How to Do Research

Research Roadmap
On this page, find help with every stage of the research process as well as interactive tutorials to build and strengthen your research skills.

Successful Research Process
The research process in a nutshell. Brief step-by-step overview of the research process.

How to Narrow a Topic

Areas of focus may be:

time period
geographic region or a specific place
demographic group (gender, age, economic status, educational level, ethnicity/culture/race, etc.)
specific aspect (religious, political, environmental, medical, economic, legal, etc.) of the topic
specific event related to the general topic
specific person/s associated with that topic

An encyclopedia essay may be useful to introduce even more aspects of a topic. Sometimes it takes several attempts to properly refine a topic. You are aiming for a research question that will enable you to make good decisions about what kind of source material you need and where you should look for that material.

Keyword Search - Introduction

In article databases you will most often use keywords to search for articles on your topic.

Keywords : Words/terms that represent the main points/ideas of a topic - the most significant words in a topic, book or article. Used when searching databases and library catalogs as well as search engines on the Web.

Keyword searching finds words anywhere in the database record - in the title, subject headings, author's name, etc. Use the most important (or, "key") words in your topic, to get the most relevant results.

Identify Key Concepts
Write down your research question and circle or underline the words or terms that express the main idea/s.

Develop a List of Search Terms and Related Terms

For each idea/concept, brainstorm a list of keywords that best describe your research question.
Think of synonyms, as well as broader and narrower terms for each keyword.
Translate the keywords in your research question into the language of the databases you use. Databases may use different words or phrases to describe the same idea/concept. There may be several useful articles that use different terminology to discuss an issue. So, it's important to keep a record of the database and the terms in that database that yielded the most useful results.

Create a Keyword Search

AND - narrows a search by combining two or more terms. All terms must be present.
Example: women and media
OR - broadens a search by combining synonyms or alternative forms of words. Any of the words must be present. Write down any commonly used alternatives to/synonyms for your search terms and connect them with or
Example: politicians or legislators

Example: portrayed or portrayal or depiction or depicted or represented or stereotype or objectification or objectify
NOT - excludes terms from a search; narrows and focuses a search Example: media not social media
PHRASE SEARCHING - sometimes you may need to enclose a phrase in quotation marks (e.g. "social media") in order to make sure the words are searched as a phrase.
TRUNCATION (aka wildcard) - symbol used at the end of a word (or its root) to retrieve variant word endings, including plurals; makes a search more efficient by decreasing the number of searches. Examples: politic* retrieves: politics, political, politician, politicians.
news* retrieves news or newspaper or newspapers.
Many (not all) databases use the * as the truncation symbol. Check the online Help in each database to find which symbol is used.
Put the search together. Make your search more efficient by using the "and" "or" connectors in one search.
Example:
how women politicians are portrayed in the media.