Getting Started - TEC 6550 - Applied Research Methods - Research Guides at Chicago Theological Seminary

Exploring Your Research Question

Brainstorming keywords for you research question.

Research question:

"How does pastoral counseling influence spiritual formation in congregants experiencing grief?"

Keywords Mapping

Pastoral Counseling	Spiritual Formation	Grief
pastoral care	spiritual growth	loss
pastoral ministry	discipleship	mourning
spiritual direction	faith development	bereavement
congregational care	Christian formation
grief ministry	tazkiya OR tarbiya

Search Combinations

Using Boolean operators:

(pastoral care OR pastoral counseling) AND grief AND spiritual formation
(mosque OR congregation*) AND (bereave* OR grief) AND (counseling OR pastoral care)
spiritual direction AND loss NOT career

You can add these search terms related to your methodology:

Qualitative research
Case studies
Congregational research
Action research
Ministry intervention

Or you can add additional broader terms related to practical care:

Applied theology
Ministry practice
Church leadership
Congregational studies
Pastoral theology

What’s the difference?

Keyword Searching: you can use any words or phrase, and results will include these words somewhere in the record (the title, table of contents, summary, etc.)

Keywords use natural language.
Different people (including authors) use different words to describe the same topic Keywords are not controlled.
Keyword searches typically search an entire database record, including full-text articles.
Use quotation marks to search a specific term.

Subject Searching: these are authorized search terms, and the catalog only searches the subject field of each record.

All cataloged and indexed materials have assigned headings called “subjects”
Subject headings describe the “aboutness” or topic of the work, bring together all of the works on the same topic, despite differences in text.
Subject headings are “controlled”- they are carefully selected from existing lists called “controlled vocabularies”
Subject searches only search within the assigned subject field within a database record

Brainstorming keywords for your research question

Your search process for information resources will invariably use a combination of both strategies.

Popular and Scholarly Information Sources

The table below shows characteristics commonly associated with scholarly or popular sources.

Both scholarly and popular sources can be appropriate for your research purposes, depending on your research question and expectations for your assignment by your professor.

	Popular	Scholarly
Types	Magazines Newspapers Websites Trade Publications	Scholarly journals Academic books Dissertations/theses
Availability	Readily available to the public OR Available behind a paywall	Available through libraries and online databases Usually behind a paywall
Authorship	Journalists Freelance writers	Researchers Scholars with subject expertise
Purpose/Audience	Inform, entertain, persuade general public	Share original research with other researchers/scholars Expand knowledge in discipline Written using using vocabulary and language from the discipline
Sources/Documentation	No formal citations or sources cited indirectly	All sources cited Extensive reference lists or bibliographies
Editorial Process	Reviewed by single editor	Blind peer-review by multiple experts or refereed by scholars in the same field
Structure	Mix of short and in-depth articles on wide variety of subjects	Lengthy articles with subsections within articles (literature review, methodology, results, discussion, conclusion)
Publisher	Popular presses; or unknown.	Academic or scholarly presses
Timeframe	Current events are well covered. Material can be published on an hourly, daily, weekly or monthly basis.	The writing, editorial and publication process takes a long time. Coverage of current events lag by about one or two years.

Other Types of Information

Grey Literature refers to materials and research produced by organizations outside of the traditional commercial or academic publishing and distribution channels. Common grey literature publication types include reports (annual, research, technical, project, etc.), working papers, government documents, white papers and evaluations.This kind of literature can be key for emerging research and alternative perspectives.

Finding grey literature

NGO Search
NGO Search is a Google Custom Search that searches across hundreds non-governmental organization (NGO) websites. NGO Search is a project of the International Documents Taskforce (IDTF) and the Government Documents Roundtable (GODORT) of the American Library Association (ALA). This is a spreadsheet of NGOs included in the project.
Policy Commons
This database brings together grey literature -- reports, working papers, policy briefs, data sources, and media -- from NGOS, think tanks, and research centers around the world. The site requires that you set-up a free account in order to access reports.
Google
Use Google's site limits to only search a government or institution's site or top-level domain, for instance use site:https://www.pewresearch.org to limit your search to reports from The Pew Research Center. This technique paired with keywords in Google is a quick way to locate grey literature. Example search: site:https://www.pewresearch.org Immigration

Government Publications
Government publications are a subset of grey literature, and can be important sources for state, federal, and international perspectives on official government proceedings of all kinds.