Welcome to your COM 101 Research Guide!

This guide contains links to useful resources to help you complete research assignments in this course. Use the navigation tabs on the left to get started.

Please contact me if you have any questions or if you need research assistance.

You can make an appointment with me using Ask Your Personal Librarian (from the library's homepage) Or, use the Schedule Appointment button to the left (on the Home tab of this guide). We can meet in person in my office (RT 110C) at the Michael Schwartz Library or virtually over Zoom.

Good Luck!

Diane Kolosionek

During my visit to your COM 101 class on February 5, 2024, I described my approach to identifying two communication concepts from the textbook, Introduction to Human Communication: Perception, Meaning, and Identity, 2nd ed. (2020).

The Michael Schwartz Library has a copy of the textbook on Course Reserves in the Textbook Center behind the front desk on the 1st floor.

You can borrow the textbook for 2 hours, in-library use only.

Here is a link to the item record for the textbook in the Scholar Library Catalog: https://scholar.csuohio.edu/record=b4743689

The two communication concepts I selected from the textbook were:

Politeness theory (p. 71)

Interpersonal conflict (p. 140)

Find two communication concepts that are interesting and relevant to you!

For each EACH communication concept, you will locate:

(1) an ACADEMIC ARTICLE, meaning a RESEARCH STUDY published in an academic journal (also known as a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal). Use the Research Database named Communication and Mass Media Complete to find academic articles.

(2) a source that is NOT an academic article. This can be a news article, a magazine article, a webpage, a book, an eBook, an encyclopedia entry. This can be any primary or secondary source. You can find it on the Internet (from a Google search, for example) or from the Michael Schwartz Library's web site. I found an encyclopedia entry for each of my communication concepts using the online Oxford Research Encyclopedias. Communication.

To find an academic article on each concept, I used the Research Database named Communication and Mass Media Complete.

You can access the database from the links provided here. Or, from the Michael Schwartz Library's homepage, go to Research Databases A-Z, then look under "C" for Communication and Mass Media Complete.

To access the database remotely, log in with your CampusNet ID and Password.

Enter your search terms into the separate search boxes, connecting them with the Boolean operator AND. The examples I demonstrated in class were:

(1) Politeness theory; (2) Interpersonal conflict AND romantic relationships; (3) Interpersonal conflict AND (romantic OR dating OR marriage OR couples OR spouse)

Apply limits to refine your results. Limit to Peer Reviewed and/or Academic Journals (under Source Type). Limit by Published Date.

Review the results. Research studies are published in academic journals, but not every article in an academic journal will be a research study.

Open the article. Read the Abstract, which is a short summary of the article. Scroll through the article and review the sections/headings.

A research study will have a METHODS, METHODOLOGY, or RESEARCH DESIGN section that describes participants and how they were selected, as well as how data for the study were collected.

Many of the articles will be available full text in the database, in HTML or PDF format. If not, use the yellow Find It! button and/or the Full Text Finder link to connect to the full text of the article in another database/location. Just follow the links!

Make sure to properly CITE your academic articles using APA or MLA style! You can get citing help inside the database, but it is ONLY a starting point. There will be mistakes or information missing from the citation generated by the database. Spot the errors and make the appropriate corrections. Refer to the Purdue OWL for RULES and examples.

This can be a news article, a magazine article, a webpage, a book, an eBook, an encyclopedia entry. You can find it on the Internet (from a Google search, for example) or from the Michael Schwartz Library's web site.

For each of my communication concepts, I found a relevant entry from the online Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication.

Make sure to cite your sources properly according to a specific citation style!

Two common citation styles are APA (American Psychological Association) and MLA (Modern Language Association).

See the Purdue OWL for examples of citing sources properly: