Preliminary Research Strategies
The first step towards writing a research paper is pretty obvious: find sources. Not everything that you find will be good, and those that are good are not always easily found. Having an idea of what you’re looking for–what will most help you develop your essay and enforce your thesis–will help guide your process.
Example of a Research Process
A good research process should go through these steps:
The first step towards writing a research paper is pretty obvious: find sources. Not everything that you find will be good, and those that are good are not always easily found. Having an idea of what you’re looking for–what will most help you develop your essay and enforce your thesis–will help guide your process.
Example of a Research Process
A good research process should go through these steps:
- Decide on the topic.
- Narrow the topic in order to narrow search parameters.
- Create a question that your research will address.
- Generate sub-questions from your main question.
- Determine what kind of sources are best for your argument.
- Create a bibliography as you gather and reference sources.
Should I use a database or the internet?
Research Databases
- Information is organized: You may search for information by keyword, subject heading, author, title, published date, and more.
- Credibility: Most of the information included in a database has gone through the editorial process - it has been checked for accuracy and reliability.
- Ease of access: Digital access to thousands of high quality, full-text magazines, journals, newspapers, and more.
Primary and Secondary Sources
A primary source is an original document. Primary sources can come in many different forms. In an English paper, a primary source might be the poem, play, or novel you are studying. In a history paper, it may be a historical document such as a letter, a journal, a map, the transcription of a news broadcast, or the original results of a study conducted during the time period under review. If you conduct your own field research, such as surveys, interviews, or experiments, your results would also be considered a primary source. Primary sources are valuable because they provide the researcher with the information closest to the time period or topic at hand. They also allow the writer to conduct an original analysis of the source and to draw new conclusions.
Secondary sources, by contrast, are books and articles that analyze primary sources. They are valuable because they provide other scholars’ perspectives on primary sources. You can also analyze them to see if you agree with their conclusions or not.
Most essays will use a combination of primary and secondary sources.
A primary source is an original document. Primary sources can come in many different forms. In an English paper, a primary source might be the poem, play, or novel you are studying. In a history paper, it may be a historical document such as a letter, a journal, a map, the transcription of a news broadcast, or the original results of a study conducted during the time period under review. If you conduct your own field research, such as surveys, interviews, or experiments, your results would also be considered a primary source. Primary sources are valuable because they provide the researcher with the information closest to the time period or topic at hand. They also allow the writer to conduct an original analysis of the source and to draw new conclusions.
Secondary sources, by contrast, are books and articles that analyze primary sources. They are valuable because they provide other scholars’ perspectives on primary sources. You can also analyze them to see if you agree with their conclusions or not.
Most essays will use a combination of primary and secondary sources.
Key Words and Phrases
Key Words: Important words and phrases that relate to the topic.
Synonym: a word or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word or phrase
When searching for information, the computer will only search the terms you provide. When you enter search terms into a database or search engine, the program scans all the words in a record (title, abstract, author) and/or compares your words to the descriptors or text of the documents. The search results include only the resources that match. Use synonyms to increase the chances of finding the best results
Search Tips:
When doing an internet search, remember:
Key Words: Important words and phrases that relate to the topic.
Synonym: a word or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word or phrase
When searching for information, the computer will only search the terms you provide. When you enter search terms into a database or search engine, the program scans all the words in a record (title, abstract, author) and/or compares your words to the descriptors or text of the documents. The search results include only the resources that match. Use synonyms to increase the chances of finding the best results
Search Tips:
When doing an internet search, remember:
- Search engines do not understand language. All they can do is search for the words you type in - they don't actually understand the words themselves.
- Putting phrases in quotations will alert the search engine that you want it to find those words together and in that order. For example, prison reform returns 9,190,000 results, while "prison reform" returns 567,000.
- Getting fewer results is actually good because the results are more on point.
- If you want to refine your search even more (which is a good thing) use this trick: intitle:"prison reform" This tells the search engine that you only want results that have prison reform in the title. This returned a mere 567,000 results and they will be spot on.
- Only want results from an .edu site? Use this trick: prison reform site:.edu
- Now you get 104,000 hits and they are all from education sites. This works if you use the same for .orgs and .govs too.
- Use tags: when searching by tags that the word [tag] is not capitalized and should be followed by a colon with no spaces and then the term you want. If the term is a phrase, remember to put quotations around it. Examples: tag:racism or tag:"disability stereotypes"
- If you're not getting the results you hoped for, use synonyms or words you pick up in your search instead.