CCJ 380 - Criminal Justice Research: Articles & More
Criminology & Criminal Justice Databases
- Criminal Justice Abstracts with Full TextOffers citations, abstracts, and full text articles in scholarly journals on crime trends, prevention and deterrence, juveniles, police, courts,and sentencing.
- National Criminal Justice Reference ServicesContains full text, criminal justice publications from federal, state, and local government along with books, research reports, journal articles, and unpublished research.
- Military & Government CollectionComprised of full text magazine and newspaper articles on national/international policy and politics, public administration, political science, international relationships, national and global security, law enforcement, and the military branches.
Multi-disciplinary Databases
- Academic Search PremierProvides selected full text, scholarly, and peer reviewed articles in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.
- Google Scholar
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Google Scholar searches the academic, scholarly Web for peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles. Searching Google Scholar from the Portland State University Library will identify full text articles available from PSU Library resources as well as open access articles from other universities and colleges. - JSTORContains full text articles from major research journals in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. Coverage of most journals starts from the beginning of a journal's publication and typically excludes the most recent three to five years.
- Dissertations and Masters Theses Global (ProQuest)Maintains citations, abstracts, and full text of dissertations from 1997 to the present along with citations and abstracts for selected masters theses from 1962 to the present. Includes subject, title, and author indexing to U.S. dissertations from 1861 to the present.
- Web of ScienceMaintains citation searching for high impact research journals in the arts and humanities, social sciences, and sciences and includes emerging sources citation indexing from 2005.
Using What You've Already Found to Find More Video
Even if you just find a few articles or books, it may be enough to get you going. Watch this two-minute video to see how you can stop searching and use what you've already found to find more.
Brainstorming Keywords for Your Topic Video
This quick video explains how to turn your topic into keywords while searching for library resources and sources on the Web.
Moving from a Research Question to a Search Strategy in 4 Steps
Moving from a research question to an effective search strategy involves breaking down the question into its Core Concepts, brainstorming Keywords, and then constructing an effective Search Strategy. You can do this in 4 steps.
1. Articulate your research question
Is union representation good for public employees in Oregon?
2. Break down your research question into its core concepts.
- Union Representation
- Public Employees
- Oregon
3. Now list alternative ways of describing these concepts.
Your list can include broader, narrower, and related concepts.
| Union Representation: | Collective Bargaining | labor union | labor dispute | SEIU |
| Public Employees: | workers | state worker | employee | staff |
| Oregon: | Pacific Northwest | Washington | United States | Portland |
4. Create multiple search strategies by combining words from your concept brainstorm list.
- Union AND employee AND portland
- (Labor Union OR collective bargaining) AND state work* AND oregon
- Etc.
Tips
- Use truncation (an * at the root of a word to find different word forms. For example, librar* will find libraries, librarian, librarians, etc.
- Use parentheses and the OR operator to "nest" your search--different terms/phrases that represent the same concept.
- Use quotation marks for phrase searching.
- Use Boolean operators to connect search terms:
- OR -- finds results with either or both terms -- it is used to broaden your search.
- AND -- finds results with both terms -- it is used to narrow your search.
Acknowledgement: The content in this box was based off of Mandy Swygart-Hobaugh's work at Georgia State University Library.