8th Grade Civics Action Project

Civic Action Research Project: Advanced Searching in Databases

Using the academic databases advanced search features to improve results and raise research skills to a higher level.

Harvard- What the Principles Get You

Click the image to the left to access the Gale Research Databases

Use this video as a demonstration and tutorial for using Gale Research Databases

How to Search

What is your question?

"Will removing food dyes from school lunches help students focus more at school?"

What are your key terms?

Phrases, tag words, synonyms

"food dyes" or "food coloring" diet, foods and attention

Set Your Limits &

Choose Your Content

Always Limit to "Full Text"

Choose your content type (article, photos, video, etc)

Choose your content level

Use Your Results

Read the Abstract/Summary: most articles contain one and it will give you a good overview of the article

Learn from what you have: skim the articles and jot down new terms you can search if these results are not what you are looking for

No article will contain everything you need. You will need more than one article to create your knowledge.

Helpful Hint

Look for an "advanced search" on ANYTHING- Gale, Google, all of them...

Leave Google for everyday research, use Gale for academic research. But if you are going to look on Google- here are some helpful tips.

Media Bias

Realize that different websites, news channels, blogs, have a target audience they direct their information to. This is a helpful graphic for understanding the bias of these channels.

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