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Home | Education Advisor | Tips & Advice | How to Conduct Research

How to Conduct Research


Choose the First Thing that Comes to You

After you read your assignment, brainstorm possible approaches. Freely generate ideas for at least fifteen minutes. When finished, choose a topic that sparks your curiosity. Then you should brainstorm several key terms to help you find information through search engines and library databases.

Use Other People's Sources

The next step is to find sources. Often the sources you most need will be checked out, but you can get any book that is out by recalling it. Just ask your librarian. Another obstacle appears when you have found the perfect source, but your library does not have it. Simply ask your librarian about an interlibrary loan. It is free and usually you can get your source quickly. Finally, examine the bibliographies in a number of sources. By reviewing these, you usually can find the foremost thinkers on your subject.

Judge a Book by Its Cover

Once you have located some sources, you need to evaluate each source's credibility. You can do much of this assessment without actually reading the text.

  • How current is the information? (You can check the copyright and publication dates.)
  • Is the author an expert?
  • How well documented is the information on the works cited page?
  • Is this sources part of a respected publication, or part of a commercial venture?


Generally, you'll want to base your research on credible sources such as governmental and educational sources over commercial ones.

Talk Back

In order to develop an original angle on your topic, you will need to compare expert opinions, and oftentimes, you will need to create a research log to help track your thoughts and discoveries while staying organized. When a quote strikes you, write it down. You'll want to keep the source's bibliographic information and the quote's page number. Ask questions of the assertions put forth by the authors, and then try to answer them. Attempt to explain what caused your reaction, and give yourself plenty of space to develop a dialogue with yourself and your written sources to allow your own interpretation of the subject matter to emerge.

With these thoughts in mind, you'll find good data and be able to form a paper on a solid factual foundation.