1. Writing Studio Coordinator
An introductory guide to scholarly research
Jessica Pitts
Writing Studio Coordinator
Keiser University
TIP:
Don’t be
that guy
Hi everyone, I’m Jessica Pitts, Keiser’s writing studio coordinator. The writing studio is here to help you out with any assignments that include writing, at any stage in the process.
For today’s workshop, we’re going to go over how to find a research topic and find scholarly sources.
So you’ve got a research paper to write… but how do you find authoritative research to back up your paper?
We all know you can find articles for pretty much anything on the internet… and it’s definitely not all legitimate.
Today we’re going to work through how to find quality research

2. Step one: What’s your end goal?1
Let’s start at the beginning.

3. The end goal: Is the point to convince or explain? Who is my audience?
What do they need to know?
What are their assumptions about this issue?
How much do they already know?
Before you begin anything else, you need to figure out what the assignment is asking you to do. Is this an argumentative paper or an expository paper?
Basically, are you trying to convince your reader of something, or are you investigating an idea?
In either case you’ll need solid evidence to back up your points.
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It’s also important to think about your audience when you start the writing process.
You don’t want to talk down to your reader, filling up pages with general knowledge.
You also don’t want to forget to define your terms and give your reader context.
This balance depends on your intended audience.

4. Step two: Finding a topic2
Next step: figuring out what you want to focus on

5. Narrowing it down First think about the assignment:
Are you given a specific topic to work with, or is it open-ended?
What are your interests/values?
If you care about the topic, researching and writing the paper will be much easier.
Before you start writing, make sure you take into consideration the instructor’s requirements.
If you write an awesome paper on dictators, that’s not going to help you on an assignment about identity theft. --
That being said, with a little creative thinking, you can always relate your interests to your assignment.
EX: If the paper is on identity theft and you’re interested in teen technology use, for example, you could write a really interesting paper on internet catfishing.

6. Step three: Develop research questions3
Step three: develop some research questions
These are questions you ask yourself to start digging into the topic.
A good place to begin is with “who, what, where, why, when, and how”
You might find that every single one of these doesn’t smoothly apply - that’s ok.
They’re just guides to get you thinking about the situation in a complex way

7. Ask yourself... WHO Who does this issue impact? Who benefits?
Who suffers?
First off: in the context of this issue, who are the major players? Who are the “villains” and the “heroes”?
Think about who wins in this situation. Who loses?
A good way to think about this is in terms of perspective: whose perspective is valued on this subject?

8. WHAT What’s at stake? What is the state of the situation?
What is being done?
WHAT
What’s the big deal here?
What’s been done?
What do we need to focus on for the future?
What impact does this issue have on the bigger picture?

9. WHERE Where is this most relevant/predominant? Where
This one is all about location. Basically, does it matter?
If this is a global issue, that’s important. If it only affects certain countries or populations, that’s important too.
This can also be on a smaller scale: does this issue impact people in their homes, in factories, on battle fields?
Where does this matter?

10. WHEN When has this been noted? Has the issue changed over time?
“WHEN” can be a really helpful question to ask.
When was your topic a big deal? If you’re talking about internet crime, for example, that’s not something people had to deal with before the late 90s.
What’s significant about the TIME frame?

11. WHY Why is this so important? Why is this issue an issue? WHY?
This is a biggie.
Why does this matter? Don’t take it for granted - you want to find the SO WHAT in your topic.
Why should people sit up and listen?

12. HOW How did this issue come about? How do people react?
How do we fix it?
And finally, HOW.
How does this issue impact people?
How do people deal with it?
Is it a problem that needs a solution? How have we gone about that, and how could we do better?

13. Step four: Develop a word bank4
Once you’ve answered the questions WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, WHY, HOW, you can start making a word bank
This step will help you out BIG TIME.
It will help you figure out your key terms, which you can use to diversify your search terms as you hunt for articles.
It will also help you when you’re putting your paper together: these key terms will keep you grounded in your subject, so you don’t go off on a tangent.

14. Map it out Use those questions to brainstorm! Write it all down…
Free write
Mind map it
The biggest piece of advice I can give you about this is to work through all these steps, and write it all down
If you don’t record your brainstorming, all those ideas and awesome keywords will be forgotten when you sit down to do research or write.

15. Here we’re taking that example of a paper on identity theft, specifically focusing on “catfishing”
(Catfishing, for those who don’t know, is when someone fakes an identity to romantically pursue someone over the internet as a prank or to scam the victim out of money)
In this example I’m doing a “brain map” or “web” - this helps me visually plot out my ideas so I can get a sense of where I want to go with this topic.
START VIDEO
I start out by thinking about the IMPACT catfishing has on victims. These are primarily financial and emotional.
Then I move on to the PURPOSE. This is basically the WHY part of those questions we just went over.
These are things like stealing the victim’s identity, stealing money, and pulling pranks.
Next I start thinking about how this internet crime could potentially be punished. I’m breaking this idea down into parts using those “who, what, where, why, when, how” questions
Then I start thinking about the WHO - who suffers in this situation? What kind of demographic is it? Is it the general public or a more specific group?
We could keep going, breaking this idea down into more specific ideas, but we’ll stop there for now.

16. The word bank Review your brainstorming notes
What key words or ideas stand out or repeat?
Highlight/circle those words or ideas
These will make up your word bank
Once you’ve brainstormed your ideas and got them on paper, you can start to go over what you have and get a sense of where you’re going.
Look for ideas and words that show up multiple times or just catch your interest.
Write these words or ideas down in a list. These will be your search terms for when you start your research.

17. Let’s say these words and ideas especially stick out to me.
So as I start conducting my research I’m looking for articles on internet crime with financial impacts primarily on adult female victims.
We’re going to use these words and ideas as search terms - mix and match them in multiple databases to see what brings up the results you want.
BUT KEEP IN MIND: don’t be afraid to explore new options as they come up - you might discover new facets of your topic during the research process.

18. Step five: Search for sources5
For papers you write in college, you want to make sure your sources are authoritative.
You want strong evidence to back up your points.
For this you want to look for SCHOLARLY sources.
The difference between scholarly and non-scholarly sources basically boils down to who reviews it before publication.
A non-scholarly source like the New York Times or Business Insider publishes excellent work, but it hasn’t been reviewed by experts in the field.
Scholarly article(s) will have been written by a scholar in a specific field of study
Scholarly articles ALWAYS cite their sources in either footnotes or bibliographies
Scholarly articles will have gone through a peer-review process
Scholarly articles are published by associations and universities
You DON’T WANT non-scholarly sources, because:
They are NOT peer-reviewed
These articles may be written by a variety of staff members, from free lance writers to staff members, NOT scholars in that field of study
And they usually don’t provide references and/or a bibliography

19. Go to the Keiser library website and click DATABASES

20. There are lots of great databases on offer, but the best place to start is LIRN. This database offers field-specific resources to make your hunt for research easier.

21. You can click “law and criminal justice” to get a selection of the most relevant journals to your field.

22. You can start your search right from the Law and Criminal justice tab

23. We’re starting broad, with “internet crime” as our first search term
We’re starting broad, with “internet crime” as our first search term. This is a really big topic, though. Lots of more specific stuff falls into this category. As you see, this search term brought up almost 30,000 results. This is a good place to start though. Look through the first few pages and see if anything catches your interest. The results are automatically sorted by relevance, so you’ll get the big picture of your topic.

24. Here’s one source that general search brought up.
We know it’s a scholarly source because it’s from an academic journal. If a source shows that it’s printed in volumes, that’s a good hint that something is an academic journal.

25. Here’s another source that general search pulled up.
On the record display up top, notice that it says it’s anonymously written. But actually, this is written by James Robinson.
Don’t necessarily discount a source because of the record.

26. Keep in mind that you won’t necessarily find everything you want in the first search. Diversify your search terms to get the best results. Here, just by adding “dating” to our “internet crime” search, we find more specific information, and a much narrower scope than just looking for articles on “internet crime”

27. Here’s an article that more specifically relates to our topic
Here’s an article that more specifically relates to our topic. Getting a good mix of broad and specific research can be a great way to represent the academic conversations taking place around your chosen topic. Here we’ve got articles that are about internet crime in general, which helps in terms of the big picture. We also have articles that focus on online dating scams in particular, which offers a snapshot of our specific issue.

28. Tip: Make sure you SAVE your research. Flashdrive Print articles
to yourself
Save to the cloud
Whatever you do, make sure you SAVE YOUR RESEARCH!
There’s nothing worse than finding all these articles and then having to go back and do your searches all over again because you didn’t save them.
Printing out your articles is always preferable, because you can highlight and take notes right there.
But you can also annotate digitally.
Just don’t forget to save it!

29. Read critically What is the main point of the article?
Are there recurring conversations among experts?
Does the author take a side?
What kinds of evidence does the author use?
How can this support your argument?
ANNOTATE YOUR SOURCES
Now that you have your research, you need to read it with an analytical eye.
What is the author arguing? If it’s not arguing for something, what does the author want you to understand?
How does the author back up his or her claims?
Now it’s time to think selfishly: as you read the article always keep in mind HOW CAN THIS HELP ME?

30. Rock the research! For more help: Come to the writing studio
(room 208)
Or book online at
KeiserWS.youcanbook.me