Research Guides: KiND: Kinesiology, Nutrition &amp; Dietetics: 2: Find Sources

Find Sources

Journal Articles
Books

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:

SPORTDiscus
Provided by the Sport Information Resource Centre, SPORTDiscus offers comprehensive, bibliographic coverage of sport, fitness and related disciplines. This database contains well over 1.7 million records with journal and monograph coverage going back to 1800; over 22,000 dissertations and theses and reference to articles in 60 different languages.
PubMed

PubMed is a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine that includes over 21 million citations from biomedical and life science journals.

To determine more easily if UNC has access to the full text of articles, login using the username and password available from the online Username and Passwords list. When first logging into PubMed, choose NCBI account. Then you will be asked to enter the username and password associated with this account. For further assistance, contact Michener Library at (970) 351-2671.
CINAHL Plus with Full Text

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.
PsycINFO
Index of journal and book literature from the American Psychological Association.

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.

Human Kinetics Library
The Human Kinetics Library is built around a mission to increase the knowledge, enhance the performance and improve the health and fitness of all people around the globe through authoritative information about physical activity and sport. The platform features a growing collection of cross-searchable ebooks and videos from the world’s leading educational publisher for fitness, exercise, coaching and sport.

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.