STEPS IN THE RESEARCH PROCESS
A BRIEF GUIDE
Choose your topic. If you can choose your own topic, be sure it is something your are really interested in. Expect your topic to change as you go through the process of finding information. You may even need to change your topic completely if little information exists.
Find background information. With a topic that is new to you, you'll want to begin your search for information with an overview or summary of the topic. Encyclopedias (general or subject specific) provide this information. Encyclopedias will also give you information on special terminology and significant authors or researchers in the field. The Web may also provide you with background information, depending on your topic (and on the requirements of your professor). Be sure to check with your professor before using Web resources.
Find in-depth information. Book materials provide in-depth analyses or interpretations of topics and are often a good place to start your search. The bibliographies in books can lead you to other resources on your topic. Books are available in hardcopy or in electronic format, so you can either search a library's online catalog or search an e-book collection such as NetLibrary. Depending on how narrow or how new your topic is, you may not find book material. Remember that books usually take years to write and get published, so you will need to supplement information from books with more recent material in journal articles or web sites.
Find focused and/or current information. Using online databases licensed by a library provides subject access to information in journal articles. Many narrowly focused topics may only be covered in a journal article. If you are lucky, the online database provides some articles in full text. If not, you need to determine what the library subscribes to in hardcopy and what you need to request via interlibrary loan. Journal articles in scholarly or professional journals usually contain bibliographies or references to additional sources of information. Regardless of your topic, you should be sure to check the journal literature to see what has been published most recently.
The Web also provides a wealth of current information, but you need to be very careful to evaluate the websites you use to gain additional information. A variety of evaluation guides for the Web exist (and many of them are on the Web), so use one as a guide when finding information on the Web.
Shaping your topic. At each step along the way, the information you find may change or focus your topic somewhat differently. That's part of the process. The assumptions you made about the topic and the hypothesis you started with is likely to change as you find out more about your topic.
