Tracking down a scholarly/research source from a news article

When I'm doing research, I will frequently find a blog post or newspaper article or something that talks about a research study, but doesn't give a full citation for it.  That can be frustrating because the study would be really useful.  Here's how I go about tracking it down.  I'm going to use a specific article as an example, but the basic steps are the same no matter where I hear about the original study.

1. Notice that there is a research study referenced in the original article.

Here's an article I found in the database Business Source Premier.  It's from Newsweek and it's about body image and advertising:

Bennett, Jessica & Ammah-Tagoe, Aku (April 6, 2009). Tales of a modern diva. Newsweek, 153(14)

At the very end of the article, there is a reference to a research study:

It is not specific, though - no publication, or title to look for.  That's fine, though, because there is enough information here to track it down.  Take note of any access points (things you can search on) that are referenced:

In this case, we have:

• the company that sponsored the research: Dove Real Beauty Campaign
• the year: 2004
• the author's name: Nancy Etcoff
• the author's institutional affiliation: Harvard

2. Find out if this research was published in a scholarly journal.

In this case we have an academic scholar as an author (Nancy Etcoff) which is a sign that we might find this research in a scholarly journal.  On the other hand, we have a commercial sponsor (Dove), which means we may not.

I don't know the specific journal I'm looking for here.  I also don't know for sure what field or discipline this research would be relevant to (psychology, psychiatry, sociology and advertising all seem potentially relevant).  Because I don't know enough to choose a specific database, I am going to start where I can do a broad, general search:  Google Scholar.

I want to be able to identify a specific author here, so I'm going to use the Advanced Search features.

In terms of keywords, I did the broadest search I could think of because I don't know the title of the study.  It is a good bet that the word beauty is in the title, so that's the only keyword I used.  Then I specified that Nancy Etcoff is the author.

This brought back a short set of results.   The one I think I want is the third one on the image above called, "Real Truth about Beauty."  You can see, though, that while the other two provide links to the content, this one doesn't.  That suggests that this research wasn't published in a journal, it was kept by Dove.

3.  Check to see if the sponsoring agency has it available

So now I have a title to search for:

The first result is the one I want:

Notice the URL for the result.  I could click on the actual PDF of the report, but it looks like there might be a whole project website with more information.  I can find out by going directly to:

http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.ae/

4. What if I do find an actual journal article?

If you do, you can look for it in the library collections to get access to the article, you can go directly to the library catalog to do this, and/or you can configure your Google Scholar to help you out.

5. A few more things to keep in mind.

So in this case, I was not able to find a scholarly journal article using this research, but I was able to find some information that might  be very useful.  A few things to keep in mind:

• While this research was done by a scholar, with academic credentials, it will not count if I am required to use a "scholarly journal" or "peer-reviewed journal" source.  This research hasn't gone through that kind of process.  It is still a potentially useful source, but won't meet that specific requirement.
• While this research was done by a scholar, with academic credentials, it was sponsored by a corporation selling products.  Before using this source you will want to evaluate that - how does the corporation's agenda affect the research?  Do the authors take that into account in their narrative?  Can you do some additional searching to see if other people have criticized or praised this research?
• In academic writing you will be in a position to use research that has been sponsored or conducted by people with a specific agenda all the time.  These might be corporations, like in this example, or they might be thinktanks, non-profits, government agencies or PAC's.  Scholars don't limit themselves to "objective" sources, and neither should you.  But you should be aware of what those agendas are and how they might affect the results of the research.