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Course & Subject Guides

EDUC 3001: Research Guide

This guide is designed as a component of EDUC 3001: Fundamentals of Research in the University of Pittsburgh's Online Doctor of Education (EdD) program.

Databases

Databases

Databases contain references to journal articles, reports, books, and other documents organized around specific subject areas. The citations in databases frequently contain links to full-text content, and often include an abstract with a summary of the article.

  • Database content is scholarly in nature, and has been reviewed by editors prior to its inclusion into the database
  • Databases such as ERIC focus specifically on a subject, rather than the general approach taken by PittCat
  • ERIC and other education databases contain links to journals, reports, and books that are held in the ULS collections
  • Databases allow you to use very specific terms to limit your search results. In the case of ERIC, there is a controlled vocabulary to narrow down your topic and combine terms

ERIC & Educational Resources

ERIC, sponsored by the US Department of Education, is the premier national database of education literature. ERIC covers educational research and literature from 1963 to present, as well as important practitioner materials and news sources.

Descriptors are disciplinary terms the ERIC database creators use to identify the major topics covered within a particular article, book or item. Descriptors can suggest other keywords you can use in your searching, or identify a more exact disciplinary term for the concepts you are seeking.

Create complex searches by combining multiple keywords.  Once you decide on your keywords, you can combine them to create focused complex searches.

 

Field Searching:  Full ERIC records are made up of field of information -- the title of the item is listed in the Title field, the author’s name is listed in the Author field, etc.  You can use these fields when you search by focusing your search for a term to a particular informational field.  For instance, if you wanted articles by Benjamin Spock, you could search for Spock in AU Author field.  This will give you results where Spock is an author.