Research Guides: PA 623: Decision Analysis and Decision Support Systems: Research Resources

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Research Guides

APA Citation Style

Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) Guide to APA 7th Edition
Publication manual of the American Psychological Association: the official guide to APA style (7th ed.)
If you would like a print copy of the APA style guide, check the availability of copies here.
7th Edition Quick Reference Guide
APA Style and Grammar Guidelines
APA Sample Papers

Citation and Reference Management Software

Here are three popular, widely-used reference and citation managers.

EndNote

Download EndNote for free (for UK students, faculty, & staff)
Endnote Research Guide
Help with Endnote - training videos on YouTube

Zotero

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Help with Zotero - support documentation

Mendeley

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Help with Mendeley - guides

Databases

Academic Search Complete
A very broad database that includes scholarly journals, newspapers and magazines, and trade publications.
Business Source Complete
Covers management, economics, finance, accounting, international business, and more. Indexes articles from scholarly journals, trade publications, business magazines, and business newspapers with many available as full-text.
Web of Science Core Collection
Indexes primary journals and article citations in several databases spanning a wide range of disciplines. This is a citation index, meaning it links articles through the articles' bibliographies, citation notes, and internal references. This makes it easy to move forward and backwards chronologically in the research trail because you can both easily see the papers cited by an article and the articles that go on to cite the article later. Citation indexes also help in determining the impact of articles and journals by highlighting which titles are most cited within a field.
PAIS Index
Indexes coverage of issues in the public debate through highly selective coverage of a wide variety of sources, including journal articles, books, government documents, statistical directories, grey literature, research reports, conference papers, publications of international agencies, microfiche, Internet material and more. The database includes a historical perspective on many of the 20th century's social and public policies.
ProQuest Political Science Database
The Political Science Database includes 450 leading political science and international relations journals. This collection provides the full text of many core titles included in Worldwide Political Science Abstracts. Political Science Database also includes thousands of recent, full-text, political science dissertations from U.S. and Canadian universities and other sources such as country reports and policy papers.
CQ Researcher
Provides reporting and analysis on issues in the news. Each CQ Researcher report offers coverage of political and social issues, with regular reports on topics in health, international affairs, education, the environment, technology and the U.S. economy. Reports include a background and chronology, an assessment of the current situation, tables and maps, pro/con statements from representatives of opposing positions, and more. CQ Global Researcher articles are freely available to all CQ Researcher customers on this site.
Access World News (NewsBank)
Contains 3687 sources from 152 countries, including print and online-only newspapers, blogs, newswires, journals, broadcast transcripts and videos. Full-text of over 600 U.S. newspapers, including the Lexington Herald-Leader (1983 - present) and other Kentucky newspapers

ProQuest US Newsstream
Searchable full-text of selected U.S. news content, as well as archives which stretch back into the 1980s, featuring top newspapers, newswires, blogs, trade journals, and news sites. Coverage includes the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, The Courier-Journal, and The Wall Street Journal, as well as local and regional newspapers.

Searching Think Tanks

Harvard Kennedy School Think Tank Search: A custom Google Search engine that searches more than 600 think tanks for policy reports.
Find Policy: Find policy reports from 17 leading think tanks in the areas of climate, economy, development, foreign policy, health care, and public policy. Use the tabs (at the top of the page) to search in any one of the subject areas.
Google NGO Search: Use this Google Custom Search Engine to search for current online documents, publications, and websites from nongovernmental organizations.
2019 Global Go To Think Tank Index Report: Includes lists of top global think tanks by area of research. Note: area of research rankings start on page 110.
Writing about think tanks and using their research: A cautionary tip sheet: This is written for journalists, but contains useful tips for evaluating think tanks.

Finding Datasets

Explore Census Data (from the U.S. Census Bureau)
Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR)
Access to social science data files, including coverage of such topics as population, economics, education, health, social and political behavior/attitudes, terrorism, history, crime, aging, and substance abuse. Direct downloading is available. Registration with a MyData account is required for most data file downloads. The data files require statistical software (e.g., SAS, SPSS, Stata) to manipulate the data.

Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR): Getting Started

Cross-National Time-Series Data Archive
Cross-National Time-Series Data Archive (1815-2016): This dataset contains more than 200 years of annual political, legislative and economic data from 1815 onward, covering over 200 countries and 196 variables used by academic, government, finance and media. Data is Excel format.

United States:

Data.gov: Home of the US government’s open data and includes Federal, state and local data, tools, and resources to conduct research, build apps, design data visualizations, and more.
IQSS (Institute for Qualitative Social Science at Harvard) Dataverse Network: Links to a large collection of social science research data
Data World: Open data sets contributed by users and organizations.
American National Election Studies: Data on voting, public opinion, and political participation to serve the research needs of social scientists, teachers, students, policy makers and journalists
General Social Survey (NORC at the University of Chicago): Contains a standard 'core' of demographic, behavioral, and attitudinal questions, plus topics of special interest. Many of the core questions have remained unchanged since 1972 to facilitate time-trend studies as well as replication of earlier findings.

International:

World Bank Open Data: The World Bank's Open Data initiative is intended to provide all users with access to World Bank data. The data catalog is a listing of available World Bank data sources.
UN Data: Users can search and download a variety of statistical resources compiled by the United Nations (UN) statistical system and other international agencies.
International Monetary Fund (IMF) eLibrary: Provides access to the IMF’s periodicals, books, working papers and studies, and data and statistical tools.
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) i-Library: Online library of the OECD, including its books, papers and statistics, which serves as the knowledge base of OECD's analysis and data.

Political Institutions:

Quality of Government Institute: The main objective of the institute's research is to address the theoretical and empirical problem of how political institutions of high quality can be created and maintained, and the effects of quality of government on a number of policy areas, such as health, the environment, social policy, and poverty. The Standard Data includes over 2000 coded variables divided into sixteen thematic categories such as Quality of Government, Economy, Media, Environment, and Political System etc. Read the Codebook to determine if the variable you need is covered in the dataset.
Database of Political Institutions: Presents institutional and electoral results data such as measures of checks and balances, tenure and stability of the government, identification of party affiliation and ideology, and fragmentation of opposition and government parties in the legislature, among others. The current version of the database, hosted by the Inter-American Development Bank, expands its coverage to about 180 countries for 40 years, 1975-2017.