Economics and international development

Planning your search

Try not to search your entire question at once. This won't find many useful results. The techniques below can help you plan your search.

Finding keywords

Start by breaking your topic down into individual ideas and terms - we call these keywords.

Example: Economic growth and the circular economy

From here, highlight what you think are the key words or concepts.

• Economic growth
• Circular economy

Once you have your keywords, take a moment to decide if there are other words or phrases that mean the same thing (synonyms). Not all authors use the same words to describe the same ideas.

• Economic growth: economic expansion, economic outlook, economic success, growth
• Circular economy: CE, circularity, circular interventions

Other ideas for keywords

• Abbreviations and acronyms - CE, circular economy
• British and American spellings - globalisation, globalization
• Terms that can be written as one or two words - timeframe, time frame

Use limits and filters

There are millions of books, articles and websites available, and you won't have time to look through all of them. To help with this, you can decide on limits to your search. This can include:

• Publication date - depending on your topic, you may only want the most recent information available. 
• Language - you can limit your search to specific languages.
• Geography - you may only want research from or about a certain place.
• Sector - you can look at specific sectors such as the public sector or private sector, or industries such as healthcare or retail.

Information sources

For this topic, you may be interested in the following information:

• General theories and definitions of the circular economy
• Journal articles discussing the latest ideas around the circular economy and economic growth
• Statistics and data from specific sectors or companies

This is not a comprehensive list. Our Information sources page has more detail on this.

Choosing your own topic?

If you have chosen your own topic, it's important to start with some general searches to make sure there is information out there before you finalise it. If the topic is very specific or new, you may struggle to find enough information. If your topic is too broad, you will find too much information.