Pick a research topic
- Read your assignment instructions carefully
- Pick a topic that interests you and meets the criteria of the assignment
- Identify key concepts of your research topic
- Do some background reading on your topic using Wikipedia
Identify key concepts
Subject specific dictionaries and encyclopedias are useful for helping you figure out the jargon of a discipline and can give quick overviews of a topic to get you started. You can often pick up keywords to use in your search strategies from these sources. Try using Wikipedia or the reference tool below to find key words.
Developing a good search strategy is important
- what is your assignment?
- what is the main topic?
- what aspect of the topic is of interest to you?
- who has an interest in that topic?
- what other language might they be using to talk about that topic? do they spell it differently?
- when was it relevant? is it a new idea, or a long standing issue?
- what other factors play into your issue? climate, population, government, geography, etc.
Once you've decided which terms are the most useful for your search, combine them in a boolean search.
BOOLEAN SEARCH TIPS:
- Use keywords only, DO NOT search using a full sentence.
- Combine keywords for different ideas with AND
- Search by keyword for specific topics: Globalization AND women
- Or by country: Globalization AND China
- Combine synonyms or similar words for an idea with OR. Use as many synonyms as you want but they must be in brackets and have OR between each term.
- (international OR global OR multinational)
- Capitalize your AND and OR terms
- Use the * at the end of the root of a word to find all the forms of that word
- Use " " quotation marks to find a phrase such as "human rights"
Use Filters offered by the database: especially Scholarly/Peer Reviewed so you see only the academic material.
Controlled vocabulary
Some databases have a list of terms used to index articles in a consistent manner. These terms can be used to search for relevant material.
This list may be referred to as:
- Thesaurus
- Subject Headings
- Taxonomy
- Synonyms
As you read through a list of search results, take note of any new terms that are relevant to your topic. Search using these new terms.
Useful guides
It is also important to understand the difference between Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Sources, including how to locate and use them.
