Ethnic Studies: Get Started

Reference sources include encyclopedias, handbooks, and dictionaries.  They are a great place to begin your research, since they can help with the following:

• Offer ideas for possible research topics
• Give you background information on your topic
• Define unfamiliar terms
• Suggest keywords to use when searching for books and articles
• Point you to books and articles on your topic, via "works cited" lists

Browse topic ideas and get background information:

When researching different ethnic groups it is crucial that you take the time to figure out all of the different ways that your demographic can be referred to. For example:

• Korean Americans can be referred to as Corean Americans
• Filipino Americans can be referred to as Pilipino Americans
• Black Caribbean Americans can be referred to as Afro-Cuban Americans
• Mexican Americans can be referred to as Chicano or Chicana
• Latin Americans can be referred to as Latinx or Hispanic American or Latino American

Also be aware that researchers may only refer to the larger demographic group in the abstract of an article but may have sections devoted to your narrow demographic group in the article itself. To capture those articles try using the following search strategy:

• Hispanic American (limited to the abstract field) AND Mexican American (limited to the full text field)
• Asian American (limited to the abstract field) AND (Korean American OR Corean American) (limited to the full text field)

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