COMM 212: Interpersonal Communication

This search box is the same one found under the Articles+ tab on the library homepage. It searches through several of the library's databases simultaneously, and can be helpful if you're not sure where to start.

The screen below shows the initial results for an Articles+ keyword search for interpersonal communication. Notice that the first two results say No full-text - this means that you won't be able to access the full article. Look for articles with the green dot and the words Full text available to find articles you can read right now.

At the top of the search results and in the menu to the left are links that will let you limit your results to show only articles from peer-reviewed journals. You may also want to choose the option to show only Full Text Online, which will remove the No full-text results.

*Please note that these features are not 100% perfect. Occasionally you will find articles that are unavailable, as well as book reviews, editorials, or articles from non-peer-reviewed sources after applying these filters. See tips for identifying peer-reviewed articles.

The screenshot below shows the search results after applying the Peer-reviewed Journals and Full Text Online filters. Notice that the information for each article identifies the source as a Peer Reviewed Journal:

At this point, you are seeing a set of results that include primarily peer-reviewed articles with full-text immediately available online.

From here, you can begin to browse articles, or you may want to refine your search by modifying your search terms or using some of the additional filters provided.

In this example, I'm still seeing over 46,000 results because I used the broad search term interpersonal communication. If you're seeing too many or too few results, you may want to adjust your search terms to something more specific or more general.

On the left side of the screen, you will see an additional set of filters that you can use to refine your results. These allow you to narrow your results by Subject, Resource Type, and Year.

When you find an article you'd like to read, click the View Online tab. This will open a window with a link to the database(s) where you can view the article. When you click a database link under the Full Text heading, it will open a new tab or window showing you the article's information including author, subject terms, and abstract. The specifics of this view will differ depending on which database the article is in. From here, there should be a link to view the full text of the article in PDF and/or HTML format.