Research Guides: Special Education: 2: Find Sources

Find Sources

Find Journal articles report the results of research by experts. Sometimes they're also called "peer-reviewed articles," "scholarly articles," or "academic articles." They are often used in academic research.

You should use journal articles because they:

Contain evidence based on research
Are written by experts
Focus on a narrow topic
Provide detailed information
Are probably more accurate because of the peer-review process
Lend credibility to your paper

Find journal articles in these databases:

Education Source This link opens in a new window
Education Source is designed to meet the needs of education students, professionals and policy makers. The collection provides indexing and abstracts for more than 2,850 academic periodicals and includes full text for more than 1,800 journals, 550 books and monographs, education-related conference papers, citations for over 4 million articles including book reviews and over 100,000 controlled and cross-referenced names of educational tests. Coverage in Education Source spans all levels of education from early childhood to higher education and also includes educational specialties such as multilingual education, health education and testing.
Education Database This link opens in a new window
Full text articles from leading journals in education and related fields.
PsycINFO This link opens in a new window
Index of journal and book literature from the American Psychological Association.
CINAHL Plus with Full Text This link opens in a new window
CINAHL Plus® with Full Text is a robust collection of full text for nursing & allied health journals, providing full text for more than 770 journals indexed in CINAHL®. This authoritative file contains full text for many of the most used journals in the CINAHL index, with no embargo. CINAHL Plus with Full Text is the core research tool for all areas of nursing and allied health literature. Full text coverage dates back to 1937.

Books on a shelf Some books include research by experts, and you may want to use them in your research project.

You should use books because they:

Give a broad overview of one or more topics
Explain a complex topic (books are easier to understand than journal articles)
Offer in-depth analysis of a topic
Summarize previous research on a topic

Find books in these databases:

UNC Libraries Catalog
Searches books, eBooks, music, videos, and other items at the Michener and Skinner Libraries.
Prospector
Searches books at other libraries in Colorado and Wyoming. Request books from these libraries and have them delivered to the Michener or Skinner Libraries.

Graph on a paper Statistics can come from different sources, including the federal and state governments and non-profit organizations.

You should use statistics because they help:

Explain how widespread the problem is
Explain how severe the problem is
Convince your readers that the problem needs to be solved

Find statistics in these databases:

State of Colorado Special Education Data
Includes data on equity of services provided under IDEA to students in Colorado.
National Center for Education Statistics
Collects data from all state and local K-12 education agencies and from all institutions of higher education.

Statista This link opens in a new window
Statista is one of the first statistic portals in the world to integrate data on over 80,000 topics from over 18,000 sources onto a single professional platform. Categorized into 21 market sectors, Statista provides direct access to quantitative data on media, business, finance, politics, and a wide variety of other areas of interest or markets. Data can be downloaded and exported for academic use.

Scales in a courtroom Legal resources provide information related to state, federal, or international laws and regulations. They cover a wide range of legal issues including corporate law, immigration, civil rights, finance and banking, environmental law, and intellectual property.

You should use legal resources because they:

Outline proposed and enacted legislation
Provide details and context for court cases
Are compiled by legal experts
Offer summaries of complex legal cases
Present legal history

Find legal information in these databases:

Westlaw Campus Research This link opens in a new window
Campus Research combines breadth of news and business information with superior depth in law-related information.
Special Ed Connection This link opens in a new window
Contains special education case law, statutes, regulations, and administrative rulings at federal and state levels.
Requires an individual username and password, sent by the vendor via email. Currently only Special Education graduate students have received those emails. Contact jennifer.leffler@unco.edu for further information.

Search Effectively

Yellow, blue, and purple keys Unlike Google, library databases can't understand complete sentences. You'll need to break your topic down into the most important concepts, also called keywords, and use those keywords to search library databases.

Example topic: How does social media impact happiness among teenagers?

Keywords: social media, happiness, teenagers

Brainstorm synonyms:

Sometimes experts use different terms than we use in everyday conversation. It's important to think of synonyms and related terms for your keywords so that you can use different combinations of words to get the best results when searching.

Keyword: teenagers

Synonyms: adolescents, youth

Library databases often have built-in search tools. Try them out!

Peer-Reviewed: Limit your search to journal articles.
Discipline: Limit your search to a particular discipline (such as psychology or education).
Publication Date: Limit your search to sources published during certain years.
Subject Terms: These are like library hashtags. Limit your search to sources about that subject.

Quotation marks Experts often cite each other's work, and that can help you find more sources on your topic!

To find older relevant sources:

Find the list of sources at the end of a relevant source you've found. This may be called "bibliography," "works cited," or "references."
Look for titles in the list that relate to your topic.
Copy and paste relevant titles into a library database.

To find newer relevant sources:

When you find a relevant source in a database, look for a link called "Cited by."
Click this link to see more recent sources that may be related to your topic.