Researching Social Problems - ENC 1101 - Professor Martinson 12 Week Hybrid

Social Problems

Brainstorm the causes and effects of a local social problem in Polk County/Florida

hunger
drugs/alcohol
homelessness
lack of education
housing market
transportation
food desert/access to healthy food
cycle of poverty
inequality
lack of infrastructure
the government
mental health
PTSD
etc.

Now, think of synonymous terms for your topic and combine them with OR. Wikipedia may be helpful for finding terms. Use quotation marks to keep phrases together. Here are some examples:

homelessness OR unhoused OR "housing first"

poverty OR poor OR "low income" OR "low socioeconomic status" OR "low SES"

"public transportation" OR Citrus Connection

___

And now consider the geography, both local Polk County and throughout Florida. For example:

"Polk County" OR Lakeland OR "Winter Haven"

Florida OR Orlando OR Jacksonville OR Miami

-----

Lastly, organize the two ideas in parenthesis and combine with AND. For example, if I was doing a local newspaper search on homelessness, I might focus geographically on local areas:

(homelessness OR unhoused OR "housing first") AND ("Polk County" OR Lakeland OR "Winter Haven")

If the search is in a database for journal articles, like Academic Search Complete, it might be helpful to search for anything pertaining to Florida, so I might search:

(homelessness OR unhoused OR "housing first") AND (Florida OR Orlando OR Jacksonville OR Miami)

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Primary Research

Remember that your primary research comes from your interview for StoryCorps.

Databases

Newspaper sources: (search for your issue and how it relates to poverty). You can also do a separate search for your organization and the work they do regarding poverty.

Florida News Sources (Newsbank) This link opens in a new window Explore Florida history through local news, events and people with the Florida News Sources. Search current and archived issues with full-color newspaper pages, full-text articles and content only published online.
Lakeland Ledger (NewsBank) This link opens in a new window Explore Lakeland history through local news, events and people with the Lakeland Ledger Collection. Search current and archived issues with full-color newspaper pages, full-text articles and content only published online.
America's News (NewsBank) This link opens in a new window With unmatched U.S. news content from local, regional, and national sources, this resource is the largest of its kind. Its diverse source types include printed and online newspapers, blogs, journals, newswires, broadcast transcripts and videos. Explore a specific issue or event through the detailed coverage provided by local reporting or compare a wide variety of viewpoints from across the country on topics such as politics, business, health, sports, cultural activities and people.

Journals/Magazines: (these are good for getting an overview of your topic)

Academic Search Complete (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window Academic Search Complete, designed specifically for academic institutions, is the world's most valuable and comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary full-text database, with more than 5,300 full-text periodicals, including 4,400 peer-reviewed journals. In addition to full text, this database offers indexing and abstracts for more than 9,300 journals and a total of 10,900 publications including monographs, reports, conference proceedings, etc. The database features PDF content going back as far as 1865, with the majority of full text titles in native (searchable) PDF format.
- This link opens in a new window
Gale General OneFile This link opens in a new window Gale's largest general-interest databases, with more than 8,000 titles (most in full text). Includes reference, newspaper, and audio content to complement the resource's robust collection of magazines and journals.

Link to all Library databases

Find a Nonprofit Organization

Data Sources for Statistics

Writing Your Paper

MLA Help

MLA Overview from Excelsior OWL
Sample MLA Paper from Purdue OWL
BibGuru
With BibGuru, you can quickly add all the sources for your paper and make citations in APA, MLA, Harvard, Chicago, and thousands of other citation styles.
ZoteroBib

Steps to Writing Research Papers

Step 1: Understand the assignment

Step 2: Select your topic (or use the one assigned to you)

Step 3: Initial planning, investigation, and outlining

Step 4: Accumulate Research

Step 5: Interview someone for StoryCorps and ask questions on your topic

Step 6: Make a final outline to guide writing

Step 7: Write the paper

Step 8: Revise and Proofread

ENC 1101 - Professor Martinson 12 Week Hybrid: Researching Social Problems