CEGS 450 - Capstone - Condella: Research Question and Strategy

1 – Choose a Topic You Care About

• Select something you genuinely want to learn more about.
• Try to find a balance between topics that are too broad (“climate change”) or too narrow (“climate change impact on bee populations in Newport, RI, on July 14, 2020”).
• If nothing comes to mind, review your syllabus for broad topic ideas
• Carefully read your assignment for guidance and parameters

2 – Gather Credible Background Information

• If you use Google to start your search, identify words and phrases people use to describe your topic. Then:
• Use those words and phrases to search library search tools such as:
  • Gale subject encyclopedias for short but meaty overviews of topics ranging from history to religion to science and technology  
  • Points of View Reference Source for overviews of controversial issues
• Identify:
  • Important terms and concepts
  • Major debates or controversies
  • Influential scholars or organizations

3 – Narrow the Focus 

• Choose research tools appropriate to your question and assignment requirements
• Review results to see how people have already written about your topic (ask a librarian if you're having trouble finding relevant results)
• While researching, try using database limiters and search words to limit your topic by:
  • Time period (e.g., “post-2000”)
  • Place (e.g., “in urban areas of the U.S.”)
  • Population (e.g., “among college students”)
  • Aspect (e.g., “mental health impacts”)
• Try asking “Who, What, Where, When, Why” to generate possible angles.

4 – Turn the Focused Topic into an Open-Ended Question

• Ask “how” or “why” rather than “what” or “is.”
  • Example: Instead of “What is climate change?” → “How have U.S. urban farming initiatives adapted to climate change since 2010?”
• Check that your question:
  • Is complex enough to require you to think critically and synthesize information from several sources
  • Can’t be answered with a simple yes/no

5 – Evaluate and Refine

• Evaluate your revised research question. Ask yourself, is your question:
  • Focused: Identifies a specific narrow issue and is expressed concisely, in the fewest possible words.
  • Researchable: You've identified sources that give you a clear picture of the background, controversies, and evidence to help you identify and support a position.  
  • Arguable: Your question's potential answers aren't settled facts, they're open to debate. 
  • Complex: Not answerable with a yes or no, but requires you to synthesize sources, identify and evaluate arguments and concepts, and think critically to develop your own answers.
  • Relevant: Relates to a your field of study or a societal issue that's important to you

Expect to revise your question after initial searching—this is a normal, valuable part of research.

AI Transparency Statement: Librarian Dawn Emsellem used ChatGPT in developing these steps, also consulting the approaches of other university libraries, writing centers, and student support websites while revising them. Some aspects of ChatGPT's answer were wholly retained. See the prompt.  

Different research tools, such as library databases, search engines such as Google or Bing, and AI tools might be appropriate with your instructor's guidance and in accordance with your assignment description and research question. Below are some qualities of different types of tools to help you choose where to start. 

Visualizing the type of sources you want to find can help you decide where to look for them. You might get guidance from your professor's requirements and assignment description, or your research topic might lend itself to certain types of sources. 

You might consider whether you want primary or secondary sources, or peer-reviewed, popular, or trade articles. Once you decide, you can use options in library databases to limit to the types of sources you want it to return. 

Articles or Books?

After you've gotten background information and you're ready to dive in, you can choose whether to look for articles or books. Your choice depends on your topic, assignment requirements, your stage of your research process, and how deep you want to go into your topic. 

Books can be useful early in the research process because they often have an introductory chapter that gives an overview of their subject matter. You can read this chapter and get a bird's eye view of your topic. Later on, you might find a book chapter that addresses your topic more in-depth, or you might even find that a large portion or even the whole book is helpful. 

Scholarly articles tend to laser in on a very specific aspect of a topic, so they are more useful after you've focused and refined your topic. If you try to find scholalry articles too early in your research, you may be overwhelmed by their numbers and specificity.

Choosing a Database

When you get deeper into your major, your professors will direct you to the best databases for your discipline. Early on, you can practice using the library's major databases, EBSCO, JSTOR, and Proquest. Try your words in each of these databases, explore the options they give you to limit by type of article (scholarly, news, trade, magazine, etc.), limit by date, and other options like peer-review and full-text. If you're having trouble finding articles, it could be that you don't know the words scholars are using to describe your topic. To find this language, try try your words or research question and toggle EBSCO's "natural language" option under the search box, or try Google Scholar. When the search tool returns results, keep an eye out for the words and phrases authors use to describe your topic. 

Citation Chaining

While you're reading, pay special attention to the works that the author cites as they back up their assertions. Using one source to find another is called citation chaining, and it's a great way to find good sources. 

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