Research does not have to be an odious task. Think of it as an opportunity to explore ideas that you've been wondering about. In fact, according to the APA (American Psychological Association), research is defined as "the creation of new knowledge and/or the use of existing knowledge in a new and creative way so as to generate new concepts, methodologies and understandings."
In your final paper, you'll explore a topic that interests you by reading what experts and scholars have to say about it, then you'll decide what you want to say about it and you'll tell your story within your paper.
Research is a process that has steps you can follow to get your work done!
For this class, you will be writing a research paper that will be due the last week of the course. You will choose a company and explore a topic about that company that interests you.
The paper is to be written using APA (American Psychological Association) Style.
If you do not understand any aspect of your assignment, ask your teacher. They are here to help you!
Carefully review the topic options your professor has listed for your final. Which one is most interesting or meaningful to you? If necessary, do some basic Web searches or use the databases below to learn a little more about each option before you select one. Librarians are happy to help you brainstorm potential topics. Have your assignment description ready when you meet with a librarian to facilitate the experience.
Once you've decided on a topic option, do some background reading to get better acquainted with it. How are other researchers and writers discussing your topic? What seems to be the most important and/or controversial aspects of your topic? What arguments are being presented?
Preliminary reading is a great help in developing your main points (definitions, background, causes, effects, etc.). It will also help you identify useful search terms for future database searching.
The point is not necessarily to start gathering your actual sources -- though you may very well find some along the way -- but to get comfortable with your topic by consulting engaging, easy to understand sources.
Here are some great databases for background reading:
Why search here? Use this database for preliminary reading as you start your research. You'll learn about your topic by reading authoritative topic overviews on a wide variety of subjects.
What's included: Gale eBooks is comprised of subject, specialized encyclopedias with articles written by scholars and experts.
Why search here? Use this database to search our collection of thousands of eBooks the MJC Library owns through EBSCOhost. These books can be a great place to start your research.
What's included: Thousands of eBooks covering a wide variety of topics.
Why search here? This is a great database to use when you want to explore different viewpoints on controversial or hot-button issues.
What's included: It includes pro/con articles, court cases, primary sources, videos, media, editorials, and news on more than 800 hot topics in business, politics, government, education, and popular culture. Use the search or browse topics by subject or A to Z.
Create some basic questions to guide your inquiry and get you to start thinking about the structure of your paper. As you start to answer basic questions like:
You'll likely revise or add questions. This is a normal part of the research process.
The MJC Library & Learning Center subscribes to roughly 100 databases. Listed below are some of our most popular databases; an MJC research librarian will be happy to point you toward the best database(s) for your given topic. You can see a complete list of MJC Databases under Articles and Databases on the MJC Library & Learning Center home page.
I've listed some databases and high-quality websites below that I've found particularly useful for this assignment.
Why search here? Use this database to find a wide variety of information on business topics and company profiles.
What's included: Articles from over 1,000 business publications dating back to 1985 and more than 10,100 substantial company profiles from Datamonitor
Why search here? Use this database to find credible sources for topics in law, political science, and business. This is your source for law review articles and court cases.
What's included: Print and online journals, television and radio broadcasts, newswires and blogs; local, regional, national and international newspapers; extensive legal sources for federal and state cases and
statutes, including U.S. Supreme Court decisions since 1790; and business information on more than 80 million U.S. and international companies and more than 75 million executives
Why search here? Use this database when you want to focus your business research on a particular region of the United States or Canadian Provinces.
What's included: Key resources include newspapers, radio and television news transcripts, trade publications, magazines and newswires provided by leading publishers in business news including The Washington Post, PR Newswire US and more.
You can find useful information in news articles and industry publications.
Why search here? Search 29 databases at the same time that cover almost any topic you need to research at MJC. This is a good resource to use when you want to delve deeper into your subject.
What's included: EBSCO databases include articles previously published in academic journals, magazines, newspapers, books, and other media outlets.
Why search here? When you want to find broad coverage on almost any topic you need to research at MJC, use Gale databases to search over 35 databases simultaneously.
What's included: Gale databases include articles previously published in journals, magazines, newspapers, books, and other media outlets.
Why search here? Use Access World News when you need to find current news stories. It's especially useful for local and California news. This is your source for The Modesto Bee from January 1989 to the present.
What's included: Articles from of local, regional, and national U.S. newspapers as well as full-text content of key international sources. It includes in-depth special reports and hot topics from around the country.
Watch this short video to learn how to find The Modesto Bee.
The two websites below are standard sources of business information. Remember, too, that you can often find valuable information about your company on their websites.
Before you jump into hunting and gathering your information, be sure you know how not to be fooled by unreliable, false, or misleading information. It's not hard if you train yourself to ask some simple questions that will help you explain why a particular source is reliable and a good fit for your research project.
Google the author's name or dig deeper in the library's biographical databases.
When searching library article databases, look for a checkbox to narrow your results to Scholarly, Peer Reviewed or Peer Refereed publications.
Check in the library's article databases to find reviews of the source in order to get a sense of how it was received in the popular and scholarly press.
The internet is a great place to find both scholarly and popular sources, but it's especially important to ask questions about authorship and publication when you're evaluating online resources. If it's unclear who exactly created or published certain works online, look for About pages on the site for more information about the authorship, or search for exact quotations from the text in Google (using quotation marks) to see if you can find other places where the work has been published.
While applying the CRAAP Test to a website, that site isn't always the best place to answer questions concerning authority, accuracy, and point of view about itself. You can not always trust what an author or organization says about themselves, and there are sites that may look very professional and credible that are actually promoting a certain agenda or viewpoint.
If you are unfamiliar with a online source, it is good practice to open a new tab and perform a search on the author and/or organization providing the source. This process is called Lateral Reading. In addition to reading "down" the webpage in order to evaluate it, you open additional tabs and read "across" multiple pages to determine what others are saying about your potential source. This helps you build the body of evidence needed to determine if the source is suitable for your research need or not.
You will be using APA Style to format your paper and cite your sources. APA style is a set of rules created by the American Psychological Association.
APA style was created by social and behavioral scientists to standardize scientific writing. APA style is most often used in psychology, social sciences (sociology, business), and nursing.
Use the pages below to learn APA Style.
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