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CDFS 410 International Families

Research help for students in CDFS 410

Library Resources

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Study Spaces

  • 6 floors, group and quiet study areas, café, iSpace

Librarians

Research Guides

CANVAS

Articles

Books/eBooks

  • OneSearch catalog
  • Check out books on the 1st floor by the front door with your ID or via a locker system out front:
    • request the book in OneSearch,
    • you will get an email when it is ready,
    • limit 5 book requests at one time
    • Check out books for 16 weeks, up to 50 at a time

Finding Keywords

Choose a topic then think about what words will show up in articles about that topic

E.g. How does marriage work in India?

  • Keywords could be:
    • marriage; India
  • Similar terms: OR for more
    • marriage OR wedding; India OR Indian
  • Broader terms (if you aren't getting enough):
    • family; South Asian
  • Narrowing terms: AND for less (if you are getting too many)
    • Add in more terms, specific religion (e.g. Hindu); specific area (e.g. Mumbai)

Ex: (marriage OR wedding) AND (india OR indian)

Brainstorm! Look at aritcles you have already found for other terms.

Finding Scholarly Articles

two journal coversAlso called academic articles, or peer reviewed articles. These are reports on research that have been reviewed by other people in the same academic field.

Use library Databases to find articles on your topic.

  • General Databases: OneSearch, Google Scholar, Academic Search Complete
  • Topic Specific Databases: SocIndex; PsycInfo,

Use your keywords to get a list of results

Change your keywords to find different results, more, or less

Use Limiters to refine your results

Access Full Text within the database or using Getit@CSULB (can also be made available in Google Scholar using Library Links)

Cite each article in APA format.

A word on Bias

We all tend to live in our own bubbles these days, where our information sources echo back to us what we already know and agree with (think of your "For You" page). Information we agree with feels good.

Some resources are significantly more biased than others and can feed into skewed views of the world.

Reliability of sources is also very important.  Is the information presented true?

Here is a tool to help you find out about sources you may be accessing.map from link

A word on AI

AI resources are quickly becoming a daily part of our lives.  A few things to think about when deciding to use AI for academic purposes.

Yes, it can be very easy to create things, but keep in mind:

  • AI can "hallucinate" made up information by mashing stuff together.  For example, ChatGPT will create article citations, but they are not real things, just titles, journal titles, random page numbers and dates
  • Specific facts and numbers tend to be incorrect in this same way.  Using AI to research facts does not (always) work.

You should consider that what it creates is realistic fiction (sounds real but might not be).

Using AI as a source of true information is problematic.  It can create falsities, and it cannot be refered back to (i.e. your readers/professors can't go back to see what you used as a source.) Using the same exact prompt will yield different results every time.

It can work fantastically as a starting point, for example, creating an outline.  It can also summarize large amounts of text fairly well (you are giving it a finite collection of data to summarize, so there isn't as much possiblity for incorrect mashups).

If you do use text generated by AI in your work, you must cite it as such.

Finding a Map

Use a google Image Search (not Maps) to find a map of your country.  One excellent site is:

Be sure to cite the source of your map!  Use the APA webpage citation example.

APA Citation Examples

Journal Articles:

Grady, J. S., Her, M., Moreno, G., Perez, C., & Yelinek, J. (2019). Emotions in storybooks: A comparison of storybooks that represent ethnic and racial groups in the United States. Psychology of Popular Media Culture8(3), 207–217. https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000185

Newspaper articles:

Carey, B. (2019, March 22). Can we get better at forgetting? The New York Timeshttps://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/health/memory-forgetting-psychology.html

Harlan, C. (2013, April 2). North Korea vows to restart shuttered nuclear reactor that can make bomb-grade plutonium. The Washington Post, A1, A4.

Stobbe, M. (2020, January 8). Cancer death rate in U.S. sees largest one-year drop ever. Chicago Tribune.

Websites:

American Cancer Society. (2020, December 3).  Study: More than 12% of people newly diagnosed with lung cancer never smoked cigarettes. https://www.cancer.org/latest-news/study-more-than-twelve-percent-of-people-newly-diagnosed-with-lung-cancer-never-smoked.html

AI (ChatGPT):

Include the full text of the ChatGPT response in your text: 

Ex: When prompted with “Is the left brain right brain divide real or a metaphor?” the ChatGPT-generated text indicated that although the two brain hemispheres are somewhat specialized, “the notation that people can be characterized as ‘left-brained’ or ‘right-brained’ is considered to be an oversimplification and a popular myth” (OpenAI, 2023).

Then, include this in your Works Cited:

OpenAI. (2023). ChatGPT (Mar 14 version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/chat