Empirical Studies - Model UN - Library Resources - Research Guides at University of Northern Iowa

OneSearch - UNI Rod Library Discovery System

OneSearch
OneSearch is a multidisciplinary library database that can be limited to peer-reviewed journal articles.
First type in your topic.
Then after searching - limit your results to the option "Peer-reviewed Journals".

Databases for Locating Research on Public Policy and Political Science

Public Policy and Political Science Databases

JSTOR
This multidisciplinary database can be set to search for only Public Policy & Administration journals (41 titles) or Political Science journals (253 titles) or both. (Note - JSTOR is an "archive" and tracks slightly older and historical research. To find research conducted in the last five years - use other databases listed on this page).

Multi-Disciplinary Databases

ABI/INFORM
ABI/INFORM is a powerful business database that also tracks research in public policy. A Peer-Reviewed journal filter is available..

Academic Search Elite
Another good multi-disciplinary database. You can limit results to Peer-Reviewed journals either before or after your search.

APA PsycInfo
Psychology and behavior. One of the few databases that can filter results to research (empirical studies) as well as peer-reviewed journals.

Gale Academic OneFile
A good multi-disciplinary database. You can limit your results to Peer-Reviewed Journals either before or after your search.

Law Review Articles - Nexis Uni
In Nexis click on the "Law Review" option in the bottom left-hand corner - then type your search in the "Search in all Law Reviews for" search blank.

Project Muse
A smaller database that features some of the high impact journals in Public Policy and Political Science.Search results can be limited to the "Research Area" of Social Sciences - Political Science - Policy Studies.

Web of Science
Large multidisciplinary database. Good coverage of all the high-impact peer-reviewed journals in Public Policy and Political Science. Web of Science allows you to sort by most frequently cited articles. Web of Science also features a free version of EndNote (citation management tool).

Advanced Google Scholar Techniques

Google Scholar
Be aware of both the power and the limitations of this familiar search engine.

Use Google Scholar "carefully" to locate research articles:

“Quotes” and the intitle: command

When searching for a phrase in Google Scholar use quotes to "lock" the phrase in place ... e.g., "socioeconomic status"

The intitle: command allows you to search for a word or phrase in the titles of articles and books ...
e.g., intitle:"institutional change" ...
e.g., intitle:discrimination

Important - the intitle: command must be typed in all lower-case letters and the word or phrase to be searched must be immediately adjacent to the colon at the end of the intitle: command.

Set your publication date to recent years.

Google Scholar ranks your results in part based on the number of times an article has been cited. Since it takes a while for even the best research articles to accumulate a large number of citations this means that Google Scholar will tend to display older research.

Google Scholar ranks your results in part based on the number of times an article has been cited. Since it takes a while for even the best research articles to accumulate a large number of citations this means that Google Scholar will tend to display older research.

Since Google Scholar only displays roughly 400 results - it might be useful to reset the search results to multiple publication date options for topics that produce many results ... e.g., 2000-2023 or 2010-2023 or 2020-2023

Problems with Google Scholar:

Though Google Scholar covers a vast expanse of research it is also very problematic. For each potential secondary source you will need to answer the following questions: Is this an article from a peer-reviewed history journal - or - is this a scholarly book?

Many of the sources in Google Scholar are neither journal articles nor scholarly books . A source found in Google Scholar might instead be a conference presentation, a thesis, a dissertation, a magazine article, or a student essay.

Though Google Scholar covers a vast expanse of research it is also very problematic. For each potential secondary source you will need to answer the following questions:

Is this an article from a peer-reviewed journal?

and

Is this an empirical study? (Is it a research article?).

Peer-reviewed journal? Research?

Many of the sources in Google Scholar are neither journal articles nor research articles. A source found in Google Scholar might instead be a conference presentation, a thesis, a dissertation, a magazine article, or a student essay.

Peer-reviewed journal?

There are three good methods for checking to see whether a journal is peer-reviewed: OneSearch, UlrichsWeb, and Scholar's Portal.

Details on using OneSearch, UlrichsWeb, and Scholar's Portal to check for peer-review.

Research article? Empirical study?

You must inspect each article to determine if it is an empirical study. While many articles reporting quantitative research studies contain the sections Methods (or Method or Methodology), Results, and Discussion - quite a few will lack some of these sections and some research articles may not use any of those terms. Research articles reporting qualitative research may be even more variable. To be certain you should check with your professor ... or your librarian.