Start with a version of the topic you shared for your paper proposal. For exampl

Start with a version of the topic you shared for your paper proposal. For example, if you want to write about the rise of social media addiction in American pre-teens, you might use a search string like: “social media problems” and realize that it is too vague because it returns over 1,000 results (and not all of them about the topic you want). Our goal is to find around 100 results for a topic, since the smaller number means that we have a higher chance of finding the specific research we need. (Note: the first results are usually the most relevant.)
In one of these two databases, do at least three searches related to the topic you picked. For each one, write down the search terms you used as well as how many results you had for each term. For example (using Gale OneFile):
1.) social media problems 1,530 results
2.) social media problems preteens 197,388 results
3.) social media addiction 872 results
Now filter your results by limiting them to peer-reviewed scholarly articles. In Gale, you do this by putting checkmarks in the boxes for “Full Text Documents” and “Peer-Reviewed Journals.” (These boxes are found under the FILTER YOUR RESULTS heading on the right-hand side of the search results page. You can see some screenshots of that here. In JSTOR, you do this by going to the left column and putting checkmarks in the options given under “Academic Content.” (You should check boxes for “Journals,” “Book Chapters,” and “Research Reports.”)
4.) How did these filters change your search results?
Now read this page on using Boolean Operators (AND, OR, and NOT) in your searches on Gale. These terms will also work on JSTOR, so do a little experimenting to see which terms help refine your results. To use our example above, you can take “social media problems preteens” and change it to “social media problems AND preteens,” which will give 11 journal results instead of 197,388.
You can also use quotation marks to narrow down your sources by putting all or some of the words inside quotes. For example, if I put “social media addiction” in quotes, I have only 620 academic journal results instead of 872.
For #5 and 6, give two examples of searches using Boolean Operators or quotation marks and note how many results you have for each. For example:
5.) “social media addiction” 620 results
6.) social media problems AND preteens 11 results
Lastly, let’s narrow these results down to things written recently. This is especially important when researching technological or societal developments. (Topics like cybersecurity, social media addiction, and artificial intelligence have changed so significantly in the past 2 years that an even shorter time limit is needed when researching them.)
In Gale, go to the right-hand side under FILTER YOUR RESULTS and click the button for “Publication Date.” In the Custom Date Range, put “11/01/2018” in the “From” box and click today’s date (11/12/2023) on the calendar for the “To” box. This will give us results from the past 5 years. In JSTOR, you can do the same by going to the left column under Date and typing in the years “2018” and “2023” in the From and To boxes.
7.) How many results did you get by limiting the publication dates for one of your previous search terms?
Now spend a little time researching. Try new search terms and skimming some of the articles you find. Some articles give a list of “key words” or “related subjects” on the first page: if one of these articles helps you, make note of these key words for future searches.
Lastly, answer this question:
8.) What is something that you’ve learned about database searches that might help future students writing researched argument papers?