CAFF Consumer Affairs Course Guides & Subject Guide

BLAW-CAFF 309: The Consumer in the Legal and Economic Environment

After you have chosen the topic for your research paper:

1) Choose Keywords for your research: For example, if your topic is How do Student Loans Affect Wealth Inequality, you would not use the whole sentence. The keywords might be Student Loans and Wealth Inequality. Also find synonyms for your keywords. Return to the Get Started Here tab to learn how.

2) Choose a resource: It might be OneSearch on the Library home page, or a databases. Google might be best for some of your research. A good multidisciplinary database to start with is Academic Search Complete, or you can select a database from the list below. Return to the Get Started Here tab to learn how to use Academic Search Complete, or how to choose another database. 

3) Refine the results of your search. It is similar whether you use OneSearch or a database.

For example, a search for health care AND consumer behavior  in OneSearch would yield more than 500,000 results, while a search for homelessness AND consumer behavior yields a little more than 15,000. That still sounds like a lot, until you start to refine your search. How many of those sources are actually ABOUT homelessness (or health care) AND consumer behavior, as opposed to sources that just mention the keywords.

To find out: Use the filters on the left side of the results screen.

For example: Using the SUBJECT and PUBLICATION DATE filters...

• 15,000+ results MENTIONING Consumer Behavior AND homelessness drops to less than 1,000 results for sources ABOUT homelessness published since 2000.
• More than 500,000 results MENTIONING Consumer Behavior AND health care drops to fewer than 20,000 sources ABOUT consumer behavior AND health care published since 2000.

And that's before filtering by Resource Type.

4) Cite your sources. Check this page for examples of common APA citations or watch this presentation on APA citations. 

Research Resources