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Econ/Legal Studies 128: Research Paper Library Resource/How To Guide

Assignment || Policy Institutes || Scholarly Article Databases || Statistics || Citation Style Guides

Assignment

Write a policy brief that explains a policy or program, discusses empirical research on the policy or program, and provides recommendations regarding what stance, pro or con, to take.

Required Elements

• Explanation of policy or program and rationale in economic terms.
• One or more tables or figures that provide descriptive statistics.
• Two or more cites to articles in an economics or public policy journal that include empirical evidence on your policy. Cites to web pages that are not published journal articles will not be counted toward the required two cites.
• Reference list with citations in Chicago Manual of Style, APA, or another commonly used citation format.

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Step 1: Find the Policy or Program

Quick and Dirty Search: search policy/research institute web pages, find policy briefs that discuss your topic, make note of laws proposed or enacted, check the bibliography, look at the statistical sources cited, journals cited, names of authors or contributors cited.

Keep a list of terms and keywords for your scholarly article database search.

Suggested Economic Policy Institutes

NOTE: read about each institute to determine what their potential bias, political or economic, may be. Each site has a history or about us section, take some time to read through it - know your policy institute's goals and objectives.

EPI (Economic Policy Institute)

Brookings Institution

Cato

NBER (National Bureau of Economic Research)

OR, conduct a Google Uncle Sam search for your policy/program. Google Uncle Sam only searches .gov or government web sites.

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Step 2: Locate Scholarly Articles about the Policy or Program

Recommended Database for searching - Cambridge Scientific Abstracts (CSA/Illumina). This is a relatively easy to search and multidisciplinary database.

Go to the library research page and:

• Type CSA/Illumina in the search box.
• Select Advanced Search.
• Select Social Sciences from the subject drop down box located directly under the green search button.
• Use your list of keywords from step 1 and type them into the search box(es)

Example Topic : Welfare Reform

Potential keywords: welfare reform, TANF, welfare to work, public aid, public assistance, personal responsibility and work opportunity act 1996, etc., cost(s), analysis, statistics, data

Successful Searches:

If your search is successful and you find some relevant articles, make a note of the descriptors - these are subjects the database uses to index your topic and they are located immediately to the right of each individual search result.

Try running a search with database descriptors to locate articles; try combining descriptors with keywords and see what results you get.

Unsuccessful Searches:

• Use the database thesaurus located in the tab called Search Tools.
• Select thesaurus from the next set of tabs( the page defaults to a command search box)
• Select "sociological indexing terms" from the drop down list of thesaurus search options
• Enter the term you were searching by and see what the thesaurus recommends - make note of the terms used by the database and rerun your search with descriptors and keywords

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Other databases to consider searching:

• Econlit : EconLit is a searchable database of citations with selected abstracts of literature in economics. Includes coverage of major journals as well as articles in collective volumes (essays, proceedings, etc.), books, book reviews, dissertations, and working papers.
  Subject area(s): Social Sciences. Covers: 1969-present.

NOTE: there are no direct links to full text or cruzcat/melvyl searches in Econlit; open two browsers to search for articles and check citations in Cruzcat/Melvyl.

• Business Source Premier :Searchable database of articles from scholarly business journals and other sources. Subjects include management, economics, finance, accounting, and international business.
  Subject area(s): ['General Subjects', 'Social Sciences']. Covers: 1965 - current, though a few select journals are available from the 1940's and 1950's.

• Westlaw - "Westlaw Campus is a web-based legal research tool for undergraduate and graduate students who need to research law-related issues." Subject Area(s): Social Sciences. Note: you must agree to the terms and conditions of using the database before you may begin searching. The main search page defaults to a journal and law review search. Select "all journals and law reviews" from the drop-down menu and conduct your search.

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Statistics

Many of the articles you find will include data and discussions of the data. If you need additional data, or, want to look deeper into the statistics used in the journal articles you find, the library has a very thorough research guide to help determine how to find statistics.

It is linked from the research page under the header "Find."

Government Resources of Special Note:

The Department of Labor has a "find it" by topic, audience, index. Topics include wages, health plans, unemployment. Look through these and link to the statistics referenced.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics: The Bureau of Labor Statistics is an agency under the Dept. of Labor, it is "... the principal fact-finding agency for the Federal Government in the broad field of labor economics and statistics." Use the search box to help ascertain how to locate statistics on your topic; use your keywords or, search for surveys referenced in your scholarly articles if you are uncertain of what terminology to use.

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission : statistics about job patterns for women and minorities along with special reports about the data are available on this site.

Citation Guides

The library has physical copies of the APA and Chicago Manual of Style citation guides at the Reference Desks.

There is an on-line How To guide for APA, as well.

Copies of the Chicago Manual of Style are located in the McHenry and S&E Libraries behind the Reference Desk, call number: Z253 .C57 2003.