When doing research in the social sciences, you will likely find a mixture of popular and scholarly (also known as peer-reviewed) sources. Depending on your assignment requirements, both might be useful. It's helpful to understand the characteristics of each:

Popular articles Scholarly articles
1. Often written by non-expert journalists 1. Written by experts on that subject
2. Reviewed by editors who are often 2. Reviewed by other experts on
not subject-matter experts that specific subject (peer-review)
3. Written for a general audience 3. Written for other scholars
4. Published in newspapers and 4. Published in scholarly journals
magazines 5. Sometimes the language and subject
5. Easy for a non-expert to read matter can make it difficult to read
6. Often includes reporting from a mix 6. Reports the results of a research
of interviews with regular people, study.
interviews with experts, and
summaries of reports and other
scholarly articles

It's also important to know what each type of source is good for in your research:

Popular articles...
1. are published more quickly so they provide timely information on a topic
2. often provide useful background information to help you understand the big picture
3. can provide a sense of popular opinion about a certain issue
4. often contain first-hand accounts of people who experienced an event or are impacted by an issue so they give you a sense of how everyday people are impacted
5. can help the reader see an issue from many different points of view. News stories often include perspectives from a variety of people involved in an issue from government officials, experts in that particular area, people working in that area, and/or the people who are impacted.

Scholarly articles...
1. provide strong expert evidence based on quality research data
2. can often be more convincing because most people have been taught to respect traditional educational expertise
3. have more validity than popular articles because they are usually studying a larger population in a systematic way.

Before you start searching on your topic, it's helpful to consider the various possible keywords you could use in searching. Here's why:

1. The more words you put into a database search, the fewer results you'll get, so breaking down your research question or topic down into the most important keywords is critical.
2. Computers are clueless and don't know that certain words are used interchangeably. For example, they don't know that a word like salary means about the same thing as earnings, wages, or pay, so it's important to think of terms that mean the same thing.
3. The terms that you naturally think of when you think about your topic may not be the same words that experts use to write about the topic.

This requires you to think not only of the terms that naturally come to your mind, but to brainstorm terms that mean the same thing or are related. You can identify other keywords by looking for a Wikipedia entry on your topic or simply doing a Google search on your topic and seeing what related or synonymous words are used in the titles of results. Try to think of as many synonyms or related terms as you can.

Here's an example research question: Does the presence of a smartphone impact people's ability to pay attention in face-to-face conversations?

The most important keywords are smartphone, attention, and face-to-face conversations. Now, I will brainstorm other keywords that are similar to those original terms:

Smartphone Attention Face-to-face conversation
Cell phone Focus Face-to-face interaction
Mobile phone Concentration Face-to-face communication
Mobile Device Distraction Face-to-face dialogue
Listening

Once you have your keywords, you can start searching. Using connecting words (AND, OR, and NOT) will help you develop a targeted search and save time. This four-minute video from Portland State University Library will introduce ways to develop your search query using connecting words and other search tools.

The Library’s article search on the front page of the library website searches our two largest multidisciplinary library databases, Academic Search Premier and MasterFILE Premier. They contain not just scholarly articles, but also magazine and newspaper articles written for a non-expert audience. Before you search, be sure to click on the Articles tab, or you'll find yourself searching for books and videos. If you want to limit your search there to just scholarly articles, you can check the box for Peer Reviewed on the front page (shown below).

Watch this four-minute video on finding articles through the library to see how our library article search works and how to search it.

Now you're ready to start searching on your own in the Library's article search. If your assignment requires you to use scholarly sources, be sure to check the box that limits your search to scholarly peer-reviewed articles. If not, you can just enter your keywords into the Library's article search and click Search.

Try different combinations of keywords and see how they change your results list. When you find articles that look useful, email them to yourself so you'll have the article as well as the formatted citation without having to go back into the database again.