Welcome to the online library orientation for your course! These pages will provide you with information and tutorials for your course research project. This page is your quick search and help page. Proceed to the next page for help guides.
Basics of Searching
The key to good searching is to develop a search plan. Planning will help you create a path toward resolving your research question and supporting your argument with strong evidence.
Strategize for Success
Diversity in searching strategies, proper planning, refining searches, and adequately delving into a topic are all important aspects of successful search strategies.
The Research Question
Strong research questions usually address:
Your research question and answers become the basis of your research statement/thesis.
Picking a Topic
Do you have a topic idea? Has your instructor provided one for you? It's not enough to just research a topic, you will need to develop a research question to further investigate. Here are some sources you may want to browse to get you thinking about research topics.
Remember these are just starting points. Once you have a topic area of interest for your research, you will want to begin reading about issues related to that topic. What is controversial about the topic? Where is the latest research? Where do articles say "future research" is needed? Thinking about these issues will help you to develop and argument or position in your research question and/or thesis statement.
Databases of Interest - Political Science
