EDU 708 Research Design in Education

- Step 1: Identifying key concepts and synonyms
- Step 2: Identify ERIC descriptors
- Step 3: Using Concepts
- Step 4: Search the ERIC database
- Still need help? See video on searching ERIC

Before you can search for appropriate articles for your bibliography, you need to identify the key concepts in your research topic, and identify any synonyms or alternative terms. Let's look at the first five topics in your syllabus:

Step 1: Identify the key concepts in your research topic.

For example: Problem solving skills of kindergarten children

NOTE: Use ERIC descriptors to narrow your search results.

Step 2: Identify any synonyms or alternative terms. You can look at the ERIC thesaurus for ideas.

You can have more focused results if you identify the ERIC descriptors. These are the subject headings or index terms used by ERIC to locate other resources on the same topic. You can use the ERIC Thesaurus to identify terms.

You can include more alternatives if you truncate words with various spellings. For example, you can use child* to find child, children, childhood, childless, childish, etc. In other words, you use the asterisk (For example,  child* ) to look for those letters as the root or stem in other word.

Problem solving skills of kindergarten children  -- ERIC Descripters in Yellow

Example 1 -- Keyword search in ERIC (CSA) using key concepts and synonyms:

Example 2: Using descriptors and truncated keywords to search in ERIC:

Scroll down for a direct link to ERIC and a video that provides additional information on searching ERIC.