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Mathematics Guide

Develop a Topic

The research process starts with the selection of your topic. It's possible your professor or instructor has already assigned a topic, or it's also  possible that you get to choose a topic on your own. Choose, large library

First, make sure you understand your assignment thoroughly. Is it an argumentative paper, where you will need to choose a side and find evidence to support it? Or is it a literature review or annotated bibliography, where you need to find quality sources and be able to summarize them?

Next, try to come up with different ideas that interest you or to which you can personally relate. This makes the research process much easier and more enjoyable!

Choosing a topic iconStep 1: Choose your topic - Your Assignment is Your Starting Point

  • Do you need to write an 1-2 page essay or a 5-7 page research paper?
  • Give a  2-3 minutes speech, a a 6-7 minute speech?
  • Do you need to present a short presentation or a long one? 
  • Do you need to demo how to prepare a healthy snack or a healthy meal?
  • Does your assignment require you to use specific sources - . books? news articles? scholarly articles? Videos?

             The scope and nature of your assignment will help you make a decision about what topic to choose. 

  • For  2-3 minute speech or presentation may need information AND  images or other visuals
  • For 1-2 page essay you may need background and scholarly information that requires thought and evaluation
  • Your target audience will guide your decision making:
    • instructor
    • classmates
    • someone else

  • Use the tools In this guide to help you get started!

By NCSU Libraries


This video is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States license.

 

 (NetBadge log-in required).

Magnifying glass icon find information   Step 2: Find information about your topic

  • Head for the library and meet with your Liaison Librarian to review resources, such as databases. What are databases?
    • Online, organized collections where you can find electronic versions of newspapers, magazines, scholarly journals, eBooks, data, statistics, business reports, and streaming video
    • Wide range of subject areas. 
    • Use text, email or  other share tools to send an article to yourself
    • Use citation tools to copy/paste your citation at the end of a paper
      • Sometimes a database citation will mess up the capitalization or punctuation
      • Be sure to verify the details before submitting your assignment
      • Also double-check the italics in the source title and database name
    • Available 24/7. Accessible off-campus via login
    • Link to UVA Wise Library's complete A-Z Databases list.
    • Link to UVA Wise's Library Database Tutorial Videos to learn more about working with library databases.

It is helpful to do some initial searching in library databases, in particular Academic Search Complete (EBSCO) or Google Scholar to see what is out there--are there many articles on your topic idea or just a few? How hard will it be to thoroughly research and write about this topic?

Some good places to find background information:

  • Your textbook or class readings
  • Encyclopedias and reference books
  • Credible websites
  • Library databases

Try the library databases below to explore your topic. When you're ready, move on to refining your topic.

Find Background Information:

Whether you're using a library database or Google, taking advantage of certain search strategies will produce quicker, more relavant results.

  • To make sure you are searching a group of words, put quotation marks around a phrase
  • An asterisk (*), or truncator, at the end of a word will search for everything that begins with that group of letters in most databases, ex: comput* will return all words starting with four letters; computing, computer, compute, etc.  
  • You can also try a question mark (?) within a word to include multiple spellings. For example wom?n will find both woman and women.
  • Focus your search by using Boolean operators; AND, OR, AND NOT
  • Some databases allow you to perform proximity searches, for example the following phrase, movies w/3 drugs is searching for instances when the term movies is within 3 words of the term drugs.
  • Consider using synonyms for words, e.g. society = culture, community, civilization, etc.
  • Broaden your search. If you don't find an article on your topic don't assume it hasn't been written. You might just be using the wrong terms or might be searching too specifically to find it. Try broader terms.
  • Look carefully at the results from your search. If there is a great article, look at the subject headings. 

Now that you've done some background research, it's time to narrow your topic. Remember: the shorter your final paper, the narrower your topic needs to be. Here are some suggestions for narrowing and defining your topic:

  • Is there a specific subset of the topic you can focus on?
  • Is there a cause and effect relationship you can explore?
  • Is there an unanswered question on the subject?
  • Can you focus on a specific time period or group of people?

Describe and develop your topic in some detail. Try filling in the blanks in the following sentence, as much as you can:

I want to research ____(what/who)____

and ____(what/who)____

in ____(where)____

during ____(when)____

because ____(why)____.

Identify Keywords

Once you have a narrowed topic, try to identify the most important ideas in your topic. You can use these KEYWORDS in searching for sources.

Animated GIF shows how to identify keywords

Example Topic: How does using dating apps impact partners in romantic relationships?

Keywords: dating apps, partners, romantic relationships