* Communication Studies 

A concept map is  a diagram showing the relationships among concepts. They are graphical tools for organizing and representing knowledge.

Creating a concept map for your research topic will help you brainstorm differenct keywords to try for your search.

Here is a tutorial showing you how to create a concept map.

Here is an example of a concept map for Cubism.

If you are stuck for keywords and synonyms please use the following resources:

KWmap

Synonym Finder

Thesaurus

Many of you are very used to conducting keyword searches in Google and other databases to find information. We want to encourage you to change your searching so that you get back a smaller, more relevant result set. Here is an example of how to use advanced searching techniques. Please use them when you are searching in library databases.

Step 1. Brainstorm keywords on your topic. Go to scholar.google.com and use quotation marks if you are searching with words that are a compound phrase-e.g "green buying". Now scan the list of results and read over the titles and summaries of related works to pick up words related to your topic.

For example searching for " green buying " you see other articles with the words- green consumer OR green consumption OR green purchases

Step 2. Think of any additional aspects of green buying that you want to limit your research to and add that into the searching using an AND-eg. "green buying" AND trends

Step 3. Now you are ready to revise your search again and add in those  synonymous keywords from Step 1. Your new search will look like this

"green buying" OR "green consumer" OR "green consumption" OR "green purchases" AND trends OR trend OR statistic OR statistics

Step 4. Ok, now that you have a good inital search go to Proquest. The next step is to run the search and look for really on target articles that fit what you want exactly. Click on the ABSTRACT and to the right you will see SUBJECT HEADINGS for the article. Find the correct subject heading and use it. For instance, GREEN MARKETING and CONSUMER BEHAVIOR is the closest match for subject headings that will provide more results on the topic of green buying.

Step 5. You can use citation chasing to look for articles that cite a particularly good article. It is like doing a forward literature review. Go to scholar.google.com. Type in "green buying". The very first result that comes up is published in 1997 and cited 111 times. Click the CITED BY 111 link to find other articles on the topic of green buying that cite this original article.

Green buying: The influence of environmental concern on consumer behavior   

T Mainieri, EG Barnett, TR Valdero, JB - Journal of Social Psychology, 1997 - doi.apa.org   

Citation. Database: PsycINFO. [Journal Article]. Cited by 111 - Related articles - BL Direct - All 2 versions

Please remember to apply some type of limits to the search. For example just look for the words GREEN BUYING in the title of the article. Look for just scholarly journal articles and not newspapers or magazines or book chapters. You can also limit publication years or simply limit the field of research you are looking through.