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Academic Skills team provide help with APA referencing.
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It's important to understand your assessment task and create a plan before you start searching for information.
A topic analysis will help you understand what your assessment question is asking you to do.
It will also help you identify the keywords that are the building blocks of your search strategy.
Your assessment task will generally have three key pieces of information:
As part of your planning, think about the types of information you need and where you can search for them. You might need definitions, background information, statistical data, government reports, case studies, or academic research. Also consider any specific requirements set in your assessment task. You may have been asked to use scholarly or academic sources or maybe primary or secondary sources. Information needs will vary depending on the task and the depth and breadth of your response.
Searching in Primo and library databases is different to searching in Google. Typing in your whole assessment question or a long phrase is unlikely to give you useful results.
The first step in planning an effective search is to build a bank of keywords. Keywords are the meaningful terms that describe what your assessment is about.
To build your bank of keywords:
The next step is to strategically combine your keywords to find better results.
Use these search strategies in Primo Search and other CSU Library databases to help you get more relevant results.
You can either enrol in one of our workshops or watch a recorded session.
Contact one of our friendly staff if you need help.