Starting your

research
Agenda

1 2 3 4
Get feedback Talk about Develop sub- Work on
on your different questions keywords
research topic methods
 • Who is the audience?
• What do you want to tell them?

Consider the • Why do you want to tell them about your

research?
• Where is it set?
questions: • When is it set?
• Why is this important?
What can be a
problem? Bad sources

Out-of-date or
irrelevant sources

Cherry-picking
Should the Problem Be Researched?

Study Study Study Study

Study the problem if Study the problem if Study the problem if Study the problem if
your study will fill a your study replicates your study extends your study gives
gap or void in the a past study but past research or voice to people
existing literature. examines different examines the topic silenced, not heard,
participants and more thoroughly or rejected in
different research society.
sites.
What is the difference?

◆ A research topic is the broad subject matter addressed by the study. Maria, for example, seeks to study
weapon possession by students in schools.

◆ A research problem is a general issue, concern, or controversy addressed in research that narrows the topic.
The problem Maria addresses is the escalating violence in schools due, in part, to students possessing
weapons.

◆ A purpose is the major intent or objective of the study used to address the problem. Maria might state the
purpose of her study as follows: “The purpose of my study will be to identify factors that influence the extent
to which students carry weapons in high schools.”

◆ Research questions narrow the purpose into specifi c questions that the researcher would like answered or
addressed in the study. Maria might ask, “Do peers influence students to carry weapons?”
Methods
Close textual analysis
Content analysis Discourse analysis
(sometimes also
(qualitative and (often called critical In-depth interviews
called multimodal
quantitative) discourse analysis)
semiotics)

Focus groups Surveys Case studies Archival

Ethnography Experiments
Creating sub-questions
• Discussion:

• Why do we need to create sub-questions?

The importance of sub- or secondary
questions

1. They help to answer the primary question.

2. They will provide the main points of investigation and

become the topics of some paragraphs in the paper.

3. They will become part of your AIMS section.

Task: Sub-questions worksheet

Write your main research question in the middle of the table and
generate sub-questions that help to answer the main question.

If you run out of your own ideas, you might want to try a more formal
“heuristic”—an investigative procedure providing a series of questions
that guide inquiry and increase the chances for a workable solution
(we’re all familiar with the old “who, what, when, where” heuristic).
Keyword • Keywords are the crux of your research question.
One way to find them is to focus on a few key
phrases or concepts that sum up what you want
generation to write about.
 1. Develop a well-formed research question
2. Extract core concepts from this research
question

How to identify 3. Brainstorm a list of alternative terms or phrases

for each concept and or term

keywords? 4. Organize the list of terms and phrases by

creating a hierarchy, indicating broader and
narrower terms for
5. Identify which terms you would combine to
conduct a search
Step 1: Start with a • How have various stakeholders responded to
Seattle's initiatives and approaches to creating
and preserving green spaces as the city has
research question grown in population?
Step 2: • How have various stakeholders responded to

Extract Core Seattle's initiatives and approaches to creating

and preserving green spaces as the city has
grown in population?
Concepts
But first… Some Helpful Tips

DATABASES CAN BE KEYWORDS ARE NOT QUESTIONS

PICKY ABOUT KEYWORDS OR WHOLE STATEMENTS
Step 3:
Create a list of
alternative terms
or phrases for
each concept and
or term
Step 4: Separate
the concepts on
your list into
categories like
broader,
narrower, and
related
Step 5: • Lastly, select a few terms to combine and begin

How to string terms your search process! You don't always have to
pick one term from each key concept category.
For example, when searching for our topic
together and you might find "Seattle" AND "community
garden" AND "urban development" gives you
what you need.
start searching
Boolean operators
Use BOOLEAN OPERATORS to relate the terms in specific ways
that will affect the results of a search.
• Boolean operators are terms that create relationships
between concepts and words
• AND
• OR
• NOT
AND retrieves only Examples:

articles that contai

n all the terms and • “child obesity” AND Maryland

will narrow the se • “child obesity” AND “eating

arch disorder”

• “video games” AND children

• “attention deficit disorder” AND

children
 Examples:
OR retrieves
articles with • “child obesity” OR “overweight
any of the terms children”
and will
• children OR juveniles
broaden the
search • “attention deficit hyperactive
disorder” OR hyperactivity
NOT eliminates
articles This will narrow the search
containing the Examples:
second term
• obesity AND children NOT adults
even when the
• depression AND teen NOT adults
first term is
• “video games” AND teenagers NOT children
present
(-)
 Use nesting to build a more complex search by putting
keywords and/or phrases in parentheses to determine
their relationship when more than one operator is used.

Examples:

Using Nesting with Operators

• (children AND teenagers) AND (ADHD OR hyperactivity)

• (children AND “video games”) NOT (teens OR adults)

 USE QUOTATION MARKS " " before and after a
phrase, two or more words that must be together
in a defined order.
Examples:
• “African American”

Key Concepts • “eating disorder”

• “obsessive compulsive disorder”
• “video games”
This lets the database know that you want to
search for this phrase, and not the individual words
that make up the phrase.
 • To use truncation enter the root of a word and
put the truncation symbol at the end. The
database will return results that include any
ending of that root word.
• Examples:

“Truncation” • child* = child, child’s, children, children’s,

childhood
• *GOAL in using truncation is to retrieve more
results.
 Truncation symbols may vary by database, the most
common truncation symbols are:
• * Asterisk
• ! Exclamation Mark
Advanced Search Techniques “Truncation”
• ? Question Mark # Hashtag

Look at the database “Help” screens to find out whi

ch symbol to use.
Database
https://scholar.google.com/

https://eric.ed.gov

https://www.sciencedirect.com/