I spent this week frantically searching for academic
journals to use in my position paper.
The topic I chose was; should people who are not willing to be organ
donors be allowed to be organ recipients?
I found this to be an interesting question, but initially difficult to
research.
I began by searching key terms through google scholar and I
found articles which increased my understanding of the organ donation
process. The key terms I used were organ
donation, priority, recipient and eligibility.
Unfortunately, I did not find information regarding the allocation of
donated organs. I also tried searching
Psychnet, but had the same results.
I took a step back from the academic sources and did a
standard google search on the topic.
This linked me to several websites, such as the Ministry of Health NZ,
Ministry of Health Israel, Ministry of Health Singapore and the World Health Organisation. It turns out that both Singapore and Israel
already implement a priority system for those who are on the donor list. By having specific examples of how this topic
was already applied in the real world I was able to choose better key terms to
enter into Google Scholar.
I updated my key terms to include Israel or Singapore and
was finally able to find articles which were relevant to my topic! Some of the articles I located were
criticising Israel’s priority system and others were praising it. I then used the key words for the articles I
could find to expand my set of key words and was able to find another 5
relevant articles, just by slightly tweaking my search. Finally, I had enough
information to start drafting my position paper.
Next time I research a topic like this I am going to start
with a basic Google search. Ensuring I
understand the topic and researching the real world applications. Using real world applications of the topic as
key words I expect to have greater success when searching academic
journals. I enjoyed researching this,
now on to writing my position paper!
4 comments:
Great research techniques Jess! I totally agree with you on doing a google search before choosing a topic, made the process so much more interesting. Nice work.
Awesome reasearching jess. I to used google but only after i had choosen a topic. Keep up the good work sounds like you no what you are doing cant wait for your next blog.
Nice work Jess. It's always good to see what other countries are up to when doing research. I believe America is trying to implement it too. I'd be interested to know your stance on the topic, for or against?
Hi Jess,
I have got a really great idea of your process. What an excellent idea you had to look at other countries who have actually applied your topic of interest to the real world setting. The use of this to find effective key words to search was very cunning - the information can be out there but if you don't search the right thing you won't find it. I am very impressed with your perseverance, and the fact that you didn't give up - you knew it had to be there somewhere! what an excellent effort.
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