How to Do Research

My approach to research usually begins with something I have read. This can be a book, a journal article or a website. No matter what the medium, the text has to be something that sparks my interest: it has to be something that I want to know more about. Then, where I go from there, depends upon the medium that hooked my interest. If it is a website, I will follow links to more information written by others or to other works written by the same author. Typically, articles online will have hyperlinks pasted into the text, so that the reader can access references easily. This is always helpful when it is time to start gathering information. I will open several tabs in my browser at once and just keep gathering information that way. If it is a book, I will look up what else the author has done and do a Google search of the subject. If it is a journal article, I will get on Google Scholar and do a key word search, or look up other articles in the same journal. Scholar is a great way to find more academic articles quickly.
If I know nothing about the subject, I will start off by doing a basic Google search and reading online texts to get some basic background information. From these texts, I will start to accumulate key words that I can use for further searches. I will also start to formulate questions that I want answers to and that will help me guide my searches as well. I will use Google Books to look up book sources or even browse books using Amazon’s “Look Inside” to get a quick idea of the subject.
As I am researching, I will begin writing. I want to write and research at the same time so that I can work out ideas on paper as I am reading about them. I continuously go back and revise, because the more I write, the more I realize I need to know. Then the more information I obtain, the more I need to go back and revise. I like this process because it prevents me from being overwhelmed by information. I can look at what I’ve gathered and write out parts of the paper as I go, referencing sources along the way and dropping in-text citations in (and plugging the references in at the end of the paper in a Works Cited or References page that I start early on).
Once I am finished with the paper and it has an introduction with a hook and a thesis statement, a body of paragraphs that supports the main idea of the paper, and a conclusion, I begin work on the Abstract. Saving the Abstract for last is easiest because I can look at what I’ve done, how I’ve done it, and what it says, and use all that information to write up a brief synopsis of the paper.
Sometimes I will do an outline if the paper is a subject that I already know a little about. I will sketch out a quick, bare bones structure of how the research paper should look, using titles and subtitles. That helps me to stay focused and to see what parts I really need to spend more time on researching.
After everything is written up, I go back and edit one last time to check for grammar and style mistakes. I check to see that all the references are in the right citation style and that it is consistent throughout the paper. I check to see that the thesis is consistently applied as well and that the conclusion summarizes the paper effectively. I check to see that the introduction has a good hook and look at the title to make sure it reflects what the paper is actually about. So long as everything looks good, I feel confident that I have composed a great research paper.