Research Strategies: Quick Start

All searching begins with a question that you want to answer. Start by defining a specific hypothesis or research question before beginning your research. You may need to spend additional time working through your hypothesis to narrow your topic so you are not searching through volumes of information; in other instances, you may need to broaden your original hypothesis.

Your research question/hypothesis will help identify the primary search concepts. Since different authors may use different terminology, you will need to gather synonyms for your key terms. This is doubly important as databases only search for the word you typed, not the concept as a whole.

Example:

How does diet affect an octopus?