ACCT 302

Choosing an interesting research topic is your first challenge. Here are some tips:

Choose a topic that you are interested in! The research process is more relevant if you care about your topic.

Narrow your topic to something manageable. If your topic is too broad, you will find too much information and not be able to focus.

Background reading can help you choose and limit the scope of your topic. 

Review the guidelines on topic selection outlined in your assignment.  Ask your professor or TA for suggestions.

Talk about research ideas with a friend. They may be able to help focus your topic by discussing issues that didn't occur to you at first.

What are keywords? Keywords are the most important words in a research statement or question. They are words that create significance or meaning.

Why use keywords? Keywords are important in research because they are highly useful to facilitate a search for information. They open the doors to vast amounts of information. Keywords may also be referred to as "search terms."

How to use keywords? You can combine keywords using boolean operators. This can help add specificity to your search. A database won't be able to parse a question or statement, using boolean operators will help you find better results while searching.

Booleans: AND, OR, NOT

• AND combines two search words together. Both must appear in your article, narrowing your results. 
• OR allows you to search for synonyms or like terms. Only one of the terms must appear in your article, broadening your results. 
• NOT removes a specific term from your results.

Quotation marks

• Phrases stick together as one keyphrase. For example the terms "climate change"; "blue whale"; and "Cretaceous period" should be written in quotes to keep the two words together in your search results.

Asterisks

• Add to the end of a root word to find all words that include all words that include that root term. For example volcan* with an asterisk on the end will return results with the words volcano, volcanic, volcanology, volcanism

Limiters

• Usually found on the left
• Narrow by subject, date, or peer-reviewed
• For this particular project, you want to cast as wide a net as possible (at least at first), so you likely won't use too many limiters.