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RELS 116: Catholicism (Clark)

Spring 2020

Research Strategies

Constructing Your Search

In general:

  • Use keywords or brief (2-word) phrases instead of sentences -- one or two for each part of your topic.
     
  • Use concepts and other nouns as your keywords.  Think of words that are likely to be used in titles (or that you have seen in titles).
     
  • When you find a good source, look at its References or Works Cited list. That will often lead you to other useful primary and secondary sources.

If your keywords aren't turning up many results, you may need to:

  • Try thinking of synonyms or other ways of phrasing your topic. If you can find one or two relevant articles, check to see what subject keywords are listed (or look for other clues in the text) and try to build keywords from there. 
     
  • Try a broader search (broader topic, broader date-range, etc.).
     
  • Try a different database.

What Am I Searching?

There are two different ways in which research tools tend to function. 

Some tools -- Google and other web searches as well as certain databases -- conduct what is called a full-text search, which scans every word of the document(s) being searched from beginning to end. 

Others, including the majority of our research databases and the library catalog, conduct what is called a bibliographic or metadata search. These tools scan only the metadata, or descriptive information about the documents they contain -- titles, abstracts, subject keywords and other info. This is why searching for sentences or entire phrases often works poorly in the research databases, and why Google produces so many more matches. 

So which do you choose? 

A bibliographic search will bring you fewer results, but will be tailored to results that mention your terms in the descriptive information (and therefore, are more likely to be relevant). 

A  full text search will bring you a greater number of results, but more of them are likely to be irrelevant (for example, if your search term appears only once in the document in an off-hand mention). However, it might catch some articles that you might not see otherwise, and may help you find articles whose bibliographic information uses different terminology to describe your topic. 

You may want to experiment with tools that conduct both kinds of searches, to get the widest range of resources on your topic. 

Using The Scholarly Conversation
No piece of research stands alone; each is part of a broader scholarly conversation in that topic/ field. You can use a single article  or other resource to find other, similar research by tracing the paths of that conversation:

Keywords – Check the abstract, subject terms and full-text to discover the vocabulary being used in this particular scholarly conversation.

Subject Terms – Subject terms not only provide insight into vocabulary you should use but also serve as search tools – click on these tags in any database (or the catalog) to find more resources on a given topic.

Cited References – Check the references list (or bibliography) to see what previous research this resource is drawing on. From here, you may wish to consider: 

- Previous articles or books published on your topic
- Other authors who have published on your topic
- Journals where your topic is frequently discussed

Times Cited – Check Google Scholar to see which articles or books have cited your sources, and to find
more-recent research which builds on your original information.


** Once you find a new resource, you can also trace the scholarly conversation around that book/article to find even more resources! **

For a simpler, graphic representation of this research strategy, download the handout below: 

Understanding & Choosing Appropriate Sources

Scholarly vs. Popular Sources:

Scholarly sources are written by experts on a particular subject (for example, a professor or other researcher). They also go through an extra process of review and approval by a group of other experts before they can be published. Usually, scholarly articles are written in 'academic-ese' and designed to be read by other scholars. However, because scholarly sources take a long time to be approved and published, they are not always good sources for current events.  

How can you tell if you have a scholarly article in your hand? 
The chart below compares the characteristics of scholarly vs. popular (non-scholarly) sources: 

It's important to keep in mind that scholarly sources are not always the best or only source available to you -- it depends on what information you are trying to find:

  • Due to the time required for a scholarly article to be researched, written, go through the peer review process and then be published, it can be difficult to find scholarly articles published about recent events, discoveries, etc.. You should expect 1-2 years between the time an event occurs and the time academic research on that event begins to be published, with some exceptions. 
     
  • For matters related to Church practice, church publications (such as bulletins from the USCCB) are also good sources of information that are generally not available in peer-reviewed formats. 
     
  • News articles, correspondence and other 'primary sources' can also provide useful insights, again depending on your topic.  

General Resources