Opposing Viewpoints in Context

Basic Search

Instead of finding your topic via the Browse Issues page, you can search for it directly by using the Opposing Viewpoints search bar, located near the top of almost every page (pictured, right).

Tips - Phrases in Quotes & Topic Pages in Bold

• Phrase search: If you're ever searching for a phrase (more than one word), you may want to put quotation marks (" ") around your search terms. This will ensure that the database searches for those words in that exact order, instead of separately.
• Search suggestions: While you're typing your search terms into the search bar, you may notice that the database is trying to "guess" what you're typing and offering a list of topics below the search bar (see screenshot below). Pay attention to this! It's giving you clues about which topics have the most information (the ones in bold) and it could give you ideas for further research. The topics listed in bold have entire Topic Pages dedicated to them -- in other words, they contain relatively large amounts of articles and research and might be your "best bet" for finding articles on your topic. The other topics (not in bold), may not have as many articles as the bold ones, but if you click on them, you will still be taken to a list of articles on that topic.

Advanced Search

Eventually, you might want to try doing an Advanced Search, which allows you to set more specific parameters on your search (like document type and date range), and allows you to more effectively search for multiple words/phrases simultaneously.

For example, instead of searching broadly for "social media," I can be more specific and tell the database I want my results to contain certain words in the title/body of the article, and that I only want results from specific authors (see screenshot, right).

To conduct an Advanced Search: click on the words "advanced search" near the Opposing Viewpoints search bar to be taken to the advanced search screen.

Note: tools for specifying document type (academic journal, magazine, newspaper, etc.) and date are located under the search bars pictured here.