Research Process

When your professor assigns a research project or paper, you might want to choose your topic right then, and go straight into researching and writing. But that's a little bit like starting a trip by just hopping in your car and driving. You might end up somewhere really cool by accident, but you'll have a better trip and get to your destination faster if you have a plan.  

Choosing a topic for your research project can seem like a daunting task, however, it might help to keep in mind that choosing a topic IS research.

• You may find that your topic will narrow or expand as you go through the research process.
• The initial topic that you choose may end up being something completely different from what you started with - it's all a part of the research process!
• Watch this short video for a brief explanation on how a topic might change as a researcher works!

Examples of Topics that are Too Broad or Too Narrow

Many struggle to come up with an idea. Below are several ways to help you. 

Brainstorming

Start with asking the questions: Who? What? Where? Why? When? 

Concept Mapping

Concept maps illustrate the connections between different ideas or bits of information through the use of boxes or "bubbles."  This next video shows how concept maps are similar to the process in the previous video where like ideas are clustered together. 

Research Topic Worksheet

If you’re feeling stuck and can’t seem to translate your research interests into a concrete topic, try this worksheet. This step-by-step process will help your refine a big idea into a tidy problem statement.

1. What is the broad topic idea? 
2. List some of the aspects of your topic you might want to investigate. Two different approaches you might try:
   1. List one or more subtopics you wish to explore
   2. List possible questions about your topic you might wish your research to focus on, using the brainstorming questions of Who? What? Where? Why? When? 
3. Draft a possible thesis or problem statement.
4. Considering your thesis or problem statement, list as many terms as you can think of which might be useful in a subject or keyword search for materials. Consider synonyms and word variations. 

Points of View Reference Center

• Explore your topic through contrasting perspectives from the Points of View Database.
• Try phrasing your topic sentence as a question. For example, "What are the connections between sleep and succeeding at school for college students?"
• As you continue your research, you will be continually working to organize your materials, select new sources, and recraft your search strategy with new "synonyms." Please review those 3 tabs. You will work through these stages in a cyclical process during your research.  
• You will, of course, be evaluating your materials throughout the process.

Credo

This will let you create something called a Mind Map. The link is below the instructions.

• At the top right side of the Credo screen, click on "Browse Credo"
• Select "Mind Map" from the dropdown options
• Once you choose a topic to search, to one side it will tell you how many results were found for the various topics. This will create a web-style map with numerous topics related to the topic you entered, along with lines connecting it to related ideas.
• Open one of the topics
• This helps generate a topic (on the Mind Map) and keywords (in the entries you review) which can now be taken to the library databases for more in-depth results! 

Encyclopedias

Similar to planning a trip, you do a little research to choose a topic. You need to explore a little to find out what exactly you want to research and what kind of information you need. 

Wikipedia or an Encyclopedia?

While Wikipedia has articles that summarize main concepts and backgrounds of a topic, for academic research, you would use an encyclopedia.  

• Like Wikipedia, an encyclopedia contains very general information on broad topics, giving you a baseline knowledge of a subject. Entries can be input by anyone.
• Unlike Wikipedia, an encyclopedia is written by experts and cites reliable, academic sources. 

What are encyclopedias good for? 

• General information written by experts
  • Gives an overview of a topic to help consider different issues and ideas included in that topic.
  • Gives expert terminology and other words you might not have known or considered to search with.
• Giving a basic understanding of a topic which helps the researcher form better questions and to know what kinds of information they are looking for
  • Helps narrow down and refine a topic if it's too broad
    • It can help find subtopics to narrow the topic down
  • Helps expand a topic if it's too narrow
    • You can explore broader but related topics to find other ideas to incorporate into your topic to expand it.
  • Provides alternate search keywords you can use when you start to look for books and articles

What areas are encyclopedias weak in? 

• Narrow or specific topics. For example, if planning research on a special circumstance like the homeless LBGTQ+ population, this would need to be broken into broader topics of just homelessness and just LBGTQ+ issues
• Current / Recent events. Encyclopedias take around 5 years to write.
  • Experts review books and articles to create a summary, which is then placed into an encyclopedia. 
• Long search strings in online versions. Unlike Google, if you type in "what are some gender disparities faced by women in higher education?", results will be poor. Instead, search for something like "gender higher education" 

If you wanted to write a paper on cage free livestock, you would find that The Gale Encyclopedia of Diets has an entry for Free-Range, Grass-Fed, and Cage-Free Animals.

• Under The Purpose, it says: " Farmers or ranchers who practice free-range animal husbandry typically do so for one or more of five major reasons: humane considerations, feed cost reduction, happier and livelier animals, higher-quality food products, and sustainable agriculture, which involves raising crops and livestock on the same parcel of land without exhausting the land or damaging the local environment." This provides different sub-topics. 
• Under The Description, it introduces terms such as "pastured" and "organic." Finding smaller pieces of the topic like this will help narrow down what specifically you want to talk about. Instead of talking about every aspect of the cage free livestock movement, a choice can be made from these smaller pieces.

Finding Keywords (excellent search terms)

Using the cage free example again, it started with three keywords:

• cage free
• livestock
• benefits

Using the same encyclopedia entry for Free-Range, Grass-Fed, and Cage-Free Animals, we can find other keywords. 

• In the Definition, the words "cage free" and "free range" are used interchangeably. This is important! It means if you only search for books and articles using "cage free." Anything that uses "free range" will be excluded, potentially missing a key piece of information. 
• Look for and identify other important words that are used by experts in the field and are related to those narrower issues and ideas that interest you. The following image pulls from the entry's The Purpose: 

• From the three keywords that started this search, there are now seven more:
  • Alternative agriculture movement
  • exhausting the land
  • grass fed
  • battery cages
  • agribusinesses
  • pastured
  • factory farming