1 / 35

Criminology Dissertation October 2013

Criminology Dissertation October 2013 . Are you feeling overwhelmed at the prospect of doing a literature search for your dissertation?. Yes No A bit!. How do I begin a literature search?. By devising a search strategy . How do I devise a search strategy? Identify any limitations

star
Télécharger la présentation

Criminology Dissertation October 2013

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Criminology Dissertation October 2013

  2. Are you feeling overwhelmed at the prospect of doing a literature search for your dissertation? • Yes • No • A bit!

  3. How do I begin a literature search?

  4. By devising a search strategy

  5. How do I devise a search strategy? • Identify any limitations • 2. Think about your topic & identify your keywords

  6. Devising a search strategy: how to tackle it • Limitations? • Will there be any geographical limits • Will there be any time limits i.e. how far back do you want to search

  7. Devising a search strategy: how to tackle it • Identifying keywords? • Think about your topic & select terms/keywords that best describe or express it

  8. Let’s look at an example…. • This is our topic: • ‘Support for families with problems in the UK, specifically Wales’ • What terms best describe this topic? • What are the key concepts?

  9. Topic: Support for families with problems in the UK, specifically Wales

  10. What other keywords/terms could be used…. • Think about: • Broader/more general terms • Narrower/more specific terms • Related terms • Synonyms

  11. Topic: Support for families with problems in the UK, specifically Wales

  12. Don’t worry the snowball effect will occur …..

  13. Keep a record

  14. I have a search strategy – what’s next?

  15. To get the best out of a search strategy you need to control how you use your search terms • These search tools will help: • Combining terms using AND, OR, NOT • Using the Phrase Search • Using the Truncation Symbol • Using the Wildcard Symbol

  16. AND

  17. OR

  18. NOT

  19. Phase search Use quotation marks “ ” to keep keywords together e.g. “child protection” “elder abuse” “British association of social work”

  20. Truncation symbol * child* child childhood children

  21. Wildcard symbol ? Behavio?r Behaviour Behavior

  22. I have received too few results: what should I do? • Use the Boolean operator AND • Use the Boolean operator OR • Give up!

  23. Too few results? • Try … • Check the thesaurus; terminology can differ • Use the truncation symbol • Combine your keywords with OR

  24. Too many results? • Try … • adding additional search terms with AND • use more specific keywords • use refining/filter menus within the search tool

  25. Do you know what peer-reviewed journals are? • Yes • No

  26. Choosing the right search tool: where to start? • You can use iFind Research to: • To locate journal articles if you have the full reference • To search for articles on a topic • Select & access key databases & resources for your topic

  27. Do you agree with this statement: “A good literature review gathers information from many sources” • Yes • No • Don’t know

  28. Sources of information to consider • Books • Journal articles • Reports • Newspaper articles • Official publications • Statistical information

  29. Where will you search for your information? • Books & Journals • Academic database • Library catalogue • Google • iFind Research • All of the above

  30. How often do you use Google to look up information for your Academic work? • All of the time • Some of the time • Hardly ever

  31. Choosing the right search tool It’s not a good idea to rely on Google Google has many disadvantages -you will receive an unmanageable number of results -will give irrelevant & inappropriate results -not everything will be free of charge -there is no quality control

  32. Evaluating Web Resources : • Key questions to ask : The Five Ws • Whowrote the information? • What is the purpose of the site? • When was the content created? • Where does the information come from? • Why is this information useful to me?

  33. Why academic databases are a better choice • Indexing is entrusted to people not search engines • They index academic quality publications • e.g. Journal articles, Conference papers • A large proportion of the content is from peer reviewedjournals

  34. Further help:Library Support for Criminologyon Blackboard (under “My Studies”)

  35. Need help? Just ask! buslib@swansea.ac.uk /swanuni.iss @swanuni_iss http://buseconlib.wordpress.com/

More Related