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Technological Literacy Across the Social Sciences - SSCI101

Finding missing information

Research is a process of inquiry and your investigation into a complex issue, compiling information from a wide variety of sources to develop your own answer to the question or solution to a problem.

You started with a general idea for a topic and are ready to narrow it down to a more focused research question. Throughout the research process, but especially now that you have decided what your focused research topic is, you can identify gaps in your own knowledge of the topic and in the research you've found.

If you're not sure what you are missing, here are some questions you can ask yourself to focus your topic:

Who is impacted by your topic? Consider gender, age, profession, etc.
What time period (when) are you interested in? The present, the past, during an event, etc.
What location (where) are you interested in? This could be a specific place like RVCC, New York, or Brazil, or a general one like colleges or urban areas.
What aspects of your topic are you researching? Causes, effects, solutions, etc.

You could think of these as variables in your research - some may be independent varaiables chosen in advance (like location or population) while others are dependent variables--results or consequences of that selection (for example, the impact of an issue may be different in the suburbs than in the city, and may impact men differently than women).

Once you have identified what you are missing, continue to research those specific information needs, finding new sources and ideas that help you understand your topic and answer your research question.

As we just discussed, scholarly articles have a narrow focus and can provide you with very specific information. How could you use a scholarly article?

Databases for narrowing your topic

Exploring a general topic so you know more about it will help you narrow your research question. These databases allow you to browse topics or issues and find a focus to your research.

Global Issues in Context This link opens in a new window
A Gale database that broadly covers the important issues of the modern world integrating news, global viewpoints, reference, country information, primary source documents, videos, and statistics in a single search.
The database focuses on broad issues as well as targeted issues including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Syrian civil war, genetically modified foods, internet control and security, and privacy rights. Updated daily with more than 660 geographically diverse full-text newspapers, magazines, and journals for a global view.
Opposing Viewpoints in Context This link opens in a new window
This Gale database provides information covering today's hottest social issues. It contains pro/con viewpoints, magazine & newspaper articles, scholarly journal articles, reference articles, and more.
This Gale resource provides more than 20,100 pro/con viewpoints covering today’s hottest social issues and more than 19,200 reference articles, including topic overviews, charts and graphs, and statistical information. It contains over 300 profiles of federal agencies and special-interest groups and offers a dedicated portal focused on the annual debate topic determined by the National Speech and Debate Association. It provides access to full-text newspapers and periodicals from multiple perspectives, including National Review, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Commentary, and CNN Wire. This is a great resource for background research on topics to gain different perspectives.
Gale In Context: College This link opens in a new window
A Gale online resource that presents material on topics such as history, science, political and social issues and popular culture in support of students for papers, projects and presentations.
It is designed to reinforce critical thinking and problem solving skills. This database provides access to full-text newspapers and periodicals such as The Economist, The New York Times, National Geographic, Newsweek, Popular Science, and Smithsonian. This site places an emphasis on images, video and audio selections with archival film clips and broadcast video from sources such as BBC News, New York Times and NPR.
US History In Context This link opens in a new window
A Gale resource that provides an overview of our nation’s past that covers the most-studied events, decades, conflicts, wars, political and cultural movements and people.
This site places an emphasis on images and video with access to more than 5,000 primary source documents as well as reference materials such as the Dictionary of American Biography, the Dictionary of American History, Gale Encyclopedia of Multicultural America, U*X*L Encyclopedia of U.S. Economic History and U*X*L Encyclopedia of U.S. History. It contains full-text articles drawn from top periodicals and newspapers and audio selections from NPR, The History Channel and Associated Press.