If you need to show evidence from contrasting and many points of view within an argumentative or informative paper, keep in mind:
1. Do not expect to find one article that covers all viewpoints. The point of your research is to synthesize information from many sources that address the contrasting sides or various aspects.
2. Do not use the words "pro" or "con" in your search. Consider some of the viewpoint terms listed below:
Neutral terms: argument, case, controversy, debate, effect, impact, issue, legislation, opinion, policy, proposal, propose, solution, viewpoint.
Pro terms: advantages, advocate, agree, benefits, in favor, proponent, strengths, support, sympathize.
Con terms: antagonist, consequences, disadvantages, disagree, drawback, limitations, problems, risks, shortcoming.
3. Search for words and phrases that address what you expect to be the different viewpoints or aspects of your topic. For instance, if researching the future of Social Security, you might use "social security" and reform, "social security" and shortfall, or increase and "retired population" and "social security."
4. Do not type your entire research question into the search. For example, "Should the United States government continue to provide Social Security as a retirement option?" Instead, turn your question into keywords and phrases - "united states" and debate and "social security" and future.
There are three little words that are used as Boolean operators: AND, OR, and NOT.
Think of each keyword as having a set of results that is connected to it. These sets can be combined in different ways to produce different sets of results. You can also exclude certain sets from your results.
The table below explains how Boolean operators work.
| Boolean Operator | Examples | Retrieves |
|
AND
|
children and poverty |
AND combines different terms when both must be present. Use AND to narrow a search. |
|
OR
|
children or youth |
OR combines terms when at least one must be present. Use OR to broaden a search. |
|
NOT
|
jazz not blues |
NOT eliminates irrelevant terms from a search. Use NOT when you want to exclude all records that contain a certain term. |
