1 Researching and Analyzing a Company and Industry Hello, and welcome to our discussion of CSU Library resources for company and industry research and analysis. In this tutorial, I am going to introduce you to the library databases that are good starting points when you are looking for information on specific companies and industries. Here is a view of the CSU Library homepage. While the Discovery Search box here at the top is a good resource to use at the beginning of many searches, you will get more focused results by using an individual database that offers the option to perform a targeted search by company or industry. To do that, click the Databases button here. The Databases button will redirect you to an A-Z list of databases to which the library subscribes. Use the titles and the brief descriptions in this list to help choose a database; then click a specific title to start your search. In this A-Z list, you will find four specific databases that are good starting points for company or industry research: they are Mergent Online, Business Source Ultimate, ABI/INFORM Collection, and IBISWorld. We’ll focus on researching and analyzing a company first. If you don’t already have a company selected, use the Company Information link in Business Source Ultimate to help select one. Here is the main search screen for Business Source Ultimate, one of our larger business databases. To start, click the Company Information link at the top of the main search screen. On the company search screen, you can search for information by specifying Company Name or Ticker Symbol. Or if you need help choosing a public U.S. company to research, look below and check the Public box under U.S. Company Type and then hit search. This will take you to a list of publicly-traded companies in the United States; click the name of a company to be redirected to a company overview page, with contact information, revenue and financial data, and a list of important executives. The amount or type of specific information available in this database varies widely among companies listed. For a more comprehensive overview of company details, let’s try the Mergent Online database instead. For company details and reports, Mergent Online is a great database to choose! To start, type the name of your chosen company into the Company Search box here and click Go; then select the one you are looking for from the company list that appears. Use the section tabs and descriptors on a company’s opening page to navigate to more detailed company information. The company overview page that opens up provides a brief overview of the company at large, including company contact info, a list of key executives, up-to-date stock prices, and recent financial figures. 2 Under the Reports tab, for example, you may find the most recent annual reports that have been posted publicly such as the latest 10-K, which is a ...

1. 1
Researching and Analyzing a Company and Industry
Hello, and welcome to our discussion of CSU Library resources
for company and
industry research and analysis. In this tutorial, I am going to
introduce you to the library
databases that are good starting points when you are looking for
information on specific
companies and industries.
Here is a view of the CSU Library homepage. While the
Discovery Search box here at
the top is a good resource to use at the beginning of many
searches, you will get more
focused results by using an individual database that offers the
option to perform a
targeted search by company or industry. To do that, click the
Databases button here.
The Databases button will redirect you to an A-Z list of
databases to which the library
subscribes. Use the titles and the brief descriptions in this list

2. to help choose a
database; then click a specific title to start your search.
In this A-Z list, you will find four specific databases that are
good starting points for
company or industry research: they are Mergent Online,
Business Source Ultimate,
ABI/INFORM Collection, and IBISWorld.
We’ll focus on researching and analyzing a company first. If
you don’t already have a
company selected, use the Company Information link in
Business Source Ultimate to
help select one. Here is the main search screen for Business
Source Ultimate, one of
our larger business databases. To start, click the Company
Information link at the top of
the main search screen.
On the company search screen, you can search for information
by specifying Company
Name or Ticker Symbol. Or if you need help choosing a public
U.S. company to
research, look below and check the Public box under U.S.
Company Type and then hit
search.

3. This will take you to a list of publicly-traded companies in the
United States; click the
name of a company to be redirected to a company overview
page, with contact
information, revenue and financial data, and a list of important
executives. The amount
or type of specific information available in this database varies
widely among companies
listed. For a more comprehensive overview of company details,
let’s try the Mergent
Online database instead.
For company details and reports, Mergent Online is a great
database to choose! To
start, type the name of your chosen company into the Company
Search box here and
click Go; then select the one you are looking for from the
company list that appears.
Use the section tabs and descriptors on a company’s opening
page to navigate to more
detailed company information. The company overview page that
opens up provides a
brief overview of the company at large, including company
contact info, a list of key

4. executives, up-to-date stock prices, and recent financial figures.
2
Under the Reports tab, for example, you may find the most
recent annual reports that
have been posted publicly such as the latest 10-K, which is an
annual report that gives
a comprehensive summary of a company’s financial
performance. Browse through past
reports to further analyze a company’s growth or shrinkage over
time.
The Competitors tab will allow you to quickly compare the
basic information of a
company’s closest competitors as well as jump between
individual company reports.
Using the Remove column and the add company box, you can
build your own custom
report to compare a company with competitors that you identify.
Remember that the company information available will differ
from one company profile
to the next. In general, the company profiles of major
companies found in Mergent
Online are extremely detailed, and the only way to truly know
what’s available is to get

5. into it and explore it widely! For articles and reports that
discuss specific companies, try
one of our other two business databases, Business Source
Ultimate and ABI/INFORM
Collection.
On the main search screen of Business Source Ultimate, type a
company name into the
top search box. Then select CO Company Entity as your search
field limit. This is
especially helpful if your chosen company has a name like
Target or Apple, which are
also words that can be used in other contexts. Add more
keywords to the lower boxes
as necessary and hit search.
Here you have your results. To limit your search to information
about problems the
company has faced, you can try adding related keywords such as
challenges, issues, or
scandals to the lower search boxes. You can place multiple
related words in the search
boxes using the OR connector. The OR connector broadens
your search by searching
for keywords separately but simultaneously.

6. Try to think of as many related words, synonyms, and even
more specific words as you
can to use in your searches because various words may be used
to describe the
information you are seeking.
If you have already discovered particular problems or issues a
company has, you can
use those as keywords as well.
Once you have your keywords in place, hit the Search button
again to update your
results.
Don’t forget to take a look at the tools available to you on the
results page to further limit
and sort your results. The options featured here allow you to
sort your results by
several criteria, including “Relevance,” which is very helpful in
that it brings articles with
information most relevant to your keywords to the beginning of
the results list.
Scroll down to take a look at the useful limiters in the left
column. Here, you can limit by
Publication Date, Scholarly (Peer-Reviewed) Journals, Source
Type, and more.

7. 3
If the titles don’t look promising, you can take a quick look
inside the article by clicking
the Preview option on the right.
Our other big business database, ABI/INFORM Collection, is
also a good place to look
for articles on specific companies. Although this database looks
a bit different than the
one we were just in, the same strategies apply to article
searches. Type a company
name in the search box to start (notice that “United Airlines”
has quotation marks
around it, and you will always want to enclose any keywords
that are phrases in
quotation marks so the database will search for that exact
phrase); then, on the right,
use your search field limiters to limit the search to
Company/Organization--ORG. Add
more keywords to the lower boxes as necessary and hit search.
Use the Preview button on the right to take a quick look inside
the article.
You can sort your results here, and limit your results using the
options in the left
column.
So, the three main databases to use for company research are as
follows: Mergent
Online is best for company details and both Business Source

8. Ultimate and ABI/INFORM
Collection are good databases in which to find articles or
reports with a company focus.
Now, let’s focus on researching and analyzing an industry. For
industry research, you
will want to try the IBISWorld database. Here, on the
IBISWorld main search screen,
start by typing either a company name or a keyword related to
the industry you want to
explore. Let’s try Ford, a major player in the automobile
industry. That will bring up a list
of industry reports in which Ford is featured, such as this one:
Car & Automobile
Manufacturing in the US. Click on the title of a report to
explore it further.
On the “About this Industry” page, you will find, among other
things, an industry
definition, which provides a short, technical outline of an
industry as well as a short list
of the products or services that are important to that industry.
The supply chain is a
visual overview of the industry that includes links to other
reports of interest, such as
those for suppliers, buyers, and related industries. The key
external drivers for a given

9. industry are listed here as well.
In the Major Players section, Ford is listed, which is why a
search for that company
triggered this report, but in this database, the focus is on the
industry at large instead of
the individual company, which is why the main activities and
products of the industry
and similar industries are highlighted here instead of the
company we started with. In
fact, the Similar Industries section can be used to identify
potential competitors or
substitutes.
Use the section tabs on the left to dive more deeply into any
given industry.
IBISWorld is a great resource to use for the bigger picture
behind a company, so to
speak.
4
The Industry at a Glance section provides a quick statistical
overview of the industry at

10. present, its key influences, and its past and expected
performance. The Industry
Structure chart identifies key industry trends and levels that are
discussed throughout
the report. Scroll down to find the Executive Summary, which
provides a brief
explanation of significant trends and issues, current
performance over the past five
years, and a forecast for the next five years. If you’re pressed
for time, this section can
also be used as a quick summary, but deeper analysis of this
section’s contents can be
found in the other sections of the report. For more information
on the future of an
industry,
Check out the Industry Outlook section, which provides
information on an industry’s life
cycle state and forecasts the potential for growth or threat of
shrinkage of the industry in
the future.
And the Major Companies section provides information on the
top 2-4 companies within
an industry, if any. Here, we can see that Ford qualifies as a
major player due to its

11. significant market share of the industry at large.
The industry reports in IBISWorld, like the company reports in
Mergent Online, are quite
detailed and demand careful exploration, but the information
that they can provide is
definitely worth the time it takes to go through them.
The IBISWorld database is an invaluable tool for industry
research! Be sure and make it
your first stop when you are looking for information on
particular industries.
And if you don’t know which database to use, or if you’ve tried
all of the search tips
we’ve discussed in this tutorial with no success, please reach
out to the CSU Library
and ASK A LIBRARIAN. We are happy to help! We are
available via phone, email, and
chat. So, please contact us if you have questions, and let us
know how we can help
you!

12. 8080 Module 3
Assignment 2:
Information Dissemination: Child Development and Learning
Advocacy is a vital component of the early childhood
professional’s role. Advocacy can occur on a daily basis
through supportive interactions with children and their families
and connecting families to needed resources. At a broader and
more public level, advocacy can occur when a specific message
is developed and disseminated with the goal of positively
impacting the lives of children, families, early childhood
professionals, and the field as a whole.
Developing effective advocacy messages requires deep
knowledge of a particular topic, an effective means of
delivering the message, and the ability to design a research-
based message that can serve to motivate others to your cause.
Over the next 5 weeks, you will design three advocacy pieces.
Each advocacy piece will use a different format—a webinar, a
podcast, and a white paper. Each advocacy message must be on
a different topic and related to nurturing young children.
Across each of the topics, the information you develop needs to
be responsive to the following:
· Audience: For whom is this information being developed?
(Families, early childhood coaches, policy makers, educators,
etc.)
· Role: Whom are you speaking as? Please select a role that
provides your voice for each piece that is meaningful to you
(educator, family advocate, administrator, coach, policy maker,
researcher).
· Goal: What do you hope to gain by sharing this information?
What impact do you want to have on your target audience?

13. The formats for your advocacy messages are as follows:
Note: Exemplars for each of these required formats are provided
within the Module 3 Optional Resources. As you develop your
Assignments, please visit the Discussion space for the Optional
Discussion: Community of Practice to ask questions, share
resources, and collaborate with your colleagues.
Assignment Task
· From the following topic below, You will create a advocacy
message on the topic below in a 4 minute speech with a
submission of a transcript included:
Write an advocacy message about the topic and subtopics below
in 4 pages dbl space.
· 2 pages discussing each the topic and subtopic
· 2 pages as a whole summarize the topic itself and the
subtopics….
· Be sure to label each topic and subtopic over each set of
detailed information
· The summary will be your used as your transcript…
· The explanation of the first 2 pages is used as the advocacy
message/speech.
· With the advocacy messages you develop, cite appropriate
references in APA 7 format to substantiate your thinking.
· For assignment, you are required to include current research
and evidence, using at least two scholarly resources from the
course and two additional scholarly resources that you have
selected from the Walden Library.
· Be sure that each of the resources you select is peer reviewed
and less than 5 years old. Select a peer reviewed article and less
than 5 years old

14. · Topic: “ Resilience”
Subtopics:
· What does Resilience means in Early Childhood Education?
· Why is Resilience important in Early Childhood?
· Building Resilience in Children
· How does child development impact on Resilience?
· What factors help children become resilient?
· Format: Podcast (Kaltura audio or video with transcript). Your
speech should be 4 minutes in length.
· Note: Please refer to Kaltura Media Uploader, located under
Course Home, for guidance and directions.· By Day 7 of Week
8
· Submit your speech./podcast