The search inquiry that I focused on was:
How can adults motivate adolescents who are reluctant readers?
Search #1
Database: Academic Search Complete Search Strategy: Building Block
For this search I broke my inquiry into three main components:
Readers AND Adolescents AND Motivation
- S1, readers netted 111,322 results
- S2, adolescents netted 95, 233 results
- S3, motivation netted 46, 4669 results
When I ran the three components together using the Boolean operator AND there were 16 hits. The 6th result was relevant to my search inquiry. The information to retrieve it is:
Ambe, E. (2007). Inviting reluctant adolescent readers into the literacy club: Some comprehension strategies to tutor individuals or small groups of reluctant readers. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 50(8), 632-639. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database.
I decided to take this a step farther and change readers to reluctant readers to see if it would give more specific and relevant results. This only produced 1 hit! It in fact was the same article that I had already selected from the previous search.
Search #2
Database: Library Literature Search Technique: Citation Pearl Growing "Snowballing"
For this search I began by using the term 'reluctant readers'. This produced 214 results. After looking through the subject headings of those results I pulled the word 'adolescent' from the 2nd hit listed. When I applied it to the search it netted only 6 results. One of the most relevant from that list was:
Holt, L. (1986). Selling reading: library service to reluctant adolescent readers. Illinois Libraries, 68, 374-7. Retrieved from Library Lit & Inf Full Text database.
Just out of curiosity, I returned to my original search and rather than using the term' adolescent' as a second term, I pulled the word 'strategies' from the 3 title on the list.
This only netted 3 results, in which was a journal article that was very relevant to my inquiry.
Inglis, J. (1996). Gentle persuasion: some strategies with reluctant readers. The School Librarian, 44, 7-8. Retrieved from Library Lit & Inf Full Text database.
Search #3
Database: WorldCat Search Strategy: The Successive Fraction Approach
I began this search using the phrase, 'Motivating reluctant readers". This produced 39 results. To further limit the results I applied the Boolean operator Not to my search and took the term 'struggling' from the subject titles of my original results.
This change netted 35 results, which did not narrow it down much at all.
To gain more specific results, I applied a limiter on the year and put in the range 2005-2010, in hopes that it would produce a lower amount of results and they would be more current.
This search netted 11 results, of which I was intrigued by this book:
Gratz College., & McGovern, C. D. (2010). The importance of choice in motivating reluctant readers. Melrose Park, Pa: Gratz College.
Unfortunately this book is not housed in the TWU library.
Search #4
Database: ERIC FirstSearch Search Strategy: The Most Specific Facet First
When applying the most specific facet first approach to a database search, I began by breaking my inquiry up into three specific facets:
- Reluctant Readers
- Adolescents
- Motivation
I then tested each result individually to see if in fact I had the specificity order of each facet correct, being 'reluctant readers' as "the most specific facet first", 'adolescents' as "the next most specific facet first", and lastly 'motivation' being the most broad of the terms. I was surprised by the last result, as I thought that 'adolescents' would be more specific generating a lower number of results than 'motivation'. Here are the results of the searches:
- Reluctant Readers - 309 results
- Adolescents - 43,716 results
- Motivation - 39,229
The most relevant result from my original search of 'reluctant readers' was:
Greenleaf, C. L., & Hinchman, K. (2009). Reimagining Our Inexperienced Adolescent Readers: From Struggling, Striving, Marginalized, and Reluctant to Thriving. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy. 53(1), 4-13.
Conclusion:
In using various databases and search techniques majority of the results were similar in each. Some databases yielded a larger amount of relevant results, but I think that is due to the type of database and the nature of the search inquiry. Overall I felt the most comfortable using the Academic Search Complete database. The database that I found the hardest to navigate was ERIC FirstSearch. When regarding the searching techniques, I most preferred The Successive Fraction Approach, as well as the Building Block Approach. This competency helped me to become more familiar with different structures of databases, and ways to search within them.
No comments:
Post a Comment