College of Education Dissertation Proposal Design and Comps Preparation: Guide

Setting up your research environment

Bookmark the following links for ease of access as you research

• Library home page
• Research Databases
• Interlibrary Loan
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Select and set up a Citation manager

Need more help?
Contact Leslie Sult, lsult@email.arizona.edu

Search strategies

• Selecting Keywords
  Try this Mind Mapping tutorial to help you focus your topic and select keywords.
   
• Using Effective Search Strategies
  Try this tutorial to help you develop effective searches: How Do I Create a Search Strategy?
   
• Rethinking and revising your search based on your results
  Try this tutorial if your initial searches are not yielding the results you'd like: Should I Rethink My Search?

Focusing your research
Paying  attention to and noting the following as you research will help you begin to focus your searching and locate more relevant resources. 

• Subject headings and tags
• Authors that are often cited
• Titles of journals where articles you are using are being published. 

Select from these tutorials to help you as you progress

• Advanced database searching 
• Finding an article when you have a citation

Conducting a comprehensive search

Engaging in the following as you search will help ensure that you conduct a comprehensive search. 

• Look at the works cited page of articles that are related to your research and then locate the articles that are cited.
• Use Dissertations and Theses Global to locate related dissertations
• Identify landmark studies by paying attention to and tracking what is frequently cited and discussed throughout the literature