Communication & Media Studies

Research Process

Research Process

Research Process (aec)

Research Process

Research is a process that cannot (should not) be completed in one sitting. If you follow the steps outlined below, you should experience less frustration, anxiety and general dread, and be much happier with the end product. Librarians can help you at any step in the process, but specifically in topic development, background research, and the collection of evidence.

Once you get the assignment, you will choose your topic, and start brainstorming. Next, you will conduct some exploration or background research and take detailed notes about what you find. Using these notes, you will then focus your topic, and your brainstorming will then be about how you will start searching for your topic. Then, you will collect the information you need to support your topic. This is where you may go back to further refining your topic and collecting more background information.  Once you feel that you have enough information to start writing, then you will work on drafting your assignment. Again, you may need to collect more information if you feel that there are gaps in your paper. Once you have completed your writing, you will write your citations and bibliography. Then you will finish by evaluating the process.

One thing that I can’t stress enough, is that this process is cyclical. If you follow this process, then you may have to revise your topic, and search for new sources a few times. Don’t be discouraged if it feels like you are going in circles with your research. You can always come meet with a librarian for help with your research.

 

Literature Reviews

Literature Reviews

COMM 390: Lit Review

What is a literature review?

A literature review is not research, it is a review of the research that has been done on your topic.

A literature review is NOT just a summary, but a conceptually organized synthesis of the results of your search. It must

  • organize information and relate it to the thesis or research question you are developing
  • synthesize and critically analyze the results comparing and contrasting their findings
  • identify controversy and themes that appear in the literature

A literature review is a piece of discursive prose, not a list describing or summarizing one piece of literature after another. It's usually a bad sign to see every paragraph beginning with the name of a researcher. Instead, organize the literature review into sections that present themes or identify trends, including relevant theory. You are not trying to list all the material published, but to synthesize and evaluate it according to the guiding concept of your thesis or research question. (From Univ. of Toronto)

Check out these sites for more help understanding literature reviews

Tips on conducting research for a literature review

  • Use bibliographies and reference pages of articles to direct your research. You may start to see some trends with the people who are writing about your topic. Check the bibliography for more articles about your topic.
  • Use the authors who you have found to be writing on your topic as starting points. Look for additional articles, and rebuttals, retractions or responses to their research

Use this chart to track articles you read for your literature review:

Scholarly Articles

Scholarly Articles

what is a scholarly article (aec)

What is a scholarly article?

A scholarly article is how researchers (scholars) communicate the findings and analysis of their research. Scholarly articles:

  • Provide original research and analysis - these articles are based on studies or experiements, or analyze an artifact or event. Every scholarly article presents something new about the world we didn't know before.
  • Are written by scholars - scholars tend to hold PhDs, or other advanced degrees and are professors at universities.
  • Are published in peer-reviewed journals - you won't find these floating about on the internet, they have to be published in a journal. Most times you'll find them in the library databases.
  • Might be hard to read - they act as the primary conversation between scholars about a field of study. Since they are written by scholars, for scholars, they contain specialized language that might be hard for the lay person to understand.

reading scholarly articles tips

Reading Scholarly Articles

Reading a peer-reviewed journal article is a multi-step process. By focusing your attention on specific sections, you will be able to decide whether or not the article will be useful to you.

 

Stage 1: Title + Abstract

The title and abstract for an article will give you the purpose of the article, a small amount of context, and a summary of the findings. After reading the title and abstract:

Does the title and abstract indicate that it will help you understand your topic in detail? (it implies it will support your thesis statement or provide answers to your research question).

 

If the answer is YES move to stage #2

If the answer is NO, locate a different article

 

Stage 2: Introduction + Conclusion

These sections will include the purpose of the article along with the main conclusion. After reading these sections:

What did the authors want to learn; what did they study? (thesis statement, research question, hypothesis)

 

Stage 3: Results + Discussion

The Results or Findings section include specific pieces of data, statistics or examples from the study. The Discussion or Analysis section will interpret these results and help you understand why these results are important. These are sections where you can take direct quotes to use in your own papers. After reading these sections:

What did the authors learn about their topic? (use quotation marks for direct quotes)

What are some specific examples you can use from the Results? (use quotation marks for direct quotes)

 

Stage 4: Methodology & Literature Review (optional)

The Literature Review summarized the research that was done prior to this article, and the Methodology section describes how the current experiment was conducted. These sections will be more useful as you move through your journey as student-scholars, and into your major and research methods courses.

 

Stage 5: Decision Making

After reading the article, you should be able to fit it with your topic, and know how to best use it in your paper. If it takes too much effort to "make it fit," set the article aside, and move on to the next one. After reading the article:

How does this article answer your research question or support your thesis statement?

If it doesn't, how can you use it otherwise?

 

** If you find an article that is not formatted (uses headings/sections) in this way, start with stages 1 and 2, then read from the end toward the beginning until you can answer the questions in stage 3 **

Databases for Communication & Media Studies

Databases for Communication & Media Studies

Most Useful

Database Full Text Sort descending Coverage Scholarly
Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA)

Provides abstracts of articles from about 2,000 journals (published worldwide), coverage of recent books, book review citations and dissertation listings.

Links to full-text via Get-It 1973 to current All
Communication & Mass Media Complete (Via Communication Source)

Provides abstracts and full text for more than 200 communication journals.

Some full-text; plus links to full-text via Get-It 1950 to current Some
Academic Search Premier

This scholarly collection offers information in nearly every area of academic study including: computer sciences, engineering, physics, chemistry, language and linguistics, arts & literature, medical sciences, ethnic studies, and many more.

Some full-text; plus links to full-text via Get-It 1975 to current Most

Also Useful

Database Full Text Sort descending Coverage Scholarly
ERIC

A national database of education literature, including reports and journal articles.

ALERT! Within ERIC search results: IF the "Link to ERIC full text" does not work, try the "Get It!" link.
Links to full-text via Get-It 1966 to current Some
Sociological Abstracts

Provides access to the latest international findings in theoretical and applied sociology, social science, and political science.

Links to full-text via Get-It 1963 to current All

Evaluating Information

Evaluating Information

Part 1: Evaluating Information Online

Research Process

A drawing of the research process steps starting with Get Assignment, then Topic, then Understand, then Analyze, then Complete, and finishing with Evaluate.

With your GEL professor, you learned about the scholarly research process and how to use that to conduct research for your classes while you’re at CSUSM. In this lesson, we are focusing on the ‘evaluating information’ part of this process. With so much information available through different sources (websites, newspapers, magazines, journals) and not all of it equally credible it is important to know how to think critically about the various aspects of an information source.

We will be learning about a method called VQE, which includes three levels of evaluation:

1. Visual: surface level
2. Quality: just below the surface
3. Ethos: deep dive

Whether you know it or not, you engage in these levels of information pretty frequently -- every time you meet a new person, read something on the internet, or any other time you encounter a piece of new information.

Let’s use the analogy of water sports to see how we can apply the Visual Quality Ethos method of information evaluation:

Visual - on the surface

This is very quick, at a glance evaluation. Evaluating information visually is only sufficient when it doesn’t matter what source you use (e.g. argument with friends, where the Starbucks is, general knowledge).

Image of a person on a jet ski with the questions: What is it? Who created it?

Things that you can quickly notice visually on source:

  • Date - when was it published, update times listed, date relevance?
  • Title - does it contain emotional cues?
  • Grammar/Spelling - are there any errors?
  • General topic
  • Ads/Pop ups
  • Author - is a name or organization mentioned?

Quality - below the surface

This level of evaluation is about determining credibility, basic purpose, content. This is the minimum level of evaluation for any source you want to use in college, whether it is for a class discussion, or for a more formal assignment.

Image of kayakers in the background and an otter in the foreground with the questions: Where do they get their information? Who is the intended audience?

Image of a snorkeler with a big fish in the foreground with the questions: How was the information created? How was the information reviewed?

Things that you might need to dig a little deeper to find out about a source’s quality:

  • Author/Organization/Credentials - Do they have the “right to write” about the topic? Credentials could mean education or experience - give examples of both.
  • References Listed - Where is the author/org getting their information?
  • Verify information with another source?
    • Do a quick Google search. Can you find this information easily?

Ethos - deep dive

Ethos in this case is referring to its “ethical appeal” -- what are they trying to convince you of, and why? When we try to evaluate the ethos of a source, we need to dig really deep and ask “big” questions.

Image of a diver next to a reef with the questions: Why does the information exist? How does it make you feel? Who funds the site? What bias does it have?

Things you can ask yourself to determine the ethos of a source:

  • What is the purpose?
  • Does it make you feel anything (note emotions while reading)?
  • Where does the funding come from?
  • Is there bias (one side favored over the other, especially in an unfair way)? Is only one side of the topic presented?

 

Now that you’ve learned this method of information evaluation -- Visual-Quality-Ethos -- let’s try it out on a couple of sample websites.

Next - Proceed to 1A. Activity: Evaluating Websites and complete those exercises to try it out.

 

APA Style

APA Style

GEO

GEO

GEO 102

This guide will prepare you for your library session for GEO 102, and serve as a place to refer back to for help at a later date. The links below and the library session will prepare you to search and use sources for the following speeches:

  • Speech of definition
  • Community impact
  • Multiple perspectives
  • Persuasive Speech

Prior to the library session, complete the following:

1. Watch this video: GEO Research Process 

2. Complete this tutorial

3. Read this presentation: GEO Finding Evidence

(Note: the audio has been disabled, but you can read the transcript below each slide)

4. Complete the quiz in Cougar Courses.

 

Most Useful

Database Full Text Sort descending Coverage Scholarly
Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA)

Provides abstracts of articles from about 2,000 journals (published worldwide), coverage of recent books, book review citations and dissertation listings.

Links to full-text via Get-It 1973 to current All
Communication & Mass Media Complete (Via Communication Source)

Provides abstracts and full text for more than 200 communication journals.

Some full-text; plus links to full-text via Get-It 1950 to current Some
Academic Search Premier

This scholarly collection offers information in nearly every area of academic study including: computer sciences, engineering, physics, chemistry, language and linguistics, arts & literature, medical sciences, ethnic studies, and many more.

Some full-text; plus links to full-text via Get-It 1975 to current Most

Also Useful

Database Full Text Sort descending Coverage Scholarly
ERIC

A national database of education literature, including reports and journal articles.

ALERT! Within ERIC search results: IF the "Link to ERIC full text" does not work, try the "Get It!" link.
Links to full-text via Get-It 1966 to current Some
Sociological Abstracts

Provides access to the latest international findings in theoretical and applied sociology, social science, and political science.

Links to full-text via Get-It 1963 to current All

COMM Courses

COMM Courses

Comm 415: Communication & Social Protest

Communication 415: Communication & Social Protest

For your literature review, you will need to learn both about the history and background of your topic, and understand what previous research shows about your topic.

Use the News Databases at the bottom of this page for background and history, and choose Scholarly Articles on the left for the best databases for communication.

 

Use these databases to explore different types of news sources. Most of what you will find in these databases are news articles, which are very useful, but are non-academic, and not scholarly.

Most Useful

Database Full Text Sort descending Coverage Scholarly
New York Times (Historical Collection)

The New York Times Historical Collection provides full page and article images including the NY Daily Times (1851-1857). The most recent four years not included in this historical collection can be searched through ProQuest Direct, LexisNexis or Factiva.

Full-text Archive None
Los Angeles Times (Historical)

Archival issues and articles beginning with 1881. Issues published during the past twenty-four years are not available in this database. Check ProQuest or Factiva databases for the material not held in this collection.

Full-text Archive None
LexisNexis Academic - News

Direct to the News link of LexisNexis Academic

Full-text 1975 to current Some
GenderWatch

GenderWatch contains publications which focus on how gender impacts a broad spectrum of subject areas. GenderWatch is a repository of an important historical perspective on the evolution of the women’s movement and the changes in gender roles.

Full-text 1970 to current All
African American Newspapers, 1827-1998

Newspapers digitized from 37 states chronicling African American experiences and influence in a variety of events from the early 19th through late 20th centuries.

Full-text 1827 to 1998 None
Hispanic American Newspapers, 1808-1980

Spanish and English language newspapers offering news, advertisements, opinion and more from across the nation reflecting contemporary thought and activity.

Full-text 1808 to 1980 None
Ethnic NewsWatch

Full-text ethnic newspapers, searchable in English or Spanish.

Some full-text; plus links to full-text via Get-It 1992 to current None

Also Useful

Need Help?

Allison Carr

Academic Transitions Librarian and Librarian for Communication & Media Studies and History
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Office Telephone

760-750-4337

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KEL 3425

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