Hello! This guide was created to support Dr. Kelley's SY 372 class in Fall 2024. This guide is meant to be a starting point for your research. Do you have a research question yet? Please start there.
This guide includes searching for articles and searching for website resources.
This guide also covers citation mining skills. This is another way to find resources without needing to create searches based on your topic.
If you have any questions, please email your Subject Librarian, Heather Butler, at hmbutler@southalabama.edu. Include the course number and your professor's name in the subject line.
A research question is the focus of your research project. It is the thesis of your paper or the point of your presentation. You will likely need to do some preliminary research before committing to a research question. Here are some requirements of a good research question:
In this example, we narrowed the scope of our initial research question in a few ways:
Sometimes, research questions need to change slightly after you have done some research. If you were not able to find any useful resources for the example research question, then you could try changing the scope. If you cannot find anything specific to Alabaman clinics, then you could change that part of your research question to "United States clinics" or "Alabaman healthcare providers."
Still stuck? Please check Monash University's Developing Research Questions guide.
