This page will provide a useful introduction to finding and evaluating sources for a research project. Another ACPHS Library LibGuide, "Conducting a Literature Review," provides a great deal of information about how to find and evaluate sources, which you can read below.
Many different databases contain articles, reports and other documents concerned with racism in health and healthcare. Depending on the focus and context of your interest, check out these useful library databases below.
The purpose of interlibrary loan (ILL) is to provide the ACPHS community with needed material that is unavailable in our library. To take advantage of this service you will need to register for an ILLiad account. ILLiad is an online system that allows you to initiate and track your requests to borrow books and receive articles from other libraries.
How do I register for an ILLiad account?
Visit the Libraries' Homepage. Click the Services tab, choose Interlibrary Loan, and click on Log in to ILLiad. Use your ACPHS network username and password (the one used for Canvas) to logon and start placing requests.
With a large research project, particularly one you don't have a great deal of foundational knowledge about, sometimes it can be daunting to even figure out where to start.
A good place to begin is with your course materials; if there is a specific class associated with the assignment, then you might have some useful information already available in course notes and textbooks associated with the class. Your textbook(s) might have a chapter or even more on the topic you're studying, and notes from your teacher might be a good place to find useful keywords and background information.
For this task, in addition to your class materials, you have another unlikely ally: the crowdsourced online encyclopedia, Wikipedia.
In many ways, this is correct: Wikipedia can be edited by anyone at any time, and while information added to a Wikipedia article will usually be cited and mistakes are often removed quite promptly, the fact that this website can have hundreds of anonymous contributors means that it is not appropriate for use in an academic context such as a research assignment. Wikipedia articles can be vandalized as a joke or heavily biased based on who wrote the information, so it is always important when reading an article on Wikipedia that you remain skeptical, double-check the sources cited, and remain aware that you are not looking at information high enough for use in a scholarly or academic report.
For an illustration of the ways Wikipedia is not a great place to find high-quality academic information, take a look at the article "15 Biggest Wikipedia Blunders," a collection of mistakes, hoaxes, or even libel that have caused significant confusion. These blunders were possible because of Wikipedia's anonymous editing process. As you can see from one of Wikipedia's own articles on the subject, some hoaxes or mistakes can persist for years before being discovered.
Despite its weaknesses, Wikipedia can be an excellent source for non-academic research, such as answering your own personal questions and curiosities; just because it does not meet the standard required for professional or academic research doesn't mean it's insufficient for casual or personal research. (In fact, some evidence suggests it reaches a similar level of accuracy as the Encyclopedia Britannica. The primary reason it cannot be used in your research is not so much because of fear of inaccuracies -- though that is a risk -- as it's impossible to verify the author(s) and their credentials.)
In addition to your own casual research, there are three major ways Wikipedia can be useful in the preliminary research process:
1. References
Because Wikipedia requires its authors to cite their claims, at the bottom of each article is a list of the sources used. If you need to know which books, articles, or other types of literature are the most important or commonly-cited in the field, Wikipedia's list of References is a good place to begin.
For example, looking at the reference list for the Estrildidae:
Of these seven sources, the articles by Frank Gill, C. H. Oliveros, and Urban Olsson (numbers 4-6) show particular promise due to their recent publication and their association with professional organizations and/or scholarly journals. Clicking on each of these, they are all free to access the entirety of, which is fortunate; if they were not open-access, however, it would still be worth saving these citations to check on in the ACPHS library, to see if you could access them through the college.
2. Background Information
While the information you discover on Wikipedia would not be sufficient for an academic assignment, it can be perfectly useful for getting a broad overview of the topic, seeing what the most common subtopics or recent developments are, and familiarizing yourself with key terms, major players, and general information.
When you first select a topic, it can often be helpful to skim through the Wikipedia page in order to develop a foundational knowledge of the topic, which you can use to direct your search for more reliable or relevant literature.
3. Keywords & Search Terms
Similarly to #2, this method of using Wikipedia collects a handful of important words, names, or even dates that you can use to narrow down your research or literature search. Returning to the Wikipedia page for Estrildidae:
As you can see, the yellow highlighted terms are just a few potentially valuable keywords for learning more about these birds. If I were to go to the ACPHS library website and search the Discovery platform, in addition to searching for estrildidae on its own, if I wanted to know more about the discovery of these birds I could search for "Charles Lucien Bonaparte"; if I wanted to know more about specifically the locations of these birds I could search "estrildidae AND Australia OR New Guinea," for example; if I wanted to know about the specific species, family, class, or other scientific classification, I could use the other highlighted terms to do so.
When it comes to looking for keyword, the blue text often points to related terms that might be valuable in searching, while the headings in the Table of Contents can suggest subtopics that could help narrow down your research.
So remember, while Wikipedia cannot serve as a source in and of itself because it does not meet academic standards, it can be an excellent place to begin the research process, by providing potential sources and information you can use to develop your research question and find literature that will be most relevant to your needs.
The ACPHS library should always be your first stop in the research process, and likely will be your last; it contains the greatest number of accessible, scholarly resources that you'll likely find. However, this doesn't mean that Google cannot be used to find valuable sources.
In general, web browsers like Google, Bing, and Yahoo pull results by popularity as opposed to relevance or accuracy. This means that the first results you see on one of these searches will include the sites most people have clicked on, regardless of the quality of the site's information. In addition, some companies pay for their web pages to show up at the top of the search results, adding an additional layer of potential bias or conflicts of interest:
Google (or any other search engine) is best used for the following types of resources:
The most important thing to remember when using Google or another search engine is that the results will not necessarily be current, accurate, unbiased, or relevant. It will be more challenging to evaluate these sources than ones pulled from the ACPHS library, because the library selects specifically for materials useful in academic study.
When looking for sources, there is another way to use Google in particular for appropriate resources: Google Scholar.
This search engine works similarly to Google, but exclusively weeds out non-academic resources. It is similar to using the ACPHS Discovery, in that a search using Google Scholar will also provide studies and reports. Here is an example of a Google Scholar results page:
As you can see, there are some filters on the left-hand side of the screen, though Google Scholar does not allow for the same level of refinement as Discovery does. You can see the articles and their sources, authors, and publication year, as well as how many scholars have cited them since publication. (This last tool can be a helpful way to find even more current research or a literature review.)
The one significant downside of Google Scholar is that you do not automatically have access to the resources found in the search results. With Discovery, every resource is either available directly through the ACPHS library or through an interlibrary loan request, but Google Scholar will pull up results regardless of whether you have free access or not. If you find an article that you like which the ACPHS library does not have access to, you can always submit an ILL request, but if it is not within our library network, we may not be able to provide it to you.
Overall, Google Scholar is an excellent collection of resources that, as with all online searching options, has both positives and negatives. Determining which type of search method to use depends on your assignment, topic, and other research needs.
When you first encounter a potential source, you'll want to know very quickly whether it is worth reading in detail and considering for your research project. To avoid wasting time on unhelpful sources as much as possible, it's generally best to run each article, book, or other resource you find through a quick checklist, using information you can find by skimming through the summary and introduction.
The two most common forms of early source evaluation are the "Big 5 Criteria" and the "CRAAP Test." These cover the same most significant variables for evaluation, and which one to use comes down to preference.
Big 5 Criteria:
The most important criteria for evaluating a potential resource are:
A good rule of thumb for Currency is that medical, scientific, and technology resources should be published within the last 5 years to prevent the information from being out-of-date; for less time-sensitive topics like history or the humanities, resources published within the last 5-10 years are often acceptable.
CRAAP Test:
A helpful mnemonic to remember the evaluation criteria, CRAAP is an acronym for:
Helpful questions for initial evaluation:
Once a resource has passed the initial evaluation, you are ready to begin reading through it to more carefully determine if it belongs in your project. In addition to the questions posed above, which are always relevant to evaluating sources, you should look at your potential sources of literature with an eye to the following questions:
1. Is there any bias visible in the work?
You already began this process in the previous step and hopefully eliminated the most obviously unreliable sources, but as you read it is always important to keep an eye out for potential blind spots the author might have based on their own perspective. Bias is not inherently disqualifying -- a biased article may still have accurate information -- but it is essential to know if a bias exists and be aware of how it might impact how the information was gathered, evaluated, or delivered.
Peer-reviewed sources tend to be less likely to have this risk, because multiple editors had to go through the resource looking for mistakes or biases. They need to meet a much higher academic threshold.
2. How was the research conducted? Are there any strengths or weaknesses in its methodology?
It is important to understand how the study in your source was administered; research can have methodological weaknesses that might make the information less accurate, and therefore the information in the source less reliable. If you notice issues in the methodology, the source may not be very useful in proving your argument.
3. How does the author justify their conclusions?
Either through the results of their own research or by citing external evidence, an article, book, or other type of resource should provide proof of its claims. In the initial research process you checked to make sure that there was evidence supporting the author's assertions; now it is time to take a look at that evidence and see if you find it compelling, or if you think it doesn't justify the conclusions drawn by the article.
4. What similarities do these articles share?
Grouping your arguments by categories based on subtopic, findings, or chronology can be an extremely helpful way to organize your work. Take notes while you're reading of common themes and results to make planning the project easier.
5. Where does this research differ from the other sources?
While very close to the previous question, this one emphasizes what unique information, methodology, or insights a particular source brings to the overall understanding of the topic. What new knowledge is being brought to the table by this source that can strengthen your argument? You want each source to provide information that none of the others do; while there will often be some overlap between sources for the same topic, the more variety you have, the more ways you can provide evidence for your points.
6. Does this source leave any unanswered questions or opportunities for further research?
Most scholarly journal articles will include a section near the end of the article addressing limits of their study and opportunities for further research. Examine these closely and see where other sources you have fill in the gaps, and where perhaps additional research needs to be done to gain a more complete understanding of your topic.
As you go through this process, you might find yourself eliminating certain sources that no longer seem like they fit with your project's goals, or getting inspired to search for additional sources based on new information you've found. This is a normal part of the research process, and additional searching may be necessary to fill in any gaps left after evaluating the sources you already have.