To complete your Week 1 discussion assignment you are asked to find a current, popular press article on a social, economic, technological, ethical, or legal issue that impacts health care delivery in the United States.

The goal of this guide is to help you locate a popular press article that you can assess for this assignment.

You will learn:

• how to brainstorm a topic and develop search terms
• where to search for popular press articles in the Walden Library
• how to narrow your database search specifically to magazines and newspapers
• how to complete a search on the discussion topic

Before you begin searching you'll need to identify the social, economic, technological, ethical, or legal issue that interests you.

Brainstorm: You'll need to brainstorm possible search topics for this assignment, and it may be helpful to jot down some ideas as you begin thinking of interests.  There are lots of issues discussed in the news, in your course readings, and in many other places throughout the day. What interests you?

Quick Answer: How do I choose a topic?

Once you have a topic picked out, you can begin developing keywords.  Keywords are words or phrases that express a topic's most important concepts; they are also effective search terms.  Choosing the right keywords for a topic takes some practice and patience.

To identify the keywords, first start by identifying the main concepts in your topic. Typically these will be nouns. Since the goal is to identify main concepts you will ignore any other words in the topic. Some types of words that will be ignored are:

little words such as who, the, and, with, etc

words that are time related, such as often, frequently, always, etc

Here is a great guide on developing search terms or keywords:

Once you've picked a topic, you'll be ready to search in a database to find articles on your chosen issue and health care in the United States.

A great database for popular sources (e.g., newspapers and magazines) is our ProQuest Central Database!

 

Here are the steps necessary for performing a search on your topic in ProQuest Central:

1. On the Library homepage, click on the Databases A-Z button.

2. Choose the letter P from the alphabet that runs across the page.

3. Scroll down and click click on ProQuest Central.

Note: If you have not already logged in to the Library databases, you'll be prompted to log in with your myWalden Portal user name and password.

4. You should now see an Advanced Search screen.

Note: If you only have one search box on your screen, click on the Advanced Search link above the search box.

Enter your keywords in the search boxes.

First search box:

Health Care and United States

Note: You might also try these phrases in quotes to make the search more exact, like this: "Health Care" and "United States"

Second search box:

If you already know what social, economic, technological, ethical, or legal issue you are interested in, type a keyword to describe it in the second search box. If you can't think of one, just leave this box empty.

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Reflection: What search terms come to mind when you consider completing this assignment?  Can you make a list of a few possible ideas?

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5. Below the search boxes, change the Publication Date drop-down box to Last 3 months.

 

6. In the Source type box select Magazines and Newspapers.

 

7. Then click on the Search button to run your search.

8. Click on the Full text link to view the article.

 

9. If you don't find any articles on your topic, consider trying different keywords or choosing a different issue.