COM 498 Internship: Capstone: Finding Articles

You may also find it useful to look in a few other databases that contain publications specific to education, communication theory, etc.

You are being asked to locate and use articles that are "empirical research". Empirical research uses data derived from actual observation or experimentation.

To determine if an article is an empirical research article, use these guidelines:

• What is the name of the journal? Popular magazines like Newsweek or Time don't publish empirical research articles; publications like  Communication Research or the Journal of Applied Communication Research do.
• How long is the article? An empirical research article is usually substantial, not 1 or 2 pages.
• Does the article contain references to other works? Serious researchers always cite their sources.
• Does the abstract of the article contain variations of the words study, measure, subjects, data, survey, or statistical to describe the empirical research?
  (Finding Empirical Research Articles. University of San Francisco Gleeson Library 11/03 http://www.usfca.edu/library/handouts/researcharticles.pdf Retrieved 8/28/06)

Here are some resources that explain what empirical research is.  

• Empirical Research Reports in... This site contains a step-by-step look at the parts of an emiprical research article, from Rutgers University.
• Finding Empirical Research Articles This is a handout geared towards USF's resources but has a good definition/checklist of guidelines.
• Research Methods: Understanding: Empirical Research This is a tutorial aimed at linguistics majors, but has some useful information on the process of empirical research.
• Conquering Empirical Research This is a research guide developed by the University Library at Mississippi State University.
• Strategies for finding empirical studies and research articles This site gives some suggestions on terms to use when searching library databases for empirical articles.