Skip to Main Content

Art Education

Writing a paper? Looking for books or articles? Need help citing your sources? This guide can help!

Research Workshop

The Research Cycle

The Research Cycle

Click on the image below for a larger view

Research questions and brainstorming: Be nimble and think through where some interesting questions lie.

Heart of the problem: What is really the main point, the kernel, of what you’re researching?

Rephrasing: What are the alternate ways of phrasing your search to find more material?

Wikipedia, Google, etc.: What can you glean from the general knowledge about your topic?

Keywords and synonyms: What are the simple phrases that best describe what you’re looking for?

Targeted searching: Determine the SUBJECT information on your topic to explore and dive deeper

Revision/trial and error: This is a multi-step process and will take a lot of revision. Usually rethinking keywords.

Read: The more you read, the more sophisticated your searching will become. This is a crucial step in finding material.

Analyze: Scrutinize and interrogate what you find. Does it hold? What questions do you have of the material?

Synthesize: Think through the author’s thesis and boil their work down to drill their work into your research. Be critical.

Where does your topic fit in with your field?: Make a case for your research and find its place. Revision is important.

ID related topics: Are there fields that can help you in your research? What are those? How far do you need to go?

ID related works and authors: Find the authorities in the field as well as subsequent or superseding work

Hypothesis and new research questions: With this round of research, where do you stand? What are your questions now?

Start again!: You now have a much more sophisticated understanding of your topic. Keep going!

Define Your Topic

Define Your Topic

Choosing your topic can be a difficult process - it is important to pick a topic that is not so narrow that little if anything has been written about it, yet it is also important to pick a topic that is not so broad that there is too much information and it is impossible to develop a coherent and focused thesis.

  • Try Elicit to generate a few options for your initial research topic and narrow it down to a specific population, geographical location, disease, etc.
  • You may explore a similar tool, LitSense to identify additional search terms.
  • Use other Artificial Intelligence tools carefully and thoughtfully to begin a discussion on what to write about, what databases to search, and get guidance on how to write a literature review. Some tools for exploration: Chat GPT, Bing Chat, Bard, and Perplexity.ai.

There are numerous strategies for selecting an appropriate topic - here are a few tips to help you with that:

  • CQ Researcher - This database contains articles that give a broad overview of recent topics of interest - try to find an article in here covering a subject that is interesting to you. These articles will give you good background information on your topic and they will help you to identify keywords to help you to have a more effective search in our article databases.
  • Opposing Viewpoints -  Explore the pros and cons of a particular issue or topic.
  • Web of Science - this article database has the ability to identify related articles by citation tracking. This refers to the idea of starting with one article that is appropriate for your topic and searching for articles that cite the initial article or articles that are cited by the initial article. This database is unique among UMD Library sources in that it allows users to find articles that have cited a given article - this can be a great technique for identifying more recent articles on your topic of interest.

Literature Review & Research Methods

What is a literature review?

In brief, the lit review is the part of a scholarly paper that discusses the relevant research, theoretical and methodological contributions on the topic. Watch these videos to learn more!

Sage Research Methods

"Sage Research Methods" is a database focused on teaching research methods, designing research projects, and many other aspects of actually doing research.

(add more description)

The link to the database can be found below, and it can also be found in the Database Finder on UMD's Library website.

Research Methods in General

Here are some books that are useful in learning about and improving the research process.

Research Methods in Social Science

Here are some books that discuss researching methods specifically for the social sciences in general, and African American studies in particular.

Search Strategies 

1. Use the following keywords to identify qualitative research. 

These keywords will search the titles, abstracts and keywords of records held in the databases. Use quotations to search as a phrase:

qualitative
"action research"
"cluster sample"
"constant comparative method"
"content analysis"
"discourse analysis"
ethnograph*
"ethnological research"
ethnomethodolog*
ethnonurs*
"field stud*"
"focus group*"
"grounded theor*"
hermeneutic*
heuristic*
interview*
"life experience*"
"lived experience*"
narrative*
"observational method"
phenomenol*
"purposive sample"
semiotics
"thematic analysis"

 

2. Use controlled vocabulary

Databases use controlled vocabulary to categorize each record stored. The terms they use are known as thesaurus terms orsubject headingsThe thesaurus terms vary for each database according to their indexing system.

For example, qualitative research is indexed in PubMed as "Qualitative Research" or "Nursing Methodology Research", while inCINAHL their subject heading "Qualitative Studies" is complemented by more detailed terms, including "Phenomenological Research" and "Grounded Theory".

Tutorials for searching subject headings:

         

           
PubMed uses Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)                CINAHL uses CINAHL Headings

 

3. Use qualitative research filters

Qualitative research filters are pre-formulated search strategies that have been constructed by librarians to help you retrieve articles in databases that deal with qualitative research. You can use the filter and then combine the results with your subject.

PsychINFO

  1. Go to PsychINFO database in Database Finder.
  2. Enter your topic in the search box.
  3. In right column, under Methodoly, MATHEMATICAL MODEL, select Qualitative study.
  4. Under Refine Search section on the left, limit further your search under Methodology drop down menu.

Modify your search strategy accordingly by using thesaurus terms, such as qualitative research, grounded theory, interviews, observation methods, etc.