Research Series: Refining Your Topic

Sometimes when we choose a topic to research, our topic is too broad. For instance, you’re assigned a 5 page research paper. This might seem like a lot, but once you start researching you will need to  narrow your topic to fill those 5 pages. With  a topic that is too broad, you could write an entire book with the amount of research you can find!

To begin, start with your broad topic and add extra elements to it. For example, the ‘Civil Rights Movement’ can be narrowed to the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960’s. To focus it even further you might look at the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960’s in Washington, D.C.

Picture demonstrating narrowing a topic

See how I’m adding these extra elements to focus my topic? First I add a time period and then I add a place. The extra elements are not limited to time frames and locations; sometimes they are specific people or themes.

Starting with a good topic will make researching a lot easier!  As always, if you need more help with your topic or research please contact the NOVA Online library at NOVA Online-Library@nvcc.edu.

Research Series: Search Strategies

In a previous Research Series post, we learned to identify keywords for our research. Once we have our keywords, then we can begin searching a database.

In order to find information in a database, you must create a search string. A search string is a combination of keywords and search operators (e.g. AND, OR, *) that tells the database the information you want to receive. Here are a few tips:

1. Use quotation marks ( ”  “ ) around phrases (two or more words); this tells the database to look for the words in a specific order.

global warming

2. Put the word AND between each new keyword or phrase; this tells the database to look for resources with ALL your keywords.

“global warming” AND atmosphere

3. Put the word OR between two or more keywords to find articles that use common synonyms for your topic.

“global warming” OR “climate change”

4. Use an asterisk ( * ) to find multiple versions of one keyword.  For example, using pollut* as a search term will include results that refer to pollute, pollutes, polluted, polluting, and pollution.

pollut*

Here are some examples of search strings in two NOVA databases:

Proquest Research Library

image of this search string in Proquest Research Library database: ("global warming" OR "climate change") AND atmoshpere

Academic Search Complete

image of this search string in Academic Search Complete database: "global warming" OR "climate change" AND pollut*

As always, if you need more help creating a search string or anything related to research, please contact the NOVA Online Library. Happy searching!