Research Strategy Steps/Tips
Here are some things you should consider while conducting research.
1. Subject: select a subject that you care about and already have some knowledge about and
experience to draw from
2. Question: Come up with questions that you would like to uncover the answers to—these can
often turn into your topic sentences
3. Thesis: Come up with your number one theory (opinion) on the subject matter that you want to
explore and prove true. Remember the thesis should be narrow enough to be concise and
researchable but not too narrow that there is nothing to explore.
4. Set goals for your sources
a. Personal experience / personal knowledge. By starting off with making a list of what you
already know and what you think, you will be focusing in on what you naturally want to
learn more about; therefore, allowing you to narrow the focus of your research.
b. Library and internet sources. Note the types of sources that your instructors will accept and
won’t accept. Internet sources are often viewed as not reliable due to lack of
documentation of the credentials of the person posting the site/ article.
c. Primary sources. These include first-hand accounts, newsletters, historical documents,
literary sources, experiments, interviews, and surveys.
d. Secondary sources. These are sources written in response to or about primary sources such
as a summary of an article.
e. Scholarly and popular sources. Scholarly sources are best as they are peer reviewed for
accuracy and content prior to publication and are from experts in the given field. For any
source there are key questions that should be answered which can tell you if it is scholarly
or popular when looking at websites without going through databases.
Scholarly Popular
Title is technical and higher level or field
specific vocabulary
Title is general and vocabulary is more
simplistic
Publisher is scholarly such as a scholarly
journal (Studies in English Literature
journal) or publishing company ( Harvard
University Press)
Publisher is general magazine such as
People or publishing company such Little
Brown
Scholarly journals are typically lengthy Typically short
Author’s biography provides credentials
that are specific to the field
No bio or bio does not reflect field specific
credentials for the author
Sources are formally cited in notes/
bibliography
No formal citation of notes/sources
Sources will usually have url ending of .gov,
.edu, or .org
**Note not all sites will these endings are
automatically scholarly-wikipedia recently
became a .org ending but is not scholarly
on any level
Typically url does not end in . gov, .edu, .org
Appropriate Source Types for this Course
1) Printed books (as found in our library or other libraries/stores)
2) Electronic books (if they are also available in print and are from reputable publishing company and author)
3) My class lectures/ recordings/ comments
4) Scholarly peer reviewed journal articles (as found in library databases or kyvl databases or on Google Scholar)
5) Interviews given by the author of the work- such as if the topic was the Id, Ego, Superego an interview with Sigmund Freud
6) Printed encyclopedia articles/ reference works ( ie dictionaries)
7) Electronic encyclopedia/ reference works if available also in print
8) The Bible or other sacred texts
9) Recordings of scholarly nature ( documentary as example)
10) Websites by the author or scholar on your topic when quoting that person or another proven scholar on his/her site
11) Dictionary: OED (Oxford English Dictionary) or another field specific scholarly dictionary
NEVER USE THE FOLLOWING:
1) Wikipedia
2) Cliff Notes or any other plot summary sites
3) 123 Help Me or any other paper mill sites
