Skip to Main Content

Social & Political Science: Plan Your Search

This guide will help Social & Political Science students find and evaluate key resources needed to successfully complete their assessments.

Why plan your search?

 

At university you are expected to find and use scholarly information:

  • in your assignments
  • to prepare for class
  • to explore new theories and ideas

However, to find scholarly information you need to search in a particular way to get good results.

Use this page to learn how to plan your search and find the best scholarly information sources to use. 

Step 1: Identify your key concepts

 

Before you find any information, identify the main ideas (or key concepts) in your assignment question or research topic.

Example:

Explore the effect of socially constructed gender roles on self-identity.

The key concepts are: 

Social norms Gender Self-identity

Step 2: Brainstorm keywords & synonyms

 

Different words can be used to describe the same concept.

Think of other words that could be used to describe your key concepts. Synonyms should also be included. 

Example:

Social norms Gender Self-identity

Cultural norms

Masculine

Feminine

nonbinary

Self-view

Icon

Tips: 

Some resources to help with brainstorming: 

  • Google & Wikipedia
  • Dictionaries & Thesauri
  • Reference books & Encyclopedias

Step 3: Build your search

 

Boolean Operators are a way of telling a database or search engine how to do your search. Watch the video to learn how.

Use Boolean Operators to combine your keywords & synonyms into a search. You can build multiple searches using different synonyms & keywords.

Example: 

Use OR to combine synonyms & similar words:

Key Concept Keywords & Synonyms Search

Gender

Masculine

Feminine

nonbinary

 (Gender OR Masculine OR Feminine OR nonbinary)

Use AND to combine your key concepts together: 

("Social norms" OR "Cultural norms") AND (Gender OR Masculine OR Feminine OR nonbinary) AND (Self-identity OR Self-view)

NOTE: We used inverted commas around "Social norms" and "Cultural norms", because we want to search for them as phrases. This means databases will only return results that include those words together, not separately. 

Step 4: Start searching

 

You will need to find different types of information during your studies. These may include: 

  • Books & book chapters
  • Journal articles
  • News articles
  • Statistics
  • Reports
  • Grey literature
  • Primary sources

The type of information you are looking for will determine where you search, and how you search. 

Using the steps above will help you find most of these information types, but there are also other places to look.

Explore this study guide or ask a librarian to discover more. 

Step 5: Review your results

 

Not all the information you get from a search will be useful. A successful search will show results relevant to your topic. If your results are not relevant go back and try different keywords in your search.

Find relevant results by checking the: 

Even if your information is relevant, it might not be good quality. Check if it passes the C.R.A.P. Test before you use it.