How to Do Research for an Assignment

Research Process Overview

Understanding the Assignment
• Determine if the assignment is assigned or if you can choose your own.
• Consider the number of pages/words needed, the length of the presentation, and the type of sources needed.
• Consider when the assignment is due and the time available for research.

Identifying Keywords
• Use keywords related to your topic to speed up the research process.
• Use keywords from research questions, articles from background research, and bibliographies.
• If struggling, use a thesaurus to identify synonyms.
• Find pictures related to your topic and describe them.
• Brainstorm keywords with a librarian, instructor, or friend.

Purpose of Background Research
• Provides an overview of the topic.
• Helps identify important facts.
• Can help refine your topic.
• Leads to bibliographies providing additional sources of information.

Types of Information Sources
• Include Encyclopedias & Dictionaries, Books & eBooks, Videos & Images, Articles from newspapers, magazines and journals, and websites.

Constructing a Search String
• Use a combination of keywords, truncation symbols, and boolean operators to retrieve relevant search results.

Search Strategies
• Keep queries descriptive but use as few terms as possible.
• Avoid natural language and use double quotations marks ("") to search terms as an exact phrase.
• Use the site: feature to limit results to a specific website or class of websites.
• Use the OR operator to allow for either of several words to appear in your results.

Evaluating Resources
• Consider the source's currency, relevance, authorship, accuracy, purpose, and intended audience.