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Finding scholarly information for your report

1. What you need to do

This guide will help you find scholarly information for Assessment 2: Report.

Be sure to read your course outline or course site for more assessment details, including the assessment instructions and marking rubric.

2. What are credible sources?

For your report, you need to find credible academic sources, such as peer reviewed journal articles. Sometimes peer reviewed articles may be called academic, scholarly or refereed articles.

Watch this short video to understand what makes something scholarly:

  • You may be asked to use scholarly, academic, or peer-reviewed sources.
  • Scholarly sources ("academic sources") include journal articles, books, conference papers, and theses.
  • Sources such as Wikipedia, newspapers, magazines, trade journals, newsletters, blogs, social media and personal websites are popular sources.
  • A scholarly source:
    • is written by researchers within a subject area,
    • reports on research findings,
    • contains comprehensive in-text citations and a reference list or bibliography,
    • uses specialised terminology and a formal writing style, and
    • is often peer-reviewed or refereed.
  • A peer-reviewed article is assessed by experts in the field before it is published.
  • Peer-reviewed journal articles should include:
    • author details including affiliations with organisations,
    • an abstract which summarises the article,
    • evidence of research findings, and
    • in-text citations and a reference list.
  • When searching in the Library Collection or databases, you can filter for scholarly, academic, or peer-reviewed resources.
  • Books can also be scholarly. A scholarly book:
    • is written by an expert,
    • is published by a reputable publisher,
    • has a table of contents,
    • provides in depth subject information,
    • includes an index of terms, and
    • has in-text citations and a reference list.

Alternatively, look at this guide:

3. Plan your search

Planning your search helps you find the most relevant results.

Watch or read the following to learn how to plan a search:


There are a few steps in planning your search. Select the headings below to follow the process.

For this assignment help, we use the following example topic:

What are reported barriers and/or facilitators to physical activity/sedentary behaviour for children?

You can use a framework like ‘PICO’ to break your problem down into its major concepts. For example, using PICo for Qualitative Studies framework:

Population children
Interest physical activity
Interest (2) barriers
Context primary school recess

 

For each PICO element, consider synonyms or alternative words you could use. This is important as not all authors use the same words to describe the key concepts in their articles.

See below for an example table.

Population children, child
Interest physical activity, exercise, sedentary behaviour
Interest (2) barriers, facilitators, enablers
Context primary school recess, lunch breaks

Tip: For the second part of your assessment, you need to identify the methods used to assess your intervention (exercise in the above example). To do this, try swapping out the terms under Interest 2 with terms like ‘assess’ OR ‘measure’

Add special symbols to your terms to search more effectively, by automatically finding word variations and more!

  • Truncation ( * ): Use at the end of a root word, to find all word endings
    • For example child* will find child, children, children's
  • Phrase searching: ("double quotes"): Use to lock terms together as an exact match.
    • For example "lunch break"
  • Wildcard (?) : Use to replace a single letter or number with any character
    • For example behavio?r will find behaviour, behavior

Tip: You can use truncation and wildcards inside double quotes.


For our example: 

Population child*
Interest "physical* activ*", exercis*, sedentary
Interest (2) barrier?, facilitat*, enable*
Context recess, "lunch break"

Create your search string by combining your terms.

  • Use AND to combine your different PICO elements.
  • Use OR to combine different terms within the same PICO element. 

For example:

Population child*
  AND
Interest "physical* activ*" OR exercis* OR sedentary
  AND
Interest (2) barrier? OR facilitat* OR enable*
  AND
Context recess OR "lunch break"

4. Where to search

You're now ready to start searching! The below are some key search tools you can use for this assessment.
 

The Library website

The Library Collection is a useful place to start looking for scientific evidence. The following video will step you through how to search:

UniSA logo How to search the Library Collection (1:47)


Medline 

Medline is a key databases for the health sciences and contains scholarly and peer reviewed literature in medicine, biology and allied health.

Emcare icon Medline


Google Scholar

Google Scholar is a great tool for finding scholarly material from a wide range of subject areas. Make sure you access through the Library website so that you won't be asked to pay for articles.

Google icon Why search Google Scholar (video 2:13) 

 

Note: View our Choosing where to search video to learn more. Additional databases are listed on the Find evidence page of this guide.

5. How to search Google Scholar

Google Scholar can be useful for finding scholarly information including articles. Access Google Scholar from the Library homepage for full text.

Note that Google scholar does not accept truncation (*) and wildcards (?) but will allow the use of "phrase searching" and AND/OR.
 

Start by putting a term from each PICO concept into the search box:

Screenshot of google scholar with the following search entered: child AND "physical activity" AND recenss
 

If you are having trouble finding relevant articles, try using some of your alternative terms: 

Screen shot of google scholar search with the following search terms: child AND exercise AND "lunch break"
 

Tip: In the above examples we only used one term per PICO concept. To use more than one, place brackets "( ) " around them.

  • For example: child AND ("physical activity" OR exercise")


Watch the video below for more help: 

6. How to search Medline

Select the Multi-Field Search option.

Start by putting each PICO concept on a new line. Notice your different concepts are connected with AND.
 

If you need to add more rows, use the "Add new row" option in the bottom right.

Screenshot of medline search
 

Try broadening your search by adding synonyms or alternative words to each line. Connect these with OR.

Screenshot of medline search


Not enough results? Try removing a concept or adding more of your alternative words.

Too many? Explore the Limits that are available to you to focus your search:

  • Select Limits (under search box) to see some basic limits.
  • Select Edit Limits to see even more.
     

You can apply these search skills when searching in other Library databases, such as Scopus.

7. Find statistics

For this assessment, you are required to describe socioeconomic factors and indicate the social determinants of health relevant for your chosen population. These are two credible Australian grey literature sources which we recommend you source statistics from in addition to peer reviewed articles.

 
Need more sources of health data? Visit

8. Evaluate your resources

It is important to evaluate all the information you find to ensure that it is credible and meets your needs. The below resources provide some guidance.

9. Write your report

You're now ready to write your report!

These websites from the Teaching Innovation Unit will assist you in writing up and referencing your resources.

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If you need help, just ask! (standard)

Navigate to the Ask the Library webpage. Navigate to the UniSA study help pals webpage. Navigate to the Studiosity webpage. Navigate to the Learning Advisors' webpage.
Contact: Ask the Library Ask: the Study Help PALs Use: Studiosity Talk to: a Learning Adviser