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* Political Science & International Relations: Researching Contemporary Issues

This guide provides reliable resources pertaining to the study of political theory, international relations, information on foreign governments, U.S. and international policy research, campaigns and elections and more. This guide includes access to books,

Ten Tips for Researching Contemporary of Hot-button Issues

  1. Make a list of what keywords are most useful for your topic.  Watch this video to learn more about brainstorming search terms.
     
  2. Try your search terms in DiscoverUR’s Advanced Search and Google Scholar to find a wide variety of sources on your topic.
     
  3. See what Congress has to say about an issue by looking for by searching for keywords using Congress.gov or search  thousands of federal websites with search.gov.
     
  4. See what a state government has to say by using Google site searching to look for your keywords [e.g. (Hamas OR Israel OR Palestine) site:ny.gov] To learn more about advanced google searching, see Finding Grey Literature & Open Web Resources on the Political Science Library Guide or this Google help guide on refining searches using advanced search operators.
     
  5. See public opinion polling sources https://libguides.lib.rochester.edu/PSCI/polls
     
  6. Locate local, national or international news on your topic using sources on the News tab of this guide. You might also want to compare news stories on a particular topic from news sources from the left, center and right side by side with AllSides.
     
  7. For an overview of all sides of U.S. issues try CQ Researcher or Gale Opposing Viewpoints. For international issues, try the United Nations: Global Issues website.
     
  8. If you’re looking for data, try Statista or a variety of sources on our Data and Statistics guide.
     
  9. Search for a country's background info and statistics on sites UNdata, globalEDGE, and WorldBank.
     
  10. Keep track of your sources with citation management software.