NSCI 325: Perspectives on Gender (Professors Talyn, Stahley, and Keys): Find a Peer Reviewed Scholarly Journal Article

The second section will analyze the problem, by discussing the history, underlying reasons, social structure, scientific phenomena, or interpretation of the problem.

This section should be informed by and refer to at least 2 peer-reviewed, scholarly journal articles from 2010-2017, to provide information and analysis about the nature of the problem.

The most appropriate type of source for this section is peer reviewed journal articles written by scholars in the appropriate fields.

Scholars in different disciplines approach the same problem from different perspectives.

For example, if you're researching the gender wage gap and you use a general database to find scholarly journal articles, some of your results may analyze the gender wage gap from an economic perspective, some may look at it from a sociological perspective, and still others may approach the problem from a psychological perspective, and so on. 

This means that you need to decide--before you start your research--which disciplinary perspective you want to explore. Then you can choose a specialized database to investigate the problem from that disciplinary perspective.

So, if you're interested in studying how the gender wage gap is calculated, you'd probably want to search in an Economics database.

Or, if you're interested in studying how African American women's lives are impacted by the gender wage gap, you'd search in a Sociology database.

Use the "Databases by Subject" box in the right-hand column, to get to library databases organized by discipline.

Computer searches look for the words you typed--not the idea you meant, or what you really wanted. So your choice of words has a direct and measurable effect on your search results.

• Think of keywords (important words describing your topic)
• For each aspect of your topic, choose a keyword, and combine the most important ones for your search

Example: If your topic is how drinking affects college students' success in school, you might try the keywords:

drinking college students grades

If you get no results or too few results, try different keywords. Think of synonyms and related terms.

Examples: For drinking, try alcohol. For grades, try academic achievement.

More tips:

• If you have too many results, try adding a keyword, or using a more specific keyword.
• Avoid long phrases or questions. Use only the most important words.
• Avoid punctuation, particularly colons (:), which may interfere with your search