Skip to Main Content

COMM 101 Trenary: Find articles

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.