If you don’t have a theme, your search will be disoriented and inefficient. You’ll spend hours reading dozens of sources, all because you haven’t taken a few minutes to develop a topic.
How do you come up with a theme? My main suggestion is to create a mind map.
Quality of research
Whether you have enough experience or are just learning to do research, it is important to check the quality of the information you use and choose the most reliable sources whenever possible. Below I’ll go over the different fonts available and how you should use them.
Primary sources of information are the best and most reliable sources of information.
What makes a strong research question?
Research questions reinforce the entire project, so it is important to spend time refining them. The criteria below will help you gauge the strength of your research question.
- Is X or Y a better policy?
- How effective are policies X and Y in reducing Z levels?
Choose a topic:
Depending on the task assigned, you will have a topic in front of you or you will have to choose one yourself.
If your teacher didn’t give you a topic, here are some helpful ways to choose one that meets your needs:
- Brainstorm
- Choose something you understand well enough to be able to explain the research on this topic
- Before you start, make sure there is plenty of content on this topic by doing a simple search online and see what happens
- Write your topic as a research question that you want to answer
- Do more research on your topic and find evidence to support what you want to answer
- Make a list of the keywords you still see appearing in the topic
- Create your thesis
Step 1: choose a topic that is a little deeper
Sometimes z research topics will be assigned to students, but the best situation is when you are asked to let you choose your topic. In this case, you can use brainstorming or mind mapping techniques to find a good topic that fits your assignment guidelines and that you want to write about. The key to success is to choose as broad a topic as possible. Remember that your time is limited and you cannot spend a lot of time researching to find enough material to write about an unusual or rare topic. This is the best way to choose a topic that has been thoroughly researched before.
If you don’t know how to quickly write a 3 page research paper, keep in mind that the fastest way is to do your research first and develop your thesis statement later. It is not a good idea to develop your thesis early because you might find that there is not enough evidence to support it. You can start with Wikipedia for an overview of the topic. Other good sources of information are Google Scholar, online databases and encyclopedias, government reports and other publications, scientific articles in scientific journals, newspapers, etc.