Research is a dynamic process that can be organized into the following stages. As you work through a research project, you may move back and forth between these stages as your understanding evolves. This section of the website will provide you with ideas and tools for working through the research process. 

The research process will usually include :

Step 1      Brainstorming  and Narrowing your topic  (if you have been given an assignment topic), or developing a topic for research if you are taking higher level (Degree and Post Graduate) studies and conducting new research.

Step 2.    Developing and Formulating Research Question

Step 3.    Developing search strategies  that will lead to relevant  information on your topic.

Step 4.    Exploring the different forms of information available. What's the difference between popular and scholarly information? Or between primary and secondary sources?

Step 5.     Evaluating your information. Use key indicators to check if your sources are reliable and appropriate for use in your assignments.

Use this worksheet to brainstorm ideas for a topic

When you need to broaden or narrow down your topic, ask yourself:

Who?

Who am I researching?

• Consider age, gender, profession, ethnicity, humans vs. animals vs. corporations, etc.

What?

What am I researching?

• Consider potential causes and effects, trends, statistics, problems, etc.

When? 

What time period am I interested in? 

• Consider when the topic became significant, century vs. specific dates, historical vs. current data, etc.

Where?

Where is my research topic taking   place? 

• Consider country, state, city, urban vs. rural, environments like prisons vs. college towns, etc.

Why?  

Why does my research matter?

• Consider what makes it important to you, to your colleagues and peers, to your community, to the world, etc.

Once you have selected a topic, you need to develop a research question. A research question is the question that guides your research. at the initial stage you may come up with a tentative question you want to answer and as you progress this research question might get tweaked . A good research question (RQ) forms backbone of a good research . A good RQ should be :clear, focused and arguable. 

You should not be afraid to revise your research question. It is a normal part of the research process. 

How to develop a RQ? Turning a Topic into a Research Question 

Designing your Research Question

Source: Lekanides,Kosta,”Getting Started” Extended Essay Course Companion, UK, Oxford university press,2016, pp 17-20

3 a: Identify search terms in Research Question:

Identify keywords that relate to your topic to assist you when you are searching for resources.   Often different words can describe the same concepts and as a researcher, you can never be sure which keywords will bring back the information you are looking for.  

Brainstorm related terms, broader terms and narrower terms related to your topic.  

Think about what synonyms might also be useful as search terms. For example:

3 b: Boolean operators:

Boolean operators or connectors are tools that allow you to narrow or broaden your search.

AND

Using AND between your search terms will narrow your search.  For example, searching elections AND contributors will find resources with both terms, giving you more specific results. You can keep adding terms with AND to conduct more narrow searches: elections AND contributors AND special interests AND federal law.

OR

Using OR between your search terms will broaden your search.  The OR operator is useful when a term has a frequently used synonym. Examples: Political Action Committee OR PAC; college OR university, corn OR maize. Conducting a search using the OR operator will find resources with either term, giving more results.

NOT

Using NOT between your search terms will narrow your search. NOT allows you to exclude a word or phrase from your search. For example, elections NOT presidential will find resources on elections (local, Senate, etc.) but exclude information about Presidential elections.

3 c. Parentheses

Parentheses are symbols () or "" put around words to show what is inside should be kept together. 

Example: “conceptual art” will get different results from conceptual art. Using inverted commas to indicate a phrase will get fewer and better results.

Example of parentheses using brackets

3 d. Truncation

Truncation is a technique that broadens your search to include various word endings and spellings. To use truncation, enter the root of a word and put the truncation symbol at the end. 

Examples:

elect* = election, electoral, elections

econ* = economy, economic, economics, econometric, economique

politi* = politics, political, politician, politique, politische

The most commonly used truncation symbol is an asterisk (*)

3 e. Phrase searching

Phrase searching narrows your search results by allowing you to define precisely how you want the words to appear. For example, if you are searching for information on job satisfaction then you are probably looking for those two words to appear right next to each other, with no other words in between, in the text of the document. To make sure that the database searches this correctly you can put quotation marks around your search term and force the database to search this as a phrase. 

What is Google Scholar?

Google Scholar searches across many scholarly disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories,  

Save Time With Advanced Search

You can really save some time by using the Advanced Search options if you are searching for specific publications, authors, legal or want to restrict the date.

To access the options, click on the arrow (pull down menu) of the search box. 

You'll get options to restrict results to specific authors, publications, dates and more. 

Get Google Scholar Alerts:

You can create a search alert with Google Scholar to get automatic updates on your research topic. Here's how:

1. Go to Google Scholar.

2. Search for your topic.

3. Click the envelope icon in the sidebar of the search results page.

4. Enter your email address, and click "Create alert".

5. Google will periodically email you newly published papers that match your search criteria.

Before you start researching a topic, first ask yourself:  "What type of information sources / research resources do I need?"  

Once you are clear about the information you need you can move on and ask:  "Where can I look to find these resources?"  

Depending on research topic you may need to use a wide variety of different information sources and databases.

Information Sources are typically categorized into three broad categories based on their proximity to original source material:

• primary:  original materials on which other research is based.

• secondary: interpretation, commentary or analysis of other sources. 

• tertiary: organization, categorization, index or collection of sources.

Check out this video below for a better understanding of primary , secondary and tertiary sources. 

Sometimes you will encounter popular resources. Not only will you need to learn how to differentiate scholarly and popular resources but you will need to know when it is appropriate to use a popular resource. Here is some information about popular resources: 

Features of popular resources such as magazines:

• Glossy pictures

• Written for general audiences most likely by non-experts such as journalists

• Easy to locate and purchase

• Catchy headlines and titles

• Articles tend to be short

• Lots of color images and advertisements

• Little or no reference to where the information was obtained

• Examples: Time, Oprah, National Geographic, People, Sports Illustrated

In the research process, one of the crucial jobs of any researcher is to evaluate sources: that is, to consider whether or not the facts and opinions within each source is believable and therefore, reliable. Only when the researcher has determined which sources can be relied on, those sources can be the basis for the researcher's own work.  

What is Source Evaluation?

Source evaluation is the process of critically evaluating information in relation to a given purpose in order to determine if it is appropriate for the intended use.

Why Evaluate Sources?

• Teachers expect students to use scholarly sources: using better sources often results in better grades!

• Information can be out-of-date, inaccurate, and even purposely misleading (such as propaganda) 

• Some forms of information, such as websites, allow anyone to contribute content or exist only to sell products or ads by generating traffic

It can be tempting to use any source that seems to agree with your essay but remember that not all information is good information, especially in an online environment.  Developed by librarians at California State University-Chico (see below for the link), the CRAAP Test is a handy checklist to use when evaluating a web resource (or ANY resource).  The test provides a list of questions to ask yourself when deciding whether or not a source is reliable and credible enough to use in your academic research paper. CRAAP stands for Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose.  

Watch a short tutorial describing how to evaluate sources using the CRAAP Test. 

What is the CRAAP Test?

The CRAAP Test is one of the evaluation methods. It was designed by the Meriam Library California State Universiy, Chico.

CRAAP is an acronym and stands for Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy and Purpose.

It provides you with a list of questions to help you evaluate the information that you find. You will be more confident in selecting sources to meet the expectations of your assignment.