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Sport and Leisure (FE): Articles

A guide to Library Resources and Facilities for FE Sport students

What are journals?

Journals are newspapers or magazines that cover a particular subject or profession. Each journal issue contains a number of articles, written by different authors, all of which will relate to the subject covered by the journal. 

Journals are also called periodicals or serials, because they are published on an ongoing basis throughout the year - this can be weekly, monthly, quarterly etc.

Most journals are now available online but some are available in the library including the ones below.

                        
 

Fitpro is aimed at group exercise instructors and personal trainers, and is required reading for any fitness professional who wants to be a success within this increasingly competitive industry

Women's Fitness (formerly called Health & Fitness) is a UK-based monthly women's magazine offering the latest health, fitness, diet and wellbeing news and features to help boost vitality. 

Where should I start?

If you are looking for books and journal articles for your assignment,  DISCOVER Search,  our single search tool,  is a great place to start. 

DISCOVER is a quick and easy way to search all the College Library’s resources, print and electronic, including the Library Catalogue, and find full text information.  You can search for books, e-books, and journal articles. DISCOVER is a bit like using Google except that the results are only for our resources and therefore suitable for your college course.

Databases are online collections of information that you can search to find full text journal articles, reports, news stories and images or videos.  

You can select your subject area from the Subject drop down list on the A to Z Database List  or check out the "Useful Databases" section. Here you will find the databases which are most suitable to search for information in your specific subject area. 

Off campus you will be asked to enter your College username and password.

 
DISCOVER Seach
a quick and easy way to search for the Library's resources
 
 

Online Magazines

Read articles online from any device with access to the Internet.  Magazine titles include:

     

Finding journal articles

Quick guide to finding journal articles

  • If you know the article title, go to the Advanced Search in Discover and choose the Title search
  • If you want to browse a particular journal, go to our A-Z journals list and type in the title of the journal
  • If you want to search across a number of journals for a topic, go to Discover and type in your keywords
  • If you want to run a very specific search, select the most relevant database in the right hand list. 

Before searching, think about:

  • The information that you already have.  Where are the gaps? Is the information you have at the right level and detail?
  • The type of information you are looking for.  Do you need newspaper articles, academic journals, industry reports, company information, statistics?  This will help you decide which database to search, or whether the information is available on the Internet. 
  • Theories or concepts that you may need to refer to.  Textbook usually are the best place to start as they introduce and explain topics with examples. If you want to find material which applies a theory to an issue, you will usually need to refer to journal articles. 

Be prepared to read around your subject.  You may not find an article which directly answers your assignment question, but instead you will need to synthesis information from a variety of sources. For example, you may find material on customer behaviour in a different setting to the one you are researching, but the argument and findings can be applied to your own topic.

Use the contents pages and indexes in textbooks to look up company names, theories or concepts. Don't just rely on your reading list - there is a lot of information out there!

Refer to the reading lists in books and journal articles, or use the related articles and cited by functions in Emerald and Google Scholar to widen your reading. 

 

 

How do you evaluate what articles are most appropriate for your research?  Use the CRAAP test to help you assess each article:

Currency

When was the article published? Does it matter for your topic?

Are there more recent articles you could use?

Relevance

Does the information help in answering your question? 

Is it at the right level? Is it too basic or too advanced? 

Does it add to your understanding?

Authority

Does the author work for a particular organisation such as a University?

Is the author appropriately qualified to provide the information?

Has the information been peer-reviewed? If an article has been peer reviewed it will have been evaluated or edited by other experts in the same field.

Accuracy

Where does the information come from?

Is it supported by evidence?

Can you verify the information from another source?

Purpose

What is the purpose or reason of the article?

Is the article objective? Does it give a balanced view? Is there hidden bias? Does the author use emotive language?

Has the author provided supporting evidence?

Does the article include references?