Skip to Main Content

PSC 401/501: Public Administration: Finding Journals: Political Science

How do you Find Research Articles?

When you research a topic, you are looking for resources that provide more information and context on your topic. There are two major ways to find articles:

  1. Through searching databases and Google Scholar.
  2. Through citation mining.

A database is a collection of journal articles (and usually other items) that you can search all at once. Databases are usually searched using keywords or terms.

Creating Search Terms

Searching is an iterative process. You will have to try out different search terms and combinations.

Our example research question for this project is: 

How does the level of citizen participation in local government decision-making processes impact the effectiveness of public service delivery?

To create search terms, we need to identify the key terms in our research question. For this question, we can pick out: 

  • "citizen participation"
  • "local government"
  • "public service delivery"

Keep phrases in quotes. This helps the search function understand that you are looking for "local government", and you are not just any article that uses the word "local".

We can also use synonyms or equivalent terms for each keyword. 

Example: "Citizen participation" can also be: "citizen engagement" or even "civic engagement"

We can also search related ideas, such as looking for articles about "city government", "city councils", or "county government".

Tricks for Choosing Search Terms

Using Your Research Question

Turn your research question into search terms.

  1. Write out your research question. How do short-term employment contracts affect hospital healthcare workers' mental well-being?
  2. Identify the important words or terms. Look at the nouns that specify the scope of your topic. 
    1. What people? Contract healthcare workers
    2. Where? Hospitals
    3. What kind of issue? Mental health
  3. Write out each important word/term. List synonyms or terms that have the same feel.

Using an Article You Like

Look at that article's keywords. Keywords are usually written underneath the article's listing in your search results. 

Different databases use different keywords. By reusing the keywords, you are learning to speak that database's "language".

Using Search Suggestions

Some databases will give you suggestions for search terms when you start typing in a search box. These are terms that the database absolutely recognizes. 

Sometimes, the suggestions will be several terms in the same text box, all separated by the Boolean Operator or. This means that the search engine will search for all those terms at once.

Always check before you select a string of terms. Some of the terms might not be equivalent for your specific research topic!

Help! My Search...

It is normal and expected to do multiple searches to find enough useful materials to complete your research project. Don't worry about if your first few searches are not fruitful.

My search had way too many results!

You can try to limit your search results in a few different ways:

  • Add a location to your search.
  • Filter your search results by language.
  • Filter your search results by date published.
  • Use multiple search terms in the same search.
  • Find an item in your search results that is useful. Take a keyword to search with from that item.

My search had too few or no results!

You can expand your search in a few ways. 

  • Use the OR option between terms to search synonyms at the same time: pork OR pig OR ham.
  • Review filters, including date published filters. Are the filters necessary?
  • Try searching using only one term at a time.

If you are doing research for a literature review, then an unsuccessful search may still be useful for your research. You can include in the literature review that this topic has been under-researched.