HOW TO REVIEW THE LITERATURE AND CONDUCT ETHICAL STUDIESreports you will examine, how many libraries you
will visit, and so forth.
Also decide how to record the bibliographic
citation for each reference and how to take notes
(e.g., in a notebook, on 3" 5" cards, in a computer
file). You should begin a file folder or computer file
in which you can place possible sources and ideas
for new sources. As your review proceeds, you
should more narrowly focus on a specific research
question or issue.
Locate Research Reports.Locating research
reports depends on the type of report or research
“outlet” for which you are searching. As a general
rule, use multiple search strategies to counteract the
limitations of a single search method.
Articles in Scholarly Journals. As discussed earlier,
most social research is published in scholarly jour-
nals. With hundreds of journals, each containing
hundreds of articles, an article search can be formi-
dable. Luckily, online services and specialized pub-
lications make the task easier.
Perhaps you have used an index for general
publications, such as Reader’s Guide to Periodical
Literature.Many academic fields have “abstracts”
or “indexes” for the scholarly literature (e.g.,Psy-
chological Abstracts, Social Sciences Index, Socio-
logical Abstracts,and Gerontological Abstracts).
For education-related topics, the Educational
Resources Information Center (ERIC) system is
especially valuable. More than one hundred such
source tools are available now. With a source tool
or online service, you can look up articles by title,
author name, or subject.
It may sound as though all you have to do is to
go find the source tool and look up a topic. Some-
times that is how it works, but at other times, things
are more complicated. The subjects or topics in
source tools are broad. The specific research ques-
tion that interests you may fit into several subject
areas. You should check each one. For example, for
the topic of illegal drugs in high schools, you might
look up these subjects: drug addiction, drug abuse,
substance abuse, drug laws, illegal drugs, high
schools, and secondary schools. Many of the articles
under a subject area will not be relevant for your
literature review. Also, many times there is a 3- to
12-month time lag between the publication of an
article and its appearance in a source tool.
Major research-oriented libraries subscribe to
the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI)of the In-
stitute for Scientific Information. This valuable
resource has information on more than 1,400 jour-
nals. It is similar to other indexes and abstracts, but
it takes time to learn how to use it. The SSCIcomes
in four books. One is a source index, which provides
complete citation information on journal articles.
The other three books refer to articles in the source
book. The organization is by subject, by university
or research center for which the researcher works,
or by authors who are cited in the reference sections
of other articles.
You can conduct an online search by author, by
article title, by subject, or by keyword. A keyword
is an important term for a topic and is often part of
a title. You will want to use six to eight keywords in
searches and consider several synonyms. The com-
puter’s searching method can vary and most look
for a keyword only in a title or abstract. If you
choose too few words or very narrow terms, you
will miss relevant articles. If you choose too many
words or very broad terms, you will get a huge num-
ber of irrelevant articles. The best way to learn the
appropriate breadth and number of keywords is by
trial and error.
Years ago, I conducted a study on the way
that college students define sexual harassment
(Neuman, 1992). I used the following keywords:
sexual harassment, sexual assault, harassment,
gender equity, gender fairness,and sex discrimi-
nation.I later discovered a few important studies
that lacked any of these keywords in their titles.
I also tried the keywords college studentand rape
but got huge numbers of unrelated articles that
I could not even skim.
Numerous computer-assisted search databases
or systems are available. A person with a computer
and an Internet hookup can search article index col-
lections, the catalogs of libraries, and other infor-
mation sources around the globe that are accessible
on the Internet.