Research guide

AP African American Studies

Independent Student Project

Project Overview

"Students in AP African American Studies will embark on an individual project to explore four related sources on a topic of their choice and then present and defend their analysis of those sources."

AP African American Studies Individual Student Project Guidelines and Key Requirements 

Research Steps

Identify and Focus on a Topic

1. Select a topic: “Virtually any sentence in the AP African American Studies CED could become the topic for deeper student exploration. Historical figures, works of art or literature, or contemporary topics or debates are all possibilities for students to explore. 

2. Conduct a preliminary search to gain background information about your topic. 

   1. Sources: Gale, EBSCO, ProQuest, etc. on the Library Portal.

   2. After reading about the topic, do you still find it interesting? If not, consider another option.

   3. Is the topic too narrow or too broad? It might be too narrow if the encyclopedia entry is very short, or it might be too broad if the entry is too long. 

3. Develop a research question. You must have a thesis statement or claim to anchor their presentation, rather than a simple declarative statement or fact. The presentation is not a report but is instead an argument in which the student supports a claim by comparing evidence or details from the sources they studied.

Discover Sources

1. Create a working list of at least eight (8) sources from which you will select four (4) for your final presentation. 

2. You may select from any combination of the following source types:

   1. Primary text-based sources

   2. Secondary text-based sources

   3. Artwork and photography

   4. Literature (e.g. poems, short stories, etc.)

   5. Data sets and maps

   6. Music lyrics

   7. Performances (e.g. plays, music, musicals, exhibits)

   8. Oral histories

   9. Event (e.g. debates, public hearings, speeches, or testimonies)

3. Academic research requires trial and error! You may need to try several approaches to find the best research tools for their topic.(Avoid Google dumping.)

4. While browsing sources, drop them into a NoodleTools project folder for “safekeeping” until you decide on your final four. 

5. Approaches (aka searching different databases and websites)

   1. BOOLEAN guide to searching with key terms

      1. “ Quotation marks result in an exact match

      2. - En dash excludes a term from the search results

      3. AND results in both terms

      4. OR results in either term

Please move on to the next step of evaluating sources.