Research Paper and Seminar

Consider the following factors when thinking about a research topic you want to work on for your paper:

• Not too broad or too small: A general topic means you would have an overwhelming amount of literature to look through for writing your literature review. However, if your topic is too small, you may not be able to find enough references for your literature review.
• Consider the data availability: Your paper depends on a certain amount of reliable data. It will be wise to check the data sources when you start selecting your topic to avoid any frustration that might be caused after you find yourself unable to find the data you need for a seemingly great idea.
• Choose a topic that interests you. Conduct preliminary research on this topic in current periodicals, journals or newspaper to see what research has already been done. This will help determine what kinds of questions the topic generates.

The following databases are useful for conducting preliminary research.

• ProQuest

Contains scholarly, trade, popular and news titles, many of which are available in full-text or full-image. Search with keywords related to your research. You may limit search to full text and filter by subject, geography, date, etc. located on the left side of the search result page.

• Business Source Complete

Comprehensive database, with citations and full-text content, for leading business journals including scholarly, trade, popular and news titles. Search with keywords related to your research. On the search result page, click on Subject: Thesaurus Terms on the left side to filter your search by subject. You may also limit search to full text and filter by geography, date, etc. located on the left side of the search results page.

• Factiva

A reputable full-text resource with news and business information drawn from worldwide sources, including Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and the KW Record. It also includes many full text articles from magazines and scholarly journals in all subject areas. Consult the Factiva LibGuide for search tips.

• Nexis Uni

Provides full-text documents for international news, business, legal research, and key people in the news. To find news articles, click on News under Guided Search, enter keywords and select the dates.

Framing a clear research question is a crucial part of developing your research proposal. One of the strategies is to start your search broad and then limit to a particular aspect of the topic for writing your paper. In particular it will be helpful if you can read some articles that involve a clear economic theory and empirical analysis.

Example: You are interested in the topic of Canadian immigrants whereas you are not sure what specific question you can research on. Searching via ProQuest may help you identify the issues that have been researched on this topic and help develop your research question.

1. Click on Connect to resource under ProQuest databases (all). Off-campus Laurier Network Login will be required for authentication.

6. On the ProQuest Advanced Search page enter immigrants on the first line, select Article for the document type, and click on Search

7. You will get a great number of results as “immigrants” is a very broad topic. To refine the search results, select Scholarly Journals under Source Type because you will write an academic research paper and scholarly journals publish academic titles. You may also limit to Peer reviewed and refine the Publication date.

8. Click on Subject ->More options. A Subject window will pop up. The terms in the subject column indicate different aspects of the topic of immigrants that have been studied. Choose the one(s) that you are interested in. E.g. labor market. Tick the first box in front of “labor market” and click on Apply. This helps reduce the number of results further.

9. Click on Classification ->More options. A Classification window will pop up. Tick the first box (es) in front of the relevant subject term(s). In this example, you are interested in Canadian immigrants and your research has to involve an economic policy. Include “Canada” and “Economic policy & planning” and click on Apply. This step helps you find the more relevant and specific articles. Note that if the number displayed in the Count column of the Classification window is less than ten, it means you may not be able to get a decent number of references to read through in that particular aspect of the topic regarding immigrants' labor market. Looking through each title on the result page may help you develop your own research question.

10. Note that you may not see "Economic policy & planning" appear as subject terms in the subject or classification window for each topic. To find specific articles that include a policy or an empirical analysis component, you may also look at other subject terms such as "regression analysis", "econometric analysis", "statistical analysis", "policy impact", "socioeconomic factor", etc.

• Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) Publications

Discussion papers (and more) on current research in economic policy.

• Conference Board of Canada: E-LIBRARY

Research reports on public policy, economics and management.

• Economics Research Network

Collection of abstracts, working and accepted papers in over 100 different Economics subject areas.

• Business Premium Collection (via ProQuest)

A comprehensive database that covers scholarly journal articles in Economics. Search with keywords related to your research. Limit search to full text and filter by subject, geography, date, etc. located on the left side of the search result page.

• EconLit (via ProQuest)

Provides citations and full-text content for more than 400 economic periodicals, as well as books, book chapters, dissertations, reviews, conferences and working papers.

• Scholars Portal Journals

A single-access search gateway to the full text of online journals published by several major academic journal publishers. Search with keywords related to your research. Click the link to subject terms below an article title to find more articles grouped under a specific subject quickly.

• Business Source Complete

Search with keywords related to your research. On the search result page, click on Subject: Thesaurus Terms on the left side to filter search by subject. You may also limit search to full text and filter by geography, date, etc. located on the left side of the search results page.

• Google Scholar

Allows users to search with keywords or titles. You can set up your own personal Google account and connect to library resources in Google Scholar. When off campus you will see "Get it @ Laurier" links to some of the contents on Google Scholar. It means you can search Laurier's journal subscriptions through Google. You don't have to sign in with your Laurier account each time.

• Academic OneFile

A source for peer-reviewed, full-text articles from international journals and reference sources. Coverage includes Economics and finance.

Peer-reviewed journals publish articles that have been evaluated by experts before publication. There are two key methods you can use to identify these kinds of journals.

• Limiting your search results using the tool within databases. Many databases let you limit your results to only peer-reviewed journals by the use of a check-box before you search. Databases such as ProQuest, Business Source Complete, Scholars Portal Journals, Academic Onefile offer this search option.
• Consulting a database: Ulrichsweb Global Serials Directory. On the main page of this database, type in the title you’re looking for and then click the small Search icon. In the list of results, the icon of the referee's shirt beside the title indicates that the journal is peer-reviewed. If the icon is not present, the journal is not peer-reviewed.

Please use the sources on the Economics Subject Guide to find aggregate data or microdata. Click on Statistics tab.

Stata and SPSS are available on Laurier Network Login workstations in the Library (versions subject to change).

Consult the following resources to learn how to use the software to do statistical analyses.

Stata

• Resources for Learning Stata: Stata provides a list of good resources to help you learn and use Stata.
• Applied Econometrics lecture notes: Econometrics Group, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA, lecture notes covering introductory econometrics topics with examples using Stata
• A Short Guide to Stata: Kurt Schmidheiny, Universit¨at Basel. This guide introduces the basic commands of Stata using specific examples.
• Stata Books in the Library. On the left panel of the Omni Advanced Search page, select an option under Availability to find books that are available in Laurier Library or online. You can also request Print books from other partner university libraries in Ontario through Omni. Consult Omni FAQ for more information.
• YouTube: search with keyword “Stata tutorial”

SPSS

• IBM SPSS 23 Guide

Google search for earlier versions. e.g. IBM SPSS 21 Guide

• Data Analysis Examples UCLA - The pages contains examples illustrating the application of different statistical analysis techniques using different statistical packages including SPSS, Stata, SAS and R.
• What Statistical Analysis should I Use? UCLA - The table covers commonly used statistical tests based on the number and nature of dependent variables and the nature of independent variables, with links showing how to do such tests in SAS, Stata, SPSS and R.
• Getting Started with SPSS – A free course offered by the Open University taking a step-by-step approach to statistics software through seven interactive activities.
• YouTube – Search with keyword SPSS
• SPSS Books in the Library - On the left panel of the Omni Advanced Search page, select an option under Availability to find books that are available in Laurier Library or online. You can request Print books from other 13 different university libraries in Ontario through Omni. Consult Omni FAQ for more information.

The Citing Sources Guide available at the library includes different citation styles and tips on how to cite by subject including data and statistics.