Empirical Research

General Suggestions

• Search with multiple keywords or search phrases.
• When searching with phrases (such as "social media"), add quotation marks around the phrase. This tells the database to treat it as one term (rather than searching each word individually).
• Using the Advanced Search options, put each keyword into its own search box and use AND/OR/NOT:
  • AND = will only show results that include BOTH terms
  • OR = will show results if they have at least one of the terms
  • NOT = will exclude results that use that term

Database Tools

• Limit search by source type (“Academic Journals” or “Scholarly Journals”) 

• Limit search by document type (such as “study”, “comparative study”, or "case study") 

• Some databases have specific content codes assigned to empirical research articles that can be searched - for example: cc(9130) in ProQuest Sociology

Topic-Related Keywords

For your topic, brainstorm keywords that are:

• Broad (more general, such as "teachers")
• Narrow (more specific, such as "elementary school teachers")
• Related (similar topics, such as "education")
• Plain or Everyday Language (simple terms, such as "teenagers")
• Jargon or Academic, Scientific, Technical, etc. (formal terms, such as "adolescents")

Empirical Research Keywords

In addition to keywords for your topic, use words or phrases such as:

• “study” or “studies” 

  • “longitudinal study” 

• “research” 

• “observation” 

• “survey” 

• “experiment” 

• “findings” 

• “subjects” or “participants” 

  • “participant group” 

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For more help with database searching and keywords, check out the Research Help library guide.