This guide is for students conducting research within majors that study various aspects of communications. This includes research for:

• Communication Studies
• Health Communication
• Journalism
• Media Production
• and Strategic Communication

In this guide, you will find information and resources that will help you with your assignments for classes in these majors, including how to conduct background and scholarly research; find industry and market research reports; get to know your target audience through demographic data; how to work with statistics and data; and cite your sources properly.

If you have any questions along the way, you can contact a Teaching & Learning Librarian for help!

Before you start your research, you'll want to make sure you have at least a general research topic or idea. Once you have a topic in mind, you can think about the type of information that will help you learn more about your topic and can begin your search. But where should you actually start searching? The following video explains the difference between what you can find with Google and what you can find in the libraries' research databases.

Video Transcript

Ultimately, you'll probably want to use a combination of sources including Google, company and government websites, and the libraries' research databases. Use the pages in this guide to help you find the information you need depending on the kind of research you are conducting.