Research - Getting Started

Researching a topic you are interested in can be great, but most people often run into two common roadblocks.

Below, we will address two of the most common problems in researching on the internet.

1. My topic is too broad! I have too many search results!

Help! My teacher has asked me to research a topic I am interested in, but I don't know where to start??

• Let's take a look at some great tools for brainstorming and narrowing your topic to something managable. For example, let's say you are interested in hunting. Hunting is a very broad topic! Searching hunting on the internet will give you millions of sites, many of which are not at all useful to you. So, you must narrow down your topic.
  
• Brainstorming in order to narrow your topic can be an interesting part of the research process. Let's look at some of the ways in which you can narrow your topic.

Everyone who has EVER been on the internet has heard of, and likely used, google. However, MOST people do not know how many excellent tools google has created to help you in efforts to find information. Let's go back to our example about hunting and try one of google's tools for narrowing your topic.

If you simply type 'hunting' into the google search engine, here is what you will likely see:

If you take a look at the top red arrow, you will see that you have over 100 million hits. That is not an effective search!!!!

The second red arrow points to an excellent tool that google offers to help you narrow down your search and begin brainstorming about what you REALLY want to know.

Google's Wonder Wheel helps you to narrow down your topic by taking your original word, in this case, hunting, and creating a mind map of other, more specific words.

Watch the following video that explains how to use Google's Wonder Wheel using our hunting example:

By using Wonder Wheel, or other topic-mapping tools, you can become more specific, refine your search and be more effective. And, we all know how important it is to make good use of your class time!

2. I know what I want to research but when I type in my topic, I get millions of hits!

While some of your problems might be a result of typing in a topic that is too broad (see above!), you may also be struggling with the way in which you are searching.

Did you know that if you simply type in a phrase in a search engine like Google, that the search engine will search each word in the question or phrase??

However, if you use simple search tools such as + and " ", you will have done a more effective search with higher quality answers.

Watch the following video to see the difference between searching a long phrase or question and creating a more specific search using simple search tools:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9GcEQ59W20

For more information on ways to do effective searching with google, read the information google provides on keeping things simple:

http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=134479

Every search engine offers tips on how to get better results. Be sure to look at the search engine you use to figure out how you can search better!

Once you have a topic, you are ready to take the next step. Click on "Finding the Right Source" on the right-hand side of your screen under pages, and find out how to determine if a site is reliable.