This guide provides selected resources for your PLCY 800 assignments.
Contact information
If you need help, please contact Nina Smart, , at or nsmart@sfu.ca (), For quick questions or when Nina is away, see Ask a Librarian.
For detailed research questions on statistics information resources or questions about microdata, please contact the Data Services Librarians Team at data-services@sfu.ca
Resources for Instant Analysis assignment
If you have just one week to do your research you will want to look for some quick-to-find, but reliable news articles, scholarly articles, a report or two, and some statistics. Here are a couple of suggestions:
News resources
CBCA Complete
Newspapers and newswires (full text), journal articles, trade publications and more
Canadian Newsstream
Full text national and local newspapers
Factiva
Full text global newspapers and business sources
Scholarly journal articles
Political Science Complete
Access to full-text political science articles [sample subject terms: Health care reform AND Canada]
ECONLIT
Database for world economic literature (sample subject terms: Urban Economics AND Canada)
Environment Complete
Covers environmental law, public policy, renewable energy sources and more
International Political Science Abstracts
Comprehensive, global database providing access to abstracts and information on world-wide political science journals
See also: databases for Public Policy
Searching Journal article databases
General database search tips, or things you can't always do in Google:
- truncation, e.g. transport* and phrase searching e.g. "food sovereignty"
- syntax: AND to narrow and OR to broaden search
- pearl-growing, or starting with a good article and finding more (see YouTube tutorial)
- search the database Thesaurus to find useful subject headings
- Keep in mind research is generally not a straight line, but iterative searching
- More search tips in How to find journal articles
Statistical resources
Statistics Canada
Quick tips for navigating the site:
- Subjects to find data and analysis as well links to other agencies with useful statistics
- The Daily, StatCan's official release bulletin. Search within The Daily to find topic subjects, e.g. covid youth
Helpful hint: Newspaper articles are terrible at citing sources, so if a StatsCan report is mentioned in one, chances are very good that looking at The Daily for the same week will get a link to it.
Statista
"simple-to-use statistics portal that integrates statistics from thousands of sources, on topics related to business, media, public policy, health and others". Covers Canadian, US and international resources, including Statistics Canada, but having so much more.
For more resources see the Statistics and Microdata section of the Public Policy page
Reports and backgrounders
Canada Commons
Canadian public policy documents from government and nonprofit organizations as well as think tanks
Government of Canada including Departments and Agencies , Open Government and Government of Canada Publications
Policy Memo
See the section Policy Writing section of the Public Policy page for how to write a policy memo
Resources for other assignments
Presentations
Giving effective presentations
Research Commons
Resources to help you improve your presentation skills
also Research Commons
Voice and Presentation Skills
SFU's Centre for Educational Excellence (CEE) has free workshops for SFU faculty, staff, and graduate students
Anti-Racism and Anti-Colonialism
Indigenous Curriculum Resource Centre at SFU Library. Resources on reconciliation and related topics
GSWS course page covering search techniques and more