Academic Research on the Internet

Having trustworthy, insightful and accurate sources are key to any research paper. But where does one find these sources?

I found an extremely helpful exercise in ‘The Curious Researcher’. The exercise was broken up into four steps with a different task in each step; the objective was to teach us how to find Internet based sources for our topic.

Step 1

This step requires us to research the key words of our topic in three different search engines.  For example Google, Yahoo! Ask.com, Bing etc.

Step 2

This step requires us to launch a search on one or more of the metasearch engines. A metasearch engine is a specialized search engine that focuses on particular subjects such as education, politics etc. For example Dogpile, Mamma, Search.com etc.

Step 3

Finally, visit Noodletools and find the link for “choose the Best Search” scroll down and find a search engine that you have not used yet

Through out steps 1 to 3, it is important to save all relevant results for future use.

Step 4

Add the results you think are promising to your bibliography, in other words, keep track of what you find.

Stepping away from my previous topic of depression I did this exercise on a topic that I have great interest in. While most people think sports only aids to the physical development in adolescence, research suggests that it, in fact, promotes emotional, communal as well as spiritual development.

I found the results remarkable, helping divide the research on my task into three easier to manage parts. By doing this division it forced me into getting three different types of opinions on my topic bring further insight from different angles and points of views. Step 1 helped me find broad general information on my topic, step 2 helped me find more specific information on areas such as education while step 3 helped me find government information on this topic of sport and adolescences development.

Example of Step 1 - http://spoonful.com/family-fun/benefits-sports-kids

This gave me a broad idea of some benefits that sport has for children.

Example of Step 2 - http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/sports/basketball/22araton.html?_r=0

This step helps me find an article based on life lessons one can learn through sport.

Example of Step 3- http://www.health.gov/paguidelines/blog/post/The-Benefits-of-Playing-Sports-Arent-Just-Physical!.aspx

This step allowed me to find a government based website on the benefits of playing sports in school.

I highly recommend trying this exercise, as you can see by my three examples above, I got such a variety of sources that are reliable and accurate.  This exercise helps to simplify searching for sources while at the same time delivering greater results.

Love, Serve, Repeat.