Skip to Main Content

POSC 344: Congress & The Presidency: Topics/Keywords

Congress and The Presidency

congress and presidency word cloud

Keywords to Try When Searching

Place quotation marks around phrases of more than 1 word when searching. (EX: "house of representatives")

  • bicameral OR bicameralism
  • bipartisan
  • bill of rights
  • congress
  • congressional committees
  • congressional spending
  • conservative
  • constitution
  • domestic policy
  • executive branch
  • executive order
  • foreign policy
  • freedom
  • house of representatives
  • ideology 
  • individual rights
  • legislative branch
  • liberal
  • liberty
  • media
  • partisan
  • policy
  • political institutionalization
  • political party
  • power
  • president
  • presidential campaign
  • presidential election
  • public opinion
  • senate
  • socialism
  • unilateralism
  • voting

Subject Headings to Try When Searching

When using an EBSCO database to search subject terms, change the "Select a Field" option to indicate "SU Subject Terms."  Place quotation marks around your subject terms as indicated above.

search example

  • CONSTITUTIONAL history
  • CONSTITUTIONAL law -- United States
  • DEMOCRATIC Party (U.S.)
  • FEDERAL government
  • LEGISLATIVE bodies -- United States
  • LEGISLATIVE power -- United States
  • POLITICAL parties
  • POLITICAL reform
  • PRESIDENTS -- United States
  • REPUBLICAN Party (U.S.:1854- )
  • UNITED States. Congress
  • UNITED States. Congress -- Powers & duties

Refining a Research Topic

Refining a Research Topic

By Shonnmharen (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Finding and Narrowing a Topic

Find ideas in the syllabus, your text, class discussion, or Google News.

   Narrow down a broad topic by asking yourself
   the 5 W's: who? what? where? when? why?

   As you search the databases, looking at
   subject headings and abstracts can help you
                focus your topic.

Boolean Operators

Using Boolean operators (AND, OR, and NOT) with your keywords will help you narrow or expand your results.

The highlighted middle section represents the use of AND. Searching for poverty AND addiction will give you results with both words present. Therefore, your results are fewer.

Using OR between similar keywords will give you results that include both words. Therefore, your results are greater. A search for teenagers OR adolescents will retrieve either or both terms.

The NOT operator gives you results from only one of your words. Therefore, your results are fewer. Searching for addiction NOT alcohol will eliminate alcohol from the results.

Click images to enlarge