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WRT 101 - Desert Vista -Controversial Issues and Your Career - Ariza Fontecha: Find Articles

1. Locate the Top Article Databases

1. RESEARCH THE CAREER

        Click OCCUPATIONS

  •  Then under What can I learn about occupations?  Click Occupations
  • ​Click a letter of the alphabet for your occupation
  • Each career has it own web page with many topics, such as working conditions

 

2.  RESEARCH THE CONTROVERSY

When you search MegaSearch, you have access to over fifty databases for articles and other types of literature.  From browsing these articles, you can can identify and choose to read about a controversy in your career.

Examples:

Career field                Controversy   

Nursing                      Should nurses participate in assisted suicide?

Financial adviser       What are the ethical responsibilities of a financial adviser?     

Dancer/Ballerina        Should ballerinas observe weight standards?

Additional databases that you can search for controversial material regarding your career:

2. Examine Controversies in Your Career

​Sample Search in MegaSearch:  I want to be a fashion model.  What is a controversy or debate in this field?

In the top box, enter a word of phrase for your career.  Then click Search.

  • Enclose a phrase in "quotation marks"
  • Use an asterisk* as a wildcard to find different endings.  Example:  model* will find any of these words: model, models, or modeling.

 

Focus on keywords that signal a controversy:

  • controversy  controversies
  • debate         debates
  • disagree       disagreements
  • ethic             ethical

To find all variants of these words, we add wildcards (asterisks*) to the stem of the word.

In the second search box, type in the following: 

controvers* or debate* or disagree* or ethic*

 

Before you search, click the pull-down menu (to the right of this search box).

  • Select AB Abstract       
  • Now, click Search.

 

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Find information that helps you . . . 1) explain the debate/controversy; 2) support your argument; 3) deal with opposing arguments.

To find sources that support the points of your argument, you do Advanced Searches in Megasearch:

Here is a second search example:

If you are looking for the danger of being injured as a firefighter.  Your basic search looks like this:

 

Now you can focus the search to find specific supporting sources.   Use the third search box.

Search 1:  Add statistics to the third box:   

Search 2:  Replace statistics with burn* or smok*:  

 

Special Search Strategy

Truncation: *

  • The asterisk * is a common symbol used to represent any number of letters at the ends of words

  • Helps find singulars, plurals, and variant endings of words

  • Example: nurs* finds nurse, nurses, nursing

  • Most databases let you limit search results. Some limiters include:

    • Language  

    • Publication type..such as Peer-Reviewed or Scholarly Journals.

    • Date of Publication

​Phrases: " "

  • Enclose phrases in quotation marks when searching the Web or most databases

  • Phrase searching in individual databases may vary. 

  • Example: "fashion model"

  • Example: "registered nurse"

MLA Style for Academic Work