MSc. Occupational Medicine and Occupational Hygiene: dissertation
R20–0730
Introduction
This resource will help you to find, evaluate and utilise high quality information in your dissertation. The resource works best if you keep your dissertation topic and research questions in mind — some of the activities will ask you to apply a strategy to your topic.
We’ll use an example topic throughout to help provide context:
“How can air quality be improved in multi-site construction projects?”
This resource will cover:
- Planning your search
- Using search tools
- Evaluating your sources
- Referencing with EndNote Online
Planning your search
What, where and how?
When you are searching for resources to support your dissertation it is important to consider the following three questions:
- What am I searching for?
- Where will I search for it?
- How am I going to search?
Spending some extra time thinking about the answers to these questions before you start searching will make your search more efficient and help you get to the most relevant information as quickly as possible.
What am I searching for?
The first step is to turn your topic or question into a set of terms to search for:
- Highlight the key concepts in your topic or research question
- Identify synonyms — are there any related concepts or other ways to express the same idea which need considering?
- Consider alternative spellings or word endings
Let’s take our example and apply this strategy. Identify the key ideas and ways other people might describe those ideas. You can be more general or specific. Please comment in the discussion board below and have a look at some of the responses.
“How can air quality be improved in multi-site construction projects?”
PLEASE INSERT DISCUSSION BOARD
Apply this strategy to your own question. Our ‘Planning ahead’ online resource can help you to do this in more detail.
Using search tools
This is our ‘where’. You have access to a wide range of information resources which will help you find high quality scholarly sources such as journal articles and e-books. We’ll start by looking at some of these tools before looking at how we can find non-scholarly sources such as government or NHS reports in a targeted way.
Library Search
What is it?
Library Search is a resource for you to search for the articles, books, journals, images etc for your studies held by or subscribed to by The University of Manchester Library.
Why should you use it?
It pulls together many of the Library’s systems and allows you to search across them simultaneously allowing you to quickly see how much information is available on your subject. Its basically the library version of Google but and this is a crucial but all the content on there is high quality academic information. It should be on of your go to places for your coursework.
How do I access Library Search?
University of Manchester staff and students can access Library Search through My Manchester or through the Library website. Make sure that if you are going via the Library website to sign in to Library Search to ensure that you can view all resources including those restricted to University staff and students.
Activity: Use Library Search on the Library homepage and carry out a quick search on your dissertation topic. Try using the filters on the left hand side to select only online journal articles.
You can find more useful tips on using Library Search on our website.
Google Scholar
What is it?
Google Scholar is a hugely popular method of searching across scholarly literature. The familiar Google search interface is used to search across a range of academic literature including journals, books, conference proceedings and unpublished papers. Google does not report the size of the coverage or fully report on the methods it uses to collect the metadata it uses, however it is widely acknowledged to be the most comprehensive search engine of academic material.
Why should you use it?
Google Scholar doesn’t offer the same amount of options for creating search strategies or limiting results as Library search or subject databases but it does contain a number of useful features. You can limit your results by date, export results to reference management software and generate citations in a variety of styles using the cite button.
The most common reason for using Google Scholar is its ease of use. This makes it great for playing around with ideas and finding things quickly.
How do I access Google Scholar?
Google Scholar is accessed freely online. When using Google Scholar it is highly recommended that you install a version of our Library Access browser extension. This will ensure that when you follow the link to an article that interests you, a pop up notification will appear if the Library subscribes to that particular journal. This will allow you to enter your University credentials and access the full text of the article from the database.
You can also select the “FindIT@Manchester” option from the settings in Google Scholar. This will ensure that when your results are listed you can quickly tell whether the Library has a subscription to the particular journal the article you are interested in was published in. There is information on how to set this up available from the Library website:
Activity: Access and install the Library Access Browser extension. Conduct a search on your dissertation topic and access the full-text of one of your results.
Subject databases
What is a subject database?
Subject databases are collections of scholarly information, such as journal articles, about a particular subject. They are searchable and often allow you to access the full-text of the sources you find.
Why use a subject database?
When you search a subject database you can be confident that the results you find are relevant to your subject. This is in contrast to search tools like Library Search and Google Scholar which search all subject areas. This means you should find fewer but more focused results. How many results did you find when you searched Google Scholar in the last activity? How many did you actually look at?
Using subject databases has two main advantages:
Subject perspective: if you search in a subject database you know that you will get results written from the perspective of that subject area.
Think — how might a health sciences researcher and a architecture researcher approach the topic of ‘healthy living spaces’?
Subject terminology: some words have different meanings in different subject areas. Searching a subject database is likely to focus on the meaning of words and terminology used in that subject area.
Activity: how might ‘Mercury’ mean different things to researchers in materials science, astronomy and popular culture?
Where can I find subject databases for my subject?
You can find the subject databases for your subject through your Subject Guide. Once you have selected a subject click ‘Databases’ to view the Library’s curated collection of databases for your subject. The ‘Medicine’ guide is a good place for many of you to start. Given the nature of your studies and the idea of ‘subject perspective’ mentioned above you might want to access subject databases outside of the health sciences.
Tip — you will find databases covering different aspects, even within the same subject area. Read the database descriptions to pick the right one for the information you are looking for.
Activity: find and access a key database in your subject area from your Subject Guide. Conduct a search on your dissertation topic.
You’ll find that different subject databases look a bit different and use different platforms. Most offer the same features and you can find out more on how to use some of the most popular subject databases in these guides:
PLEASE EMBED SLS GUIDES, HOWEVER WE’RE DOING THAT!
Introduction to the Ovid platform using PsycInfo
Introduction to the EBSCO platform using CINAHL
Introduction to the Web of Science platform
Introduction to the Proquest platform using ASSIA
Google Advanced Search
What is it?
Google Advanced Search allows you to search Google with more control. It provides more options for combining your search terms in an easy-to-use way.
Why should I use it?
You should use Google Advanced Search when you want to conduct a focused Google search without millions of results!
My favourite feature of Google Advanced Search is its ‘domain searching’. I can combine the term and phrase combinations with a particular domain to really focus my search. Returning to our example, I might want to find NHS guidance on workplace respiratory diseases. I would search for the terms ‘workplace’; ‘respiratory’; and ‘disease’ in the ‘all these words’ search box. For ‘site or domain’ I add ‘.nhs.uk’.
Another useful feature is the option to select ‘file type’. Selecting ‘Adobe Acrobat PDF (.pdf)’ here, when combined with the features mentioned above, often returns reports from the organisation.
How do I access Google Advanced Search?
You can access Google Advanced Search by going to Google and clicking ‘Settings’ in the bottom right corner. From the list select ‘Advanced search’.
For ease I usually just Google ‘Advanced Search’!
For ease I usually just Google ‘Advanced Search’!
Activity: use Google Advanced Search to find suitable sources for your assignment. What types of non-scholarly source might be useful for your assignment? These might be reports, news articles, press releases or anything else you won’t find in an academic journal. Identifying the organisations that might produce such sources can help you in your search.
Getting the most out of search tools
Finally we get to the ‘how’. Library Search and most subject databases offer an ‘advanced search’ function allowing us to combine our search terms (Google Advanced Search does too but in a slightly different way).
They use something called ‘Boolean operators’: the ‘OR’ and ‘AND’ that you can see on the search interface.
We use ‘OR’ to combine terms that are of a related concept. Using our example we might search for ‘air quality OR air pollution OR silica dust’. This returns results which feature any of those terms.
We use ‘AND’ to combine different concepts together. Using our example we might search for ‘air quality AND construction’. This returns results which feature both of those terms.
You can find out more about using these functions on our guide to advanced searching.
PLEASE EMBED THE SLS RESOURCE HERE:
Advanced search: making use of Boolean operators
Evaluating your sources
Evaluating your sources is all about asking questions. Listen to this podcast on evaluating your sources. There is an activity at the end which will give you an opportunity to add your own questions to the discussion board and read and comment on the questions others have posed.
PODCAST SCRIPT
Hi, I’m Michael, a Teaching and Learning Librarian at the University of Manchester Library. In this podcast I’ll be talking about evaluating your sources.
As a librarian I like to think that there’s no such thing as a bad source: it’s what you do with it that matters! I wouldn’t use a statement from a tabloid newspaper to support the central argument in my dissertation but I might use it to demonstrate the public interest in the topic I’m talking about.
To use information effectively we need a way to analyse it. A great way to do this is by asking questions.
Some of the questions I might ask are: what is the purpose of the source and why was it created? Is it trying to inform you of a fact or persuade you of a viewpoint? Can you detect any bias? This might be from what the author includes or from what has been left out! What about the organisation that has published the source? What do you know about them? This can be particularly important for non-scholarly sources such as reports. When was it published and are the facts and ideas presented still relevant?
We have barely scratched the surface here and there are likely very specific questions that you will want to ask of particular sources that are related to your subject. You can find out more in our ‘Finding the good stuff’ online resource embedded below this podcast. You’ll also find out more by discussing your sources with course mates, tutors and colleagues. Discussing these questions with them can help you discover even more about the sources you are using.
The ability to critically evaluate information is essential for your studies and you will often find mention of it on your assignment mark schemes. It’s also a skill that we use in our every day lives. We interact with information when watching the news, in discussions with friends and making decisions. Let’s use an example that will be familiar to most of us: buying stuff online.
Activity: In this activity we will look at a news article and I will ask you to think of some questions you might ask when evaluating the article. Please post some of your questions in the discussion board.
In January 2019 the product testing, consumer championing, review publishing website Which? reported on a slew of fake 5 star reviews for products listed on Amazon. You can find the article in the links below this podcast. Pause this podcast and read the article.
Which? described suspicious behaviour on reviews for a particular phone charger. Reviews were posted in batches of 350 or so and many were copied from the reviews of other chargers for sale on Amazon.
As consumers many of us use the customer reviews to inform our purchases and fake reviews obviously erode our trust. What questions would you ask about this article? Add your questions to your Blackboard discussion and read what others have posted. I’ll volunteer some of my thoughts when you return to this podcast. Pause this podcast and post your questions in the discussion board.
The first thing I asked myself is about the source itself: ‘what do I know about the people who published the article?’ I’m old enough to remember the printed version of Which? and that it was a trusted source when my mum and dad bought a washing machine! So I know who published it and what they do. I knew that you had to buy the magazine and now subscribe to their reviews website. I know that ‘trusted reviews’ is how they make their money, so I know why the article was published. Which led me to thinking that it is in Which?’s interest if consumer generated reviews on Amazon cannot be trusted! Call me cynical!
I know this is a news article so I’m not expecting it to present its evidence in the same way as a journal article. I can see some mention of the research methods but not enough to replicate the research if I was so inclined. I guess the question is ‘do I believe Which?’s claim of there being thousands of fake Amazon reviews?’ On balance I would say ‘yes, I do’. However, if my thesis was ‘you can’t trust Amazon reviews’ I would want to find other sources which corroborate this argument.
By asking questions and articulating our responses to the answers to those questions in our assignments we demonstrate an understanding of the limits of our sources. We can see from this example that in critically evaluating our source we often don’t reach a simple conclusion. It can prompt us to look for further evidence or even conflicting view points. All of which makes for better, more critical assignments and a deeper understanding of your topic. I hope that you enjoyed this podcast and thinking critically about sources. Check out the links below for further information on being critical and My Learning Essentials.
END
Which? article:
Evaluating your sources embed
You can find out more about being critical in your thinking, reading and writing here:
Referencing with EndNote Online
Before we look at using the reference management tool ‘EndNote Online’ it’s worth having a quick recap on using other people’s ideas in your own work.
Introduction
When you are writing an assignment, it can be quite tricky to work out how you can successfully integrate the work of other writers into your own writing.
Should you directly quote from an author’s work or should you rewrite what they have said in your own words? How is the best way to convey someone else’s ideas?
How do you ensure that your voice is heard in your assignments, as well as the thoughts and opinions of other authors? How do you balance what you think on a topic and what others say?
This post will address all these questions allowing you to present evidence effectively as well as integrating your own voice and argument.
Quote, paraphrase or summarise?
There are a number of different ways that academic writers can effectively incorporate the work of others into their writing. We are going to look at three: quoting, summarising and paraphrasing. You will find the following explanations useful:
- Quote: a direct reproduction of text produced by someone else, use quotation marks to signify a direct quotation. Quote when only the original words will do and you want to make an impact, remember a direct quotation surrenders your own voice so use sparingly.
“ For Manchester is the place where people do things…. ‘Don’t talk about what you are going to do, do it.’ That is the Manchester habit.” Sir Edward Abbott Parry, 1912
- Paraphrase: re-writing another author’s words or ideas in your own words without altering the meaning. Your version would be about the same number of words as the original. To help you paraphrase, imagine trying to explain the content to someone who is unfamiliar with the topic.
Example:
Original text:
“Political right-wing orientation correlates with climate change denial in several Western countries. Politicians and voters of far-right (i.e., radical and extreme right-wing) parties seem to be particularly inclined to dismiss climate change but the reason for this is unclear.”
Paraphrase:
A right-wing political outlook often presents as a notable characteristic of many who engage in active climate change denial. This has been observed in a number of Western countries, though the reasons for this are not yet fully understood (Jylhä et al., 2020).
- Summarise: shorter than the original text, a summary is a broad overview of important information which is relevant to the point you are making. A summary is commonly used when establishing the background of your writing and can be especially useful when you are referring to multiple (often related) sources of information.
Examples of when to summarise:
Introducing a topic for discussion
“Klein (2014) made the first connections between free-market ideology and the growing climate crisis”.Reinforcing an argument
One of the main barriers to concrete improvements on climate change remains the human psyche. On an individual level, it can often seem to be a process which is beyond our control. This phenomenon was well evidenced in a series of interviews published by Marshall (2015).Multiple sources
Climate change denial has often received support from influential voices which can then add credibility to more unreasonable claims. U.S. Presidents George W. Bush (2000) and Donald Trump (2018) are both on record making statements which call the veracity of climate change into question.
You can find out more about using other people’s ideas in your own work in our Citing it right resource:
Using reference management tools
Here at the Library we support EndNote Desktop, EndNote Online and Mendeley. All three tools do similar things but in slightly different ways. I tend to suggest EndNote Online for CPD students who may be working on their own personal device and a work device as only requires a Word plug in to be downloaded.
If you are doing a systematic review for your dissertation you might find that you need additional functionality. EndNote Desktop and Mendeley both provide this and which one you use is a matter of preference. You can find our guide to referencing and reference management tools on our website:
The best way to get started with any of these tools is to work through our guides:
EndNote Online:
EMBED: https://medium.com/specialist-library-support/getting-started-with-endnote-online-ec4acc50bda9
EndNote Desktop:
EMBED ENDNOTE https://medium.com/specialist-library-support/endnote-desktop-getting-started-e199b1f9e525
Mendeley:
Help and support
For help finding and evaluating information, searching databases and referencing you can get in touch in a number of ways:
- Use the ‘Ask a question’ tab at the right side of the page on any Subject Guide.
- Use Library Chat by going to the Library Website or MyManchester (log in required).
- Email us at uml.teachingandlearning@manchester.ac.uk
