages found in this guide

What Kind of Article Is It?

[Create a chart outlining features of each]

Identifying Scholarly Sources
A Word document version of the chart below

When deciding whether to use an article, it is helpful to identify three things:

1. Who is the Author?
2. Who is the intended Audience?
3. What is the article's Purpose?

	Magazine Title: National Geographic	Trade Journal Title: Food Technology	Scholarly Journal Title: Journal of Morphology
Title and summary	Eating Green Discusses environmentally conscious eating choices. Consumers can choose organic options, purchase locally grown foods, and walk or bike to farmers markets to help reduce their carbon footprints.	Is Local Better? The author reports that eating local at the basic level makes sense because fewer food miles, or the distance food travels before it reaches the consumer, equal fewer emissions.	Evidence for most and least fattening local eating: customs from individuals' reports in their culture's terms The least fattening patterns of behavior can be identified in a culture's own words.
Author	Journalist hired by magazine editor	Journalist hired by editor	Researchers working in the field, often in teams and with university affiliations.
Audience	General public – interested consumer	Practitioners/professionals	Researchers/experts working in the field Students
Purpose	Edited articles offer an overview on a topic or current events, these general interest articles are: for entertainment and to sell ads to make a profit	Editor and possibly an editorial board offer articles of interest to those working in that field Purpose will be to offer advice and tips to those in the trade Some ads related to the profession	To share peer-reviewed research on a very specific aspects of a discipline using specialized vocabulary. Goes into lengthy detail. Often has charts and graphs. Always has citations/references Few or no ads.

Search Tips

Try these to get more specific or broader results

Boolean Operators

Using AND, OR, NOT can broaden or narrow a search depending on your inquiry. "AND" will give you results that contain both words. "OR" will give results about either word and "NOT" will not search the term preceding.
Example: Summer AND Flower, Summer OR Flower, Summer NOT flower

Wild Card

Use a * to include forms or variants of words in your search
Example: type test* to search for test, testing, tests

Phrase Search

By inserting quotes around an exact phase, you will search only the words you type in, in that exact order with no words in between term.
Example: "consumer product chemistry"

Adding a ~

Adding a tilde (~) to your search term will return related terms.
Example: ~nutrition will search also nutrition, food and health

Adding a -

Adding a negative (-) to your search term will take away that term in your search.
Example: Pets -cats will not find web sites that focus upon cats as pets.

Evaluating Sources

When searching on the internet, it is important to evaluate the information you find before using it in your research.

SIFT is a series of steps to take when evaluating the reliability of web sites and their claims. It is based on an approach used by professional fact-checkers, and was developed by Mike Caulfield from Washington State University.

Each letter in SIFT stands for one of the steps:

Stop!
Investigate the Source
Find Better Coverage
Trace Claims, Quotes and Media to the Original Source

When you see a web site that you are considering using or sharing, stop and ask yourself:

Do you know and trust the author or organization that published the web site?
What do you know about the reputation of the web site, or about the claims it makes?

Don't use the source until you have found out more about its content, its creator, and its publisher.

Watch the video below, which highlights the importance of verifying your sources, and then proceed to the next step (Investigate).

The quality of your research is determined by the sources you use. Investigate a source by leaving that web page and looking for information about the source elsewhere. Check several different places before deciding if the source is reliable.

Watch the short video [2:44] below to learn about some of the best ways to investigate a source. Proceed to the next step: Find Better Coverage.

Oftentimes the source of information you come across is not important, even if the claim itself is. What that means is, we can try and find the information we're looking at in other sources. This helps to both verify whether the information is true and to find a better, or more trusted, source of coverage.

"Trusted coverage" can mean:

A track record of accurate reporting
A reputation for minimizing bias in reporting

These can be determined through various online tools, such as the Media Bias Chart or the resources located in the Fact Checking Websites box on the Fake News -- Checking Sources page.

As you work through SIFT more, you can build up a list of trusted sources that can become your "go-to," saving you even more time in searching.

Many times the information we encounter is stripped of its context, which can distort its meaning. It's important to trace claims, quotes, and media back to their original source so that you can understand the context and ensure the information is being presented accurately.