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PSC/CJ 330 - Judicial Process: Topic Development and Search Terms

This guide is created to support PSC/CJ 330.

Research Questions and Search Terms

Research Questions

Research questions should:

  • Define what you will and will not write about
  • Not be answered with ‘yes’ or ‘no’
  • Require you to take a stance that you must back up with evidence

Search terms are based off of your research question.

Search Term Creation

Pull search terms directly from your research question. Add synonyms or other terms you want to treat as equal.

Example research question:

How does law school prestige affect the career satisfaction of alumni?

Keywords: "law school prestige", "career satisfaction", alumni

keyword synonym broader narrower
"law school prestige" "law university prestige stratification" "university prestige" "Ivy League"; Law school size
"career satisfaction" "work satisfaction"; "employee satisfaction"; "job satisfaction" "emotional fulfillment"; contentedness social well-being at work; "intrinsic job satisfaction"
alumni graduates; students   "female alumni"; alumnae; "Black alumni"

 

Structured Questions

You can create a research question, and explore a research topic, by answering structured questions related to an initial interesting topic. These questions help you choose a scope for your research question and will help you if you need to adjust your research question in the future. 

Questions are: 

  • Who? What populations or groups are involved in this concept? Are these people, plants, or animals? Who is affected by this phenomena? 
  • Where? Where does this event happen? Is there a specific physical environment? Do you want to limit your research to a state or a type of institution?
  • When? When does this event happen? Do you want to study a specific time frame? Do you have a decade you want to focus on? Is there a season or a time of day?
  • Why? Why does this event happen? What is an inciting factor? What effect or result do you want to focus on? Why does this topic matter to the population you are studying?
  • How? How does your topic happen? What factor do you want to focus on? How does your topic affect the world? 

Example Research Topic

As you do early research, you might end up adjusting your research question to fit your interests.

This adjustment can look like:

How does law school prestige affect the career satisfaction of alumni?

  • What part of career satisfaction do we care about?
  • Which law schools do we want to look at?
  • Do we want to look at a certain group of alumni?