2.1 Research Process: From Topic Choice to Finding Sources

^[1]What is “rhetorical research”?

Rhetorical research is a thoughtful and strategic approach to seeking and evaluating information in order to solve problems, make decisions, and/or communicate effectively.

Academic or professional rhetorical research follows a strategic process. You may have some experience with research assignments from other coursework or from your job. However, research and information finding is a constantly evolving process due to the nature of how we find, evaluate, create, and share information in our mostly digital world. In this chapter, we will focus on how to develop a research strategy that you can apply to your academic, professional, and personal life.

Research as a Reiterative Process

As much as we would like research or information finding to be a “once and done” activity that always gives us an easy and straightforward answer, that just isn’t how it works. More often than not, the first “answer” you find is not always the best one (I’m looking at you, first entry listed in my Google results). Finding quality information that is credible and represents diverse views takes time and multiple sources. Additionally, finding information related to your initial question or topic can lead to more questions which can lead to even more questions–and some dead ends — that require you to back up and redirect your research. This is a normal part of research and can actually help your understanding of an issue, question, or topic.

“Research is iterative and depends upon asking increasingly complex or new questions whose answers in turn develop additional questions or lines of inquiry in any field.”^[2]

The more information you learn about what you are researching, the more you are able to engage with the topic. You’ll learn what field-specific terminology is used to discuss the topic; you will learn what some major debates or controversies surround the topic, etc. All of this information can help you ask the right questions and lead you to sources that are credible, authoritative, evidence-based, and reflect varying viewpoints.

The Research Process

There are many ways to approach the research process, and your particular strategy will vary depending on the specific research need you have. However, it is helpful to understand the common steps of the research process, so you can use them to guide you regardless of what it is you are searching for. For the purpose of this section, we will focus on research strategies that relate to academic assignments or projects, although they can most certainly be applied to professional and personal research needs as well.

1. Start with a general question or topic of interest

Most of the time, our search for information stems from the need to answer a question, satisfy our curiosity, or solve a problem. Begin your research strategy with a general idea of what it is you want to know or find out without feeling too committed to the topic. It is important to keep an open mind and to be topic flexible during the early stages of research, especially concerning a subject that you don’t know much about.

2. Pre-Research or Background Research

Background research is a crucial step in the research process as it will help you gain direction for your research. The pre-research stage is all about discovery and information gathering.

Reference Sources for Background Research

Often, the best types of sources for background information are reference sources.  Reference sources such as encyclopedias and handbooks contain fact-based information to help you gain an overview of a topic. Reference articles will broaden your understanding of a topic or issue by:

• Providing context
• Highlighting important subtopics, common arguments or debates, and people
• Utilizing key terminology or jargon relevant to the discussion

Academic Reference Articles

You may be familiar with online encyclopedias such as World Book and Britannica, and these types of reference sources are similar to academic reference sources that you can find through a college library.

Most of the reference sources you will find through the library are considered subject-specific.  These sources provide in-depth background information on a specific subject area and its subtopics.

Many academic reference articles are written by or in conjunction with subject experts. This gives the work ethos.

As you learned in Composition 1, ethos (or credibility) is vital to effectively evaluate if a certain source can be trusted. Academic reference databases, for the most part, are full of sources that have authors of similar credentials which allow the sources you will find in these databases to be far more credible than those you may find on a more general, online source (such as the encyclopedias listed earlier). 

3. From Background Research to Research Question

With a more robust understanding of your topic including subtopics and issues, you can use the background research to formulate a specific research question. Having a research question will give an outline to your search strategy as you focus in on finding sources that provide evidence and support to “answer” the question.^[5]

What makes a good research question?

1. Questions that are focused on a specific issue or subtopic related to your initial background research inquiry. Notice the difference between the general topic and the focused research question below.

2. Open-ended questions. Start your question with Why or How. Notice the difference between the general question and the focused research question below.

3. Questions that focus on a solution to a problem. Notice the difference between the general question and the focused research question below.

Remember, your research question is NOT your thesis statement. You will use your research question to focus on finding information that will help you craft your thesis statement as well as information that can provide evidence or support for that thesis.

4. Key Concepts & Keywords

Equipped with a focused research question, you are almost ready to do a deep-dive into the literature and scholarly conversations to find evidence that will shape your thesis. Before you grab your scuba gear, you need to turn your research question into a database-friendly search statement. Library databases, unlike Google, do not understand when we search with a question or a long string of words. Databases give the best results when we search using specific keywords and phrases. These keywords, or search terms, come from the key concepts or main ideas of your research question.

The key concepts are the most important words or phrases of your research question. You will use these as the basis for developing a list of keywords which will then become your database search terms.

Identifying Key Concepts

In order to identify the best keywords to search with, start with the key concepts or the main idea from your research question. Take your research question and pick out the most important words or phrases that really capture the essence of your research question. Key concepts are usually nouns and may be a single word or a phrase.

In this question, the two key concepts are “voter turnout” and “underserved communities.” Words like increase, benefits, causes, etc. are not considered key concepts. These words are very general and could be applied to many different topics.  Focusing on the key concepts when we search will naturally find information that talks about the importance of and the relationship between the two concepts, so we don’t need to include these words as a search term.

Key concepts can also be search terms (keywords), the words we put into the search box of the database. However, since the library databases will only show you results based on the exact words you type in the search box, it is helpful to brainstorm several different search terms that will yield different search results.

In other words, if you only search using the terms “voter turnout” and “underserved communities,” the database will only show articles that use those exact phrases. Most likely there are plenty more relevant articles that use different terminology to discuss those concepts. In order to see those articles in the list of results, you need to try multiple searches using different keywords.

5. Identifying & Brainstorming Keywords

We don’t always know what keywords will give us the best results until we try them out in the database, but having a robust list of keywords will give you options when searching. Take some time to brainstorm before you begin searching, but also remember that you can and should add to your keywords as you find articles and learn more about the language used in the discourse around the topic. Focus on your key concepts and your background research to get started brainstorming keywords.

This table provides examples of alternative terms for each key concept.

Keywords are incredibly important to your search strategy, but we have one more step to go before we are ready for the databases.

6. Creating Search Statements

You may already have figured out that one of your keywords on its own is not enough to get you the results you need. For example, if I only search with the phrase “underserved communities,” I’ll likely get a large number of results but those results will be about many different topics most of which will be unrelated to voting. This is because the database is showing me every article and resource that includes the phrase “underserved communities.”  The fix? I need to make sure that my search includes all the relevant concepts.  Joining together keywords is called a Search Statement.

    The Power of AND

It’s good to mix and match and try different combinations of keywords. However, not all of your keywords may mix well together. Think about what information it is that you want to find. Read the search statement. Does it make sense for what you are looking for?

7. Database Searching

Up to now, we’ve been focused on developing a research strategy primarily for an academic purpose, but it is important to remember that all of these strategies can be applied to other research needs as well as other resources of information (i.e. Google searching). Since we are focused on library databases, it may be helpful to note the differences between databases and Google.

The CSC Library provides access to general databases that include information on many different subjects and topics. The library also has access to subject-specific databases which include information on a specific topical area such as nursing, psychology, history, or criminal justice. You can search each of these databases individually or you can use the Primo. Primo is a discovery tool which means that it pulls information from many of the library’s different resources and puts it into one list of results^[6].

8. Expanding Keyword List and Refining Topic Focus

Your database search results should give you a much more in-depth understanding of your research topic, and you can begin to establish your own thoughts and opinions based on what you learned so far. This process with help you begin developing your thesis statement. For example, through researching “How can we increase voter turnout within underserved communities?” using our Keywords and Search Statements, we would have learned that one way to increase voter turnout is through ride-sharing to polling locations. If we wanted this to be part of our thesis, we should include these new keywords in our subsequent searches. This would help us find information that discusses specifically this aspect of our general topic.

Next Steps: Continue searching the databases, reading articles, refining keywords and search statements as needed, and keeping track of your research.

Research Tip: Use the “Ask a librarian” chat service for research assistance from a real-live librarian during their hours of operation (which you can find in your course syllabus). You can also text our CSC Library staff using the number 918-215-8TXT (8898). Outside of those hours, any questions can be sent via email!