One way to find related research is to follow the citation patterns of articles and books. All research is built on prior research, and following the sources can help you find the scholars and researchers who are working in a field on a topic.
If you are given a research article or book chapter for a course reading, chances are it is considered very important by other scholars. This also means that they will cite this as important in some way to their own research.
For example, imagine this is the title of a suggested or required course reading : Children's search for gender cues: Cognitive perspectives on gender development
Google Scholar is a great and easy tool for finding who has cited an article or book. Using Google Scholar like this through the Temple proxy also shows the more reliable sources in Web of Science.
Here is a search on the title. The search is going through the Temple proxy, so it shows if Temple has direct access to the article on the right:
https://scholar-google-com.libproxy.temple.edu/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=5%2C39&sciodt=0%2C39&cites=11510893346974345858&scipsc=&q=%22Children%27s+search+for+gender+cues%3A+Cognitive+perspectives+on+gender+development%22&btnG=
This shows me how many times it has been cited by other sources in Google Scholar - the "Cited by" link (articles, books, papers) and also by the much more selective database Web of Science (which is almost all only articles.)
If I click on the "Cited by" link, I can search within the set of sources that have cited it using specific terms.
I can also click on the Web of Science link in the Google Scholar record to use the powerful tools in that database, such as ranking the articles by most times cited and the link to Related Records on the right side of the record of a recent article to find who is citing the same articles and likely doing similar research.
