Keywords, also referred to as search terms, are words that represent the main ideas of your topic. These words are considered the most important, (or the key), ideas, concepts, or subjects about which you’re looking for information.
For this assignment, consider combining the following search terms in various ways to find related information. We'll use borderline personality disorder as an example in the suggestions below.
Be sure to enter the search terms exactly as they're written here, including special characters or capitalization. This tells databases how to search in a very specific way.
To learn more about using connecting words (AND, OR, NOT) and other special characters with your keywords, read the Search Strategies section of the Research Library Guide.
You don’t necessarily have to read an entire article! Instead, look for sections called:
These will help you quickly determine whether or not the article meets your needs and is relevant. At the college level, these sections are really all you need to complete your assignments.
Once you find two or three relevant articles, take a look at the reference lists from those articles. This is called citation chaining. There you’ll find a list of sources the author(s) used to write their own article – just like what you’ll do for your own paper. These sources should provide further information on the subject discussed in the article.
You can also find what articles have cited your resource. This is called forward citation chaining and is a great way to find resources that have been published more recently. Forward citation chaining can be done using Google Scholar, as demonstrated in the video below.
There are four things to consider when determining the quality of information. Instead of determining if a resource is “good” or “bad”, evaluate its credibility, accuracy, reliability, and relevance. Use these criteria to evaluate all types of resources, including information generated by artificial intelligence (AI). What do these terms mean?
Credibility means how likely the information is to be trustworthy. Some indications of a source’s credibility might be:
Accuracy means how likely the information is to be correct. Some indications of a source’s accuracy might be:
Reliability means someone or something that has proven to be consistently correct. Some indications of a source’s reliability might be:
a publisher that consistently publishes content that is correct
an author who has published a number of works in trustworthy publications
the information is presented in a way that doesn’t rely on:
Relevance means the information relates to your topic. Some indications of a source’s relevance might be:
Use our checklist to help you determine whether a resource is of quality.