Identifying Primary Vs. Secondary Research Articles
Keyword search using broad-to-narrow strategy
Question: How effective were public communication methods in communicating prevention measures during the pandemic?
Keywords: ​public communication pandemic CDC prevention
public communication= 5000+ results.
Add pandemic OR covid-19 OR coronavirus = 113 results. Notice your results are now much more specific.
- Limit to scholarly journals. Checkmark the Peer Reviewed box on the left side of your screen.
- Do the same to limit to Full Text (articles that you can access immediately)
- Which of these are original research studies? Tip: find the METHOD section.
- Use the date limiter to weed out very old articles. Try to find articles published within the last ten years or so.
Communication & Mass Media Complete database allows you to search through almost 1000 communication-specific news and research publications.
Note: You can simultaneously search dozens of Ebsco databases by opening Academic Search Ultimate below. This will increase the number of results that you get from searches.
Select Choose Databases, Select All. Now you are searching multiple databases at once!
SU Databases
A-Z list and by subject
Your topic may concern subject areas such as education, health, history, etc. You may consider searching within databases that contain articles that were published in subject-specific journals.
