Research Guides

• Conduct background research on your topic.
• Determine what aspect of your topic to investigate.
  • Consider the issues, mystery, debate, problem, or controversies.
  • What interests you?  What needs to be solved?
• Create a concept map or a list of ideas to help brainstorm potential questions.
• Use question starters, if needed, to help create a question: 
  • Who
  • What
  • Why
  • When 
  • Where
  • Which
  • How
  • To what extent
• Put your question through some tests once you've created it:
  • Answerable but not obvious?
  • Open? (not a yes or no)
  • Simple? (not too many questions being asked)
  • Debatable? (you should need multiple perspectives)
  • Judgement or evaluation needed?
  • Narrow and focused?
• Develop sub-questions in order to have a purpose/focus for the sources you read.
  • Ask yourself, what do I need to know to answer my primary research question?
  • You may find your primary research question and/or subquestions changes after doing research.  That's okay!

1. State your research question/topic

   • EXAMPLE: "How do cigarette companies target children with their advertising?"

2. Identify main concepts:

   • EXAMPLE:  "How do cigarette companies target children with their advertising?"

3. Brainstorm synonyms, related terms, broader terms, scientific/technical terms, and more specific terms based on your own background knowledge:

   • EXAMPLE:

     • Cigarette companies:  Philip Morris, Camel, Imperial

     • Children:  child, adolescent, teen, teenager, students, youth

     • Advertising:  ads, marketing, commercials, promotions, product placement

4. Avoid the following:

   • Abbreviations - spell them out

   • Relationship words - words like compare, contrast, causation, etc.

   • Judgement words - words like best, worst, pro, con, etc.

5. If needed, search Wikipedia and other reference sources to further develop your list of keywords.

Science

Humanities

Examples of Primary and Secondary Sources

adapted from University at Albany Library