Week Three Assignment

Background Searching on the WWW

Part One: Background Information

1. My research topic is “Animal Assisted Therapy for Sexual Assault Victims”

2. a. I used http://academic.research.microsoft.com/
 b. I found that I may have to broaden the scope of my research topic from      “Animal Assisted Therapy...” to “Therapy Options” because it appears there are very few sources for animal assisted therapy for sexual assault victims. I found that I can also narrow the scope of my search to include the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder as there are many sources that include information about PTSD.

c. Some subtopics I read about in my search are: the comorbidity of mood disorders in sexual assault survivors, group therapy for the treatment of PTSD, sexual dysfunction in sexual assault survivors, social implications and victim blaming.

d. While I was reading through my initial background search of my research topic, a number of questions came to mind. One research question I would like to answer in my research paper is “How can the current therapy options that are available for sexual assault survivors be improved?”

e. Distinctive- sexual assault

    Broad term- violence
    Narrow term – sexual assualt of adolescent females
    Related term- crimes

Part Two: Evaluating the Website

1. http://www.goodtherapy.org/

2. The website's domain is .org which tells me that it's an advocacy website.

3. There is an “about us” link. It says that the website is “an association of mental       health professionals from more than 30 countries worldwide who support efforts to reduce harm in therapy.” The founder and CEO is Noah Rubinstein who is a licensed marriage and family therapist. There are also a number of committee members with PhD credentials who are involved with continuing education for the website.

4. The page about trauma and PTSD was last updated on December 10, 2014.

5. The website appears to have quality information. References are given for each information page or article. It appears to be as credible as textbooks or journals. The website was created by the founder, Noah Rubinstein, to support the worldwide efforts to reduce harm in therapy. The purpose of the website is to educate people about healthy psychotherapy and how to identify unhealthy psychotherapy practices.

Part Three: Reflect

Searching for background information about a research topic is very useful. But I found that it can be very difficult to find background information about a topic if it is too narrow. Since the background information is not used for a research paper's reference list, it's much easier to search a wide variety of information sources in order to narrow the scope of the research topic or to adjust the research topic before setting it in stone. Browsing and reading through a wide variety of information related to my research topic gives me the ability to iron out the wrinkles in my initial research topic.