For many students, the academic research process can feel overwhelming and confusing, leading to frustration and struggles. Remember: research may be difficult, but it shouldn’t feel impossible. If you are unable to make progress, you probably should change your strategy. Always keep your purpose in mind. Use these chapters, your instructor, your librarians, and tutors to change your strategy and make more progress

Topic and Basics

Know the Assignment Purpose

Before you choose your unique topic or focus, understand the unique research project that you have been assigned. Consider these different prompts:

• What if you were assigned to write an informative report about an environmental issue based on research?
• What if you were assigned to analyze a speech and evaluate its effectiveness and include background and context about when and where the speech was originally given?
• What if you were assigned to write an argument about an issue in your community based on research?

Can you see how each of these assignment prompts may lead to students looking for different types of information? Different types of sources?

• An informative report like this should be neutral and cite data from credible scientific studies.
• An analysis of a piece of communication such as a speech should cite credible reference information about its historical context.
• An argument, on the other hand, should describe multiple perspectives and may cite facts and opinions from news articles, scholarly journals, and other sources to present claims and evidence that relate to your own position.

The Right Topic

The right topic will lead to a more engaging research process and a more successful final project.

A good topic usually connects with your prior expertise, interests, and learning. And, it creates opportunities to learn more and explore different possible directions and academic research questions. So, good topics are usually the result of conversations and collaborations with instructors, librarians, and peers who can learn about who you are and what feeds your curiosity and motivation.

Preliminary Research: Knowing the Basics

Knowing some background facts about your topic, before you begin searching for sources to support your project, is an essential first step. Why?

• If you search for answers to broad, background-based questions at a later stage, you may find dozens of sources that say the same thing, and waste your time sorting them all. This might feel productive – “I have 5 sources already!” – but chances are, you haven’t learned enough to turn around and write about your topic–in an informative report or in an argument–to an academic audience.
• Having broader and deeper background knowledge will help you to use search terms and evaluate search results later. You will be able to consider new perspectives, questions, and areas of study as you research.

Consider this preliminary research or pre-research.

Research Questions

In general, academic researchers ask open-ended questions that allow for complex, debatable answers, and they reach those answers only through continual thinking and learning.

In college-level research, the research steps are usually “recursive,” meaning that they move in a cycle. You may start with a research question, read and learn from some sources, change your focus a bit, and then continue to read and learn. Read section 1 from the chapter, “Roles that Sources Can Play” called “Good Research is a Process that Starts with Inquiry” for an example of this.

In the chapter, “Academic inquiry and developing a research question” there are 4 key sections:

1. The benefits of learning inquiry
2. How to develop a research question
3. Checklist for evaluating/revising research questions
4. You’ve finished your project; now what?

At this stage, focus especially on Sections 2 and 3, as well as a short section in another chapter titled, “How Can I Create a Research Strategy?”

Keywords

While typing a question into a Google search bar can be a good strategy when you need a quick answer in daily life, academic research, including searching in library databases, requires a little more work: namely, developing key words (“keywords”) that you can search for, and developing lists of synonyms for those key words so that you can try different combinations.

Databases and Types of Texts

While the different sources that you find may look similar on your screen, they were probably written by various authors for a variety of purposes and situations. So, you need to think about the different types of texts that you discover in your research and how to analyze and process them all.

Read the first 2 sections of the textbook chapter, “Finding and Using Outside Sources:”

• “What are the different types of sources?”
• “What makes a source scholarly or academic?”

First, determine what expectations your instructors have for your research. For example:

• Are you required to cite one or more scholarly sources?
  • Does this mean peer-reviewed academic books and journals or may you cite studies from other credible organizations instead?
• How are you supposed to evaluate sources and determine what is credible?
• When and why might you use an opinion article or an op-ed?

Scholarly Sources

Using Library Databases

The best way to learn how to search databases effectively is to experiment and then get help. At HCC, you can get help in many ways:

• Schedule a session with a librarian. (Here is the website where you can make appointments.)
• Click on the “Ask Us. Chat” button when you are anywhere in the library webpages to chat with a librarian online.
• Work with an English tutor in person or online
• Keep up with class assignments and homework, and schedule an appointment or office hour visit with your instructor

Database Resources

There are a lot of videos about using databases, but what’s most important is that you learn a little, try a few things, and then go back and learn a little more; most students get a bit overwhelmed when they are new to the process. Here are several resources for you to start with.

A Few Final Database Tips

• It’s important to find the right words to search with.
  • You can search “AND” or “NOT” to fine-tune your searches.
• Use “filter” tools in library datbases:
  • You can filter by type of text.
  • You can filter by the age/date of the text.
• Databases include tools for saving the sources that you find.
• Databases include tools for saving the citation/bibliographic information of the sources that you find.

Assessing Sources

The CRAAP test, mentioned above, will help you to evaluate the following for each source:

• currency
• reliability
• accuracy
• authority
• purpose

This is another important tool in your search; if you can determine immediately that a text isn’t fully relevant to your research goals and your research question, then you only need to spend a few seconds evaluating it.

Likewise, if you notice while skimming a list of search results that many texts are ten or more years old, or that you are finding a lot of Tier-3, less credible sources, then maybe a new search strategy will help.

Another Consideration: How Sources Serve You as a Writer

In these textbook chapters, there are a lot of lessons about using sources to write academic, research-based college essays and papers:

• “Roles that Sources Can Play”
• “Synthesis of Multiple Sources”
• “Putting Sources in Context”

Some things to consider as you are researching are:

• What am I learning? From whom? Do I feel reasonably informed on this topic?
• How are my sources working together to build my foundation of knowledge?
• Is my understanding well-rounded?
• Is this information enough to enable me to make a thorough, well-supported argument (if I am writing a persuasive essay)?

Ultimately, you will compose a research-based product that presents your findings, whether it be an informative report, an argument or an inquiry-based essay. You can think about your sources as serving different roles within your project. The chapter “Roles that Sources Can Play” will help you to plan for that as well.

Moving into Internet Research

Searching the web online using a search engine such as Google or Bing seems much easier than using library databases, but it does require more sifting, filtering, and skimming. You should still use the CRAAP strategy, but you may also want to be more skeptical of what you find.

The SIFT method is a strategy for online searching that can help you.

Making Connections and Critical Reading

The chapter “Synthesis of Multiple Sources” will help you start to make connections across and among your sources in order to synthesize and build your own understanding and position on your topic.

Critical and Active Reading

Before you begin writing your essay, annotate your sources, either digitally or on paper:

• Highlight important passages that you might want to quote or explain in your own project.
• Highlight or mark key numerical data or information.
• Identify perspectives and positions in your sources.
• Identify key figures, experts, or researchers whom you might want to reference, quote, or discuss.

Reading closely and critically — and capturing your close reading with annotations and notes — will make your project easier in many ways:

• You will have a clearer understanding of your sources and, therefore, your topic or issue
• You will start to “see” the way your sources are (or are not) connecting or “speaking to each other”
• You will have a much easier time starting to outline your essay or writing project
• You will be able to recall or relocate key ideas, information, or people to include in your own writing

Read the chapters, “Critical Reading” and “The Active Reading Process” for more reading strategies.