This week we had a guest lecture from Dr Leanne Doherty from the Student Success Centre on how to search for material for our dissertation but also how to structure and write our dissertations.
When developing a search strategy to use in library databases to find the most relevant journals and articles for our dissertation we first need to identify our research question and then define the scope of our question. This helps narrow down our area that we will be searching for. We can use the following to help us define our research question:
Then when we begin to search, we can identify keywords from our research question and topic that would be useful in our searches. One of the techniques Leanne covered was using a Venn Diagram. This is done by putting each keyword or topic from your research question into separate circles and then add synonyms or alternative descriptions for each keyword in the relevant circles.
She also taught us some tips such as using phrase searching, truncating which usually uses an astrisk at the root of a word to find various endings for example: educat* would return results for "education," "educator," "educational. She also taught us about using boolean operators “OR” to combine words in a circle and “AND” to narrow your search and find results that include both those specific terms.
She also introduced us to Citation Chaining, a way we are able to discover related literature by following references in the articles we read by accessing the list of references, who has previously cited the article and allow us to access documents on similar topics we could use. When searching and screening the evidence we may use, we can follow the following:
We can also looked at deciding on inclusion and exclusion criteria for our searches. For example if our topic was the impact of loneliness in old people we would want to include old people but exclude any other age group such as adolescents or children as it is not relevant.
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I found this really useful especially with the techniques for searching such as using the Venn Diagram & citation chaining. I had previously started to look at finding some articles and journals for my dissertation but was struggling a little to find ones which specifically related so im hoping these techniques will make it a lot easier for me
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Quoting is matching the source word for word using quotation marks. It is used to convey a powerful meaning within your essay but it is important to introduce why you are using it, verifying the source and cite the original source.
Summarising is putting the main ideas into your own words, focusing on the key points such as the key concepts or arguments and avoiding the unnecessary details. You need to make it clear where your summary starts and ends and always cite the original source.
Paraphrasing is the best practice in academia, it allows you to express the authors ideas but in your own words to demonstrate your understanding. It should not match the source word for word or simply have the original words swapped out for synonyms.
An example of all three:
