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EDD Educational Leadership (K-12) Dissertation Guide

Guide for students in the EDD K-12 program writing their dissertations.

FYI Search Tips

  • Use quotation marks (“”) to search for exact phrases.
  • Two word queries such as advertising campaigns are searched as an implicit AND
  • Spelling variations: ProQuest is able to recognize and match differences in spelling between American and British versions of a given word such as humor vs. humour. If you do not want spelling variants to be applied to your search, enter your term in quotation marks. 
  • Different grammatical forms of the same word: ProQuest is able to recognize and match different grammatical forms of a word such as with plurals and adjectives. For example, searching for mouse will also produce hits on mice. Searching on tall will also produce hits on tallest. If you do not want different grammatical forms, enter your term in quotation marks.  

Proximity Operators

Proximity Operators tell the database how the different search terms should appear in relation to each other.

NEAR/#

OR

n/#

Finds documents where these words are within some number of words of each other (either before or after).
Note: You must specify a number, otherwise, “near” will be treated as a search term, rather than an operator.

Example: computer NEAR/3 careers

PRE/#

OR

p/#

Finds documents where these words are within some number of words of each other in the specified order.
Note: If you do not specify a number, a default value of 4 words will be applied.

Example: business management PRE/5 education

EXACT

OR

.e

Used primarily for searching specific fields, like Subject, EXACT looks for your exact search term in its entirety, rather than as part of a larger term.

Example: Type EXACT(“higher education”) in the Subject field
documents with the subject term "higher education"
Will not retrieve documents with the subject terms of “higher education administration”, “women in higher education”, etc.
w/PARA

Use this when you want your search terms to appear within the same paragraph.

Example: education W/PARA leadership

Setting up a ProQuest Account

My Research is used to save, manage, and organize items in ProQuest. It is also used to save searches and create search alerts..

Creating an Account and Signing In

1. Click on the profile Person icon and select the Sign into My Research link (located in the upper, right-hand corner of any page in the ProQuest platform) to create an account or sign into an existing account.

2. The link to Create a My Research account is to the right of the Sign in box.

3. To create an account, just fill in the required fields: name, username, password, and email address. Baker does not have a RefWorks account, so ignore this part of the form. 

Features

Once you create a My Research account, you will have access to the following items (located in tabs when you are signed in):

  • Documents – Save, view, and organize ProQuest documents. If you have a RefWorks account synced with your My Research account, you will also see your RefWorks records and folders here.
  • Searches – Save searches to provide easy future access to search strategies and results.
  • Alerts – Manage any alerts that you create while logged in to My Research.
  • RSS feeds – Manage any RSS feeds that you create while logged in to My Research.
  • Widgets – Create and embed ProQuest search boxes in web pages and subject guides to make new access points to ProQuest.
  • Account – Adjust your account settings and preferences to personalize your ProQuest search experience.

Important to know: My Research accounts will be permanently closed after three years of inactivity.