Step C - CQ Researcher

Introduction
CQ Researcher is often the first source that librarians recommend when researchers are seeking original, comprehensive reporting and analysis on issues in the news. Founded in 1923 as Editorial Research Reports, CQ Researcher is noted for its in-depth, unbiased coverage of health, social trends, criminal justice, international affairs, education, the environment, technology and the economy. Reports are published weekly in print and online 44 times a year by CQ Press, a division of Congressional Quarterly, Inc.

To find it, click on "Databases" on the library’s home page, then click on CQ Researcher.

Home Screen

Here is the CQ Researcher search screen. At the top of the screen you see the Quick Search box. This is the fastest way to search. In the middle of the screen, you  see an abstract from the current report. On the right side of the screen you see recent reports and items in the news. On the left side of the screen there is a side bar that includes Advanced Search, Browse by Topic, Browse by Date, Pro/Con and Issue Tracker. This bar will remain the same on every CQ Researcher search screen.

Issue Tracker
You can use the Issue Tracker to browse for an idea for your paper.

When we click on "Issue Tracker," we come to an alphabetical list of topics starting with abortion and ending with Yugoslavia. If we click on a topic, such as Animal Rights, we come to a list of issue trackers for that topic. There are four for Animal Rights, listed in order by date, most recent first.

Now, let's do a Quick Search on animal rights.

Quick Search Results

Here we find 209 articles. That's a lot more than the four we found under Issue Tracker. Why so many? Well, some of these results may be about animal rights, but many will merely mention the keywords animal and rights. However, the results are sorted in order by relevance. Look in the column labeled "score." The first article has a score of 100. According to CQ ranking methods, this is the most relevant article in the entire list. However, if you look down on the list you will find other articles that are just as relevant. For example, both the second and sixth articles have the phrase animal rights in their titles. On the other hand, there are some articles at the top of the list that aren't relevant at all. The fourth article, for example, is about property rights, while the fifth article is about gay rights. How did these two articles rank above the sixth article, which is actually about animal rights? Well, the CQ ranking system is not perfect; it merely counts the number of times your search words appear in the article. Very likely, the word rights occurs more often in the article about property rights than in the article about animal rights.

Let's do another search, this time on the phrase "animal rights."

When we do a phrase search we are looking for the topic words to appear next to each other. This search limits our results. This time, when we search we find 25 articles. This is a much more focused list. This time, we do not see the articles about property and gay rights.

You see this list is still sorted by relevance score. Instead, we can choose to sort by date. To do that, go over to the column labeled "Date," and click on the up arrow.

Now we see that the most recent article is dated January 12, 2007, and the articles go back in time as we scroll down the list. The first article is titled "Factory Farms." The relevancy score is quite low, only a 5, but it is still a very useful article about animal rights. Let's look at it. To view an article, click the title.

Full Article View

Here is a full-text article titled "Factory Farms." At the top of the article we find an abstract.

Cite Now!       
Above the abstract you see the option to "CiteNow!"

When you click there, a new window  opens. The default option is APA style.

Click on the link for MLA style.

While this citation is formatted in close MLA style, it is not exact. Please do not use this. Instead, use the sample citation shown at the bottom of the page.

Printing
To format the article for printing, go to the Print box located just above the article title. When you click on Print, a drop down box appears. To print the full article, click on Full Report. You can also choose to print certain sections of the article, such as the Overview or the Chronology.

When you click on Full Report, a print dialog box opens. From here click on the print button to print the article.

English 111 Assignment
For Step D, use CQ Researcher to find a full-text article and create an MLA citation. Remember to find the page information at the bottom of the article. Here is an example:

Weeks, Jennifer. "Factory Farms." CQ Researcher 12 Jan. 2007: 25-48. The CQ Researcher Online. CQ Press. Virginia Western Community Coll., Brown Lib., Roanoke. 23 July 2007 <http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/>.