Choosing a topic to research can be difficult. We suggest the following:

1. Look at your assignment. Do you have the option to create you rown research topic, or were you assigned one?
2. If you can pick your own, focus on one that you have interest in. If you're interested in the topic, you will be more invested in your research and are less likely to feel bored by it.
3. Start small and do some basic background research about your topic in Google or Wikipedia.

Please reference the video below for more information.

Thanks to McMaster University

A good research question should explore the relationship between three or four different aspects components. 

If your research topic is "sleep," you must narrow your search further because the topic is too broad. Consider adding different pieces based on the information you found in your background research. An example of a good research question within the topic of sleep would be:

"How does sleep effect the GPA of college students"

Notice there are two other components here beyond just sleep. Try doing a brainstorm to see how you wish to further investigate your main topic and then come up with two or three possible questions to work with.

The next step is finding the right keywords within your research question to search with. The example in Step Two was:

"How does sleep effect the GPA of college students"

Break down the question into the main, workable components. Here, your keywords would be:

Sleep 

GPA (Grade Point Average)

Collge Students

Note: effect is not a keyword - words that are comparable are not included (ex. effect, impact, affect, relationship, etc.)

Please reference the video below for more information.

Thanks to McMaster University

The next step is to combine your keywords in a library search. 

Since we know what our example keywords are, use the word AND in between each keyword and search in the UB Libraries Everything search. If you have a keyword with two or more words, put quotation marks around it to search it as a phrase.

sleep AND GPA AND "college students"

You can also use synonyms for each word to expand your search, but it may not be necessary if you're finding what you want already. You would do this by putting the word OR between the synonyms.

sleep OR Rest AND GPA OR "grade point average" AND "college students" OR "university students"

Please reference the video below for more information.

The last step is to find high level information, such as scholarly articles, within the UB Library databases. Figure out what discipline or subject area your research question pertains to.

The example research question above is investigating sleep AND GPA AND "college students."

It would make sense to start looking for sources within a database about Education. You can find these within the UB Libraries Subject Guides.

Please reference the video below for more information.