What is your research topic? Once you have made a decision, you should generate keywords. Keywords are search terms that you use when searching for information about your topic. The above video explains how you can write keywords. Watch it, then continue reading this section.
Let's pose an example: you're examining the elasticity of demand for household purchases during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your keywords could include:
When writing keywords or even starting economics research, it can be very helpful to get some background information first. A database like CREDO Reference is perfect for this task. Read an article or two about your topic so that you become more familiar with it. This will make it easier to select keywords and to know if information sources that you find are actually relevant. I want to stress how important and useful it is to do this step. Economics, like many academic fields, has its own specialized vocabulary. A short article summarizing your topic, such as a definition of arc elasticity, clues you into that vocabulary.
Now that you have keywords, it's time to search the databases. Have you used the databases before? If you don't have recent experience with our library's databases, then I suggest watching this introductory video.
The video embedded above shows you how to search Academic Search Complete, which is one of the three databases ideal for economic research. It also shows you how to search Business Abstracts with Full Text, which is the second of our three databases for economics research Both Academic Search Complete and Business Abstracts with Full Text are structured the same way, so the tutorial video applies to both Academic Search Complete and Business Abstracts with Full Text.
ABI/Inform Complete is another business and economics news database. The platform is different, so here's a video tutorial for it.
We have two excellent ebook databases. These let you read full-text books online. The interfaces can be confusing, so I have included a tutorial video for each one.
The video above shows you how to search the ebook database titled EBSCO eBook Collection.
The video above shows you how to search the database ProQuest EBook Central.
This is our video that introduces APA documentation. I urge you to watch the entire video carefully before starting to write your paper or annotated bibliography. It is much easier to cite correctly as you go along, rather than try to fix your documentation after you have written your paper. This is our complete APA guide, which goes into more detail about citing sources and formatting correctly.
It includes our sample paper. When you're writing a paper, you can model the formatting of your paper after this one. If you are unsure how to set up the formatting in Microsoft Word so that it fits the requirements for APA formatting, you could instead download this blank Word document that has the formatting already set up for you.
