I've spent a lot of time working with our reference librarian on this topic. After analyzing students' responses to a literature search homework assignment, here are some common problems my students have and some areas in which they need improvement:
Searching the Literature: Areas in Which Methods Students Need Improvement
1. Creating appropriate search terms (students try to use phrases and treat the data bases like Google)
2. Determining when to use the thesaurus (students use common terminology rather than the PsychLit termiinology)
3. Checking for misspelled words in search terms (gee, I couldn't fine any articles on deperssion)
4. Failure to use logical operators
5. Failure to narrow searches (one problem area is that they obtain abstracts of unpublished dissertations)
6. Stopping search once a minimum number of matches are found
7. Failure to use wildcard characters
8. Don't do searches based on authors� names
9. Need to learn to tree forward (finding articles that have cited a key article; our data base interface shows how many times an article has been cited by others and thus provides access to a citation index)
10. Need to learn to treeing backward (our data base interface shows how many references and allows you to obtain a list of the refs in a particular article so you can obtain primary sources cited in an article)
Hope this helps you out.
Lisa
Lisa D. Hager, Ph.D. Department of Psychology Spring Hill College 4000 Dauphin St. Mobile, AL 36608 251 380 3055 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: Claudia Stanny <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: "Teaching in the Psychological Sciences" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Teaching in the Psychological Sciences" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Literature Searches
Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2004 10:40:10 -0500
Whenever I teach a research methods course, I invite a librarian to conduct a workshop to introduce students to literature searches using PsycINFO and other data bases. Aside from the usual advice about Boolean combinations, what suggestions do you offer to students who are trying to learn to identify useful search terms and create effective searches in these data bases?
Claudia Stanny
________________________________________________________
Claudia J. Stanny, Ph.D. Associate Professor Web Site: http://uwf.edu/cstanny/ General Track Coordinator Department of Psychology Phone: (850) 474 - 3163 University of West Florida FAX: (850) 857 - 6060 Pensacola, FL 32514 - 5751
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