A Guide to researching your essay
This is a short guide to help students get the most out of the internet when researching
essays online.
The last decade has seen a major change in the way students study at university. Only
a few years ago the vast majority of research was done exclusively using books or
journals. However the internet and other electronic resources have it easier to search,
copy and edit information. It has also vastly increased the amount of material
available.
This guide will outline the advantages and disadvantages of using the internet for
research and provide a step by step guide to using it along with a list of useful
websites.
There are clear advantages and disadvantages to using the internet as opposed to
replying on more traditional methods:
Advantages of researching using the internet
 Broadband connections make it both quick and easy to find information.
 A wide range of materials are available. As well as books and articles there are
also video and sound clips, data sets and statistics.
 Much of this information is available for free (or subscribed to through your
university).
 Thousands of people can search through the same information at once.
Downsides of researching using the internet
 Information overload – sometimes there is so much material available that
finding the salient facts can prove impossible.
 Much of the information you find online may be of questionable veracity.
Often the internet is the major source of the mistakes and falsehoods that
appear in student essays.
 If you don’t have access to broadband then the information superhighway can
often seem more like a traffic jam.
 Online research materials can often be more difficult to reference than books
or journals.
A step by step guide to researching using the internet
Step One
Always start with the recommended reading list. The lecturer will have provided you
with a list of books, articles and sources in the module handbook. These are always
the best place to start researching the essay. You should read through them carefully
making a note of any arguments, facts or quote that seem to have relevance to
answering the essay question.
Points to remember:
Always make notes carefully as you go along including detailed information of where
you found which piece of information. That way you can always easily find it again if
you need to double check something or do further research.
Step Two
The sources from the reading list should provide you with enough information to start
sketching out an answer to the question but also will provide you with suggestions for
further reading. You should start to make a list of potential sources to investigate that
will help you answer the question in more detail.
When searching the internet using an engine like Google always start by using the
keywords found in the essay title.
For instance if the question is ‘Explain the differences between the three branches of
the US government’ then the keywords you should use are Differences, Branches,
Government and US.
However you should also make use of a variety of different keywords as often
political scientists use different terms that mean the same thing. For instance some
academics use the phrase ‘interest groups’ while others prefer ‘pressure groups’.
Before you begin searching take a few minutes to try and write down some of the
keywords you can think of that might be connected to your essays subject matter.
Another useful tip is searching by author. If you find a good piece of research by a
particular author you should trying searching using their name as often they’ve
published several things that cover similar ideas and themes.
By using the library in conjunction with the internet you should be able to find the
right information you need in order to fully answer your essay questions and to make
sure that your arguments are fully backed up with facts, quotes and examples.
Points to remember:
The essay is there to assess both your ability to conduct independent research and
your breadth and depth of reading. However you should always keep in mind the
relative importance of the piece of work you are researching for. If it is a short essay
or you have more important work due in don’t go overboard in your research. Always
try to make sure that you spend an appropriate amount of time on each piece of work.
The temptation is often to focus on work we enjoy, find easy or where there are lots of
resources available. By doing this you risk neglecting other pieces of work that may
be just as important.
Step Three
Remember to use a wide range of sources such as books, articles, newspapers and
websites. However, when searching for information online always try to be mindful of
the reliability of the information you discover.
The best way to ensure that you find reliable information is to use either respectable
sources of online information e.g. government websites, newspapers etc, or to use an
academic search engine like Google Scholar, The Social Science Research Network
(SSRN) and Jstor. These websites allow you to search by author and keyword for
useful articles. They also suggest articles similar to the ones you’ve found which can
be extremely helpful.
Google scholar tells you how often a book or article has been cited. Although this
figure is often an approximate one it can give you a useful idea of how influential an
article is (although not necessarily its quality). For instance an article that has been
cited over a thousand times is probably more important than an article that has been
cited only twice.
Google books
Due to copyright law how much of the book you can see can range from a few
fragments, a few pages or the entire book. However it is still useful as it can. You can
also usually view the contents page an index. This can be helpful if you’re thinking
about ordering the book from a library but are not sure if you need it or not.
Google News
When searching for newspaper and magazine articles Google News is an excellent
search engine to help you find information. You can search using a range of different
parameters which can be adjusted to take into account keywords, when the article was
published and even country of origin. Google have recently taken steps to limit access
to these but for undergraduate research it is still extremely.
Points to remember:
 Is the information you’re searching through relevant to answering the essay
question?
 Is it an appropriate source?
 Is the source accurate and suitably academic?
 Is it up to date?
Some questions lend themselves better to internet research than others. Normally
questions that require up to the minute information are better suited to internet
research. For instance, a question on the political thought of Machiavelli can still be
researched online through the use of e-books and online journals but information from
a book published in the mid 1960s will still be relevant. However a question on the
civil rights of African Americans in the 21st century gives you greater scope to
research online.
As mentioned earlier the two main problems with researching online are that we often
have access to more information than we know what to do with and have no way of
verifying its quality. Academic books and journals students have the guarantee that
they’ve been peer reviewed and proof read so should be free of irregularities and
errors. It also means that they should meet a certain academic standard.
Differentiating between good and bad sources of information can often be difficult.
As a general rule of thumb you can usually trust information gathered from:
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Government websites
Peer reviewed E-books
Online academic journals
Mainstream party political sites
Mainstream newspaper/broadcasting websites
Polling company sites
Sites recommended in your module handbook reading list
However you should always make clear where a piece of information or a quote came
from to put it in its proper academic context. For instance if quoting an opinion make
this clear. Don’t present it as a fact.
You should use caution when researching information from partisan websites (website
promoting a particular point of view or cause), blogs and online encyclopaedias
(Wikipedia). The information on these sites my not always be reliable, present
opinion as fact or simply be made up.
Research time
As mentioned earlier the internet is a massive storehouse of information. Most
searches will likely generate several millions hits. Through the use of research and
appropriate keywords you should be able to narrow this down significantly. Once
you’ve found the research material needed for one section of the essay you should
move on to the next section. If you haven’t found what you need you can always
come back to it later.
Referencing
One of the downsides of using the internet is its ever changing nature. A webpage you
find one day may not be there the next. Therefore it’s important that you make notes
as you go along just like any other research. Also by recording as you go it saves you
time later on.
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Always make sure that you’ve added the internet address (the URL e.g.
www.bbc.co.uk) to your list of favourites and cut and pasted it to a separate
document. This is very important later on when creating your bibliography.
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If you find material of interest on the net always check to see if you can
download it.
If you can not download it you might be able to cut and paste the information
into a word processing package.
Another option is using the computers print screen function to make a record
of the onscreen information.
Useful websites for political information
Article collections or search engines
www.google.scholar.com
www.ssrn.com
www.jstor.org
Newspaper Websites
Another good source of primary information are newspapers. Nearly all newspapers
now have an online presence with the ability to search by keywords and dates.
Always use quality (or broadsheet) newspapers. The tabloids are less likely to fact
check. Here are some examples of good online newspapers:
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The Guardian
The Times
The Telegraph
The Independent
The Washington Post
www.guardian.co.uk
www.thetimesonline.oc.uk
www.telegraph.co.uk
www.independent.co.uk
www.washingtonpost.com
News Portals
Again most are searchable by keywords and dates:
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The BBC
ITN
CNN
www.bbc.co.uk
www.itn.co.uk
www.cnn.com
Government Websites
These are sometimes the best source for statistics and other official figures. For
instance the British and American official statistics websites contain huge data sets
covering a multitude of different areas.
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The website of the British government
The Prime Ministers Office
The British government Statistics site
The Public Records Office
www.direct.gov.uk
www.number10.gov.uk
www.statistics.gov.uk
www.pro.gov.uk
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The website of the US government
The US government Census
The Bureau of Labour Statistics
The library of Congress
www.usa.gov
www.census.gov
www.bls.gov
www.loc.gov
Political Party Website
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The Conservative Party
The Labour Party
www.conservatives.com
www.labour.org.uk
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The Liberal Democrats
The Greens
www.libdems.org.uk
www.greenparty.org.uk
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The Democrat Party
The Republican Party
www.democrats.org
www.rnc.org
Search Engines
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Google
Google Scholar
Google News
Yahoo
www.google.com
www.google.scholar.com
www.google.news.com
www.yahoo.com
Online dictionaries, article collections and encyclopaedias
www.dictionary.reference.com
www.wikipedia.org
General collections or politics resources
The Political Studies Association politics portal www.psa.ac.uk
The University of Keele guide to government and politics on the internet
http://www.keele.ac.uk/depts/por/