- Grand Valley State University
- Subject Guides
- Communication Studies
- Articles/Databases
Communication Studies: Articles/Databases
Communications databases
- Communication Source This link opens in a new windowJournal articles & more on all aspects of communication fields/majors.
Click "Choose Databases" and add Academic Search Ultimate and any others related to your topic. - Sage Journals This link opens in a new windowJournals published by Sage in communication-related fields & many other disciplines.
- Web of Science This link opens in a new windowCommunication research articles. Also includes a "cited reference" search to trace theories to the original and see how they are used currently.
- Sage Research Methods This link opens in a new windowIncludes articles, books, and videos about qualitative research methods.
Finding case studies
- Try any database which seems relevant, choose additional databases to search at the same time
- Look for ways to limit Language
- Search: su("case studies") AND su(ethics) AND su(communicat*)
- Look closely at the resulting menus - document types, location/geography, database, publication date, subjects
- In Web of Science, search: "case studies" AND ethics AND communicat*
- In JSTOR, search "case studies" OR "case study" in the item title, AND ethics AND communicat* in full text; narrow the Item Type to Articles and Narrow by discipline and/or publication title (choose relevant discipline areas).
Empirical Research vs. Secondary Resources
- Primary and Secondary Sourcesa video tutorial on primary sources (a.k.a. empirical research), secondary sources, why you would use them, and why analyzing these can be complicated.
To find primary sources in a database like Communication Source, use the terms
research (Su Subject terms)
AND primary OR quantitative OR experimental OR method* OR qualitative (SU Subject terms)
AND whatever your topic is.
Statistics
Search tips for finding articles
- use "quotation marks" around phrases
- truncate - shorten a word to its trunk or root to get alternate endings - with an asterisk * (shift 8), e.g., truncat* finds truncate, truncated, truncation
- apply Boolean connector AND to combine unlike ideas, e.g., dance AND promotion
- apply Boolean connector OR to connect synonyms, e.g., advertisements OR campaigns
Put it all together:
- "hip hop dance" in one box
- AND (promot* OR advertis* OR campaigns) in the next box
- use parentheses in single-box searching - when you don't have another set of boxes, e.g.,:
- "hip hop dance" AND (promot* OR advertis* OR campaigns)
Use the left or right menus to narrow your results, e.g., by language, date, subject, etc.
Databases have a citation (information about an article such as the title, author, name of the journal or magazine, volume and issue (which correspond to the date), date, and pages) and sometimes they will also contain an abstract, or summary, of the article.
Databases also often cite multiple types of resources - books, essays or chapters, government documents, etc.
Some databases will also have the complete item (called the full text): you should see a link to an HTML or PDF document. Or click on - this will check the other library databases for the full text of the article.
- Last Updated: Feb 22, 2024 12:35 PM
- URL: https://libguides.gvsu.edu/communications