GUIDE TO RESEARCHING

Louise Sopher

Sp07, Warwick Sociology Grad

PRINCIPLES OF ACADEMIC ESSAYS

• If choosing a topic:

• Don’t worry about whether or not it is too big. You can always focus on only one or two areas of that topic

• Pick anything you are interested in. You will have to sit through hours of reading!

• There is no official guide on how many references should be in an essay. Some tutors for some subjects will tell you 6 per 2,000 words. For other subjects, or with other tutors, it’s 1 per 100 words. My advice? Stop counting! Start writing.

• If you write a good essay, or more importantly if you use your references well, it doesn’t really matter how many references you have. See the next slide for more on this.

HOW TO USE YOUR REFERENCES WELL

Remember this:

• When writing essays, we are unqualified academics. So:

• When stating something, who says we’re right?

• Someone else has probably said the same thing in another way.

• Someone else has probably done some research that ‘proves’ this might be true.

• Someone famous, someone respected, or someone with titles to their name has probably expressed an opinion we want to use.

• Quote them.

START WITH IDEAS

START THINKING ABOUT WHERE TO GET YOUR INFORMATION FROM

PRF & MEMORIES

FROM THE JOBWILL GOOGLE WILL GOOGLE

WILL USE

TEXTBOOKS

WILL FIND

NEWSPAPER

ARTICLES

GOOD SOURCES

• Good sources to use are:

• Academic ones – journal articles, textbooks

• Quality Newspapers (The Times, The Telegraph) for furthering your argument

• Relevant Websites (East of England Ambulance Service, PatientUK, GOV UK, Kings Fund, HSE & other sites like charities for specific medical conditions)

• Using a combination of good sources in your essay make it look better. It shows that you have read around i.e. you haven’t just stuck with what your JRCalc tells you, and you are up to date on your topic.

• To prove that you are up to date on your topic, you can also use recent news articles or quote organisations that so happen to mention, say, the number of calls the ambulance service are currently receiving to chest pain, if you’re writing about chest pain.

FINDING GOOD SOURCES: TAGS

• Google is a search engine that picks up on titles of pages as well as whatever they are tagged with

• What do I mean by tags? Have a look at the next slide

Common words or phrases in a book on Google Books

The NICE website allows you to search for titles of guidance sections & also tags. Search diabetes for example and you will be able to select a ‘diabetes, pregnancy’ tag. That is not the title of the guidance

All blogs and articles contain tags. Tags make it easier to find them.

NOW THAT YOU KNOW THIS, YOU CAN START TO GOOGLE BETTER

LETS GO BACK TO WHERE YOU CAN GET YOUR INFORMATION FROM

PRF & MEMORIES

FROM THE JOBWILL GOOGLE

WILL USE JOURNAL

ARTICLES

WILL USE

NEWSPAPER

ARTICLES

WILL USE

TEXTBOOKS

FINDING JOURNAL ARTICLES AND TEXTBOOKS

• It is easiest to use Google as suggested on the slides before, but you can also search on these websites:

• Books.google.com

• Openathens.net

• Jstor.org

The problem with using sites like openathens is that you will not be able to access all content with the login the Trust (or the university) provides for you.

Google Books & Amazon tend to show you limited free previews of books. TIP: Occasionally it may be worth checking both Google Books & Amazon for the same book to see how much of it you are allowed to read. You can also try refreshing the page, or opening the link through a different web browser (Firefox instead of Chrome, for example) if Google is telling you that you are only allowed to read a certain number of pages. If you open it in another browser and start reading from page 20, it doesn’t know you’ve already read 20 pages!

TIPS FOR WHAT TO SEARCH

• Your topic is about treating chest pain?

• Search for national chest pain guidelines, Trust specific guidelines, and guidelines relating to your role (EMT, Paramedic etc)

• Search for PPCI criteria. You could even search for PPCI criticism

• Find success stories

• Find stories about failures

• Find statistics about the number of calls we get to chest pains, and the prevalence of Mis.

TIPS FOR WHAT TO SEARCH

• Your topic is partly about communication?

• Try searching for journal articles on communication with healthcare professionals

• Try searching for the same thing from the patient’s perspective (newspaper articles, blogs, websites etc)

• Try searching for our guidelines

• Try searching for charities that offer training & quote their reasons for it

• Try searching for information relating to your role:

• Healthcare Student + communication/Newly qualified + communication

• Paramedic + communication

TIPS FOR WHAT TO SEARCH

• Your topic is partly about decision making?

• Try searching for guidelines

• Search for information relating to your specific role (students/newly qualified vs those with experience)

GENERAL TIPS

• Allow yourself to read up on different disciplines (nursing, etc) but be open about it in your essay, e.g. ‘although this refers to nursing, the same problem could be said to apply to our profession’)

• Write it in the right way, and you can say pretty much anything. Want to input your opinion without making a statement?

• ‘It could be argued’

• Then find some research to back up your argument. Say, ‘in fact, this research appears to agree’

MORE TIPS

• Make a point

• Back it up

• Conclude your point (Point, Evidence, Explanation)