RESEARCH QUESTIONS & SEARCH TERMS
Map Your Topic
After completing the last section, Choosing & Narrowing Your Topic, you should have a narrowed topic of interest to you. Now that you have a focused topic how do you know what information to research?
Start by discovering all of the possible sub-topics.
First, be sure to read an overview of your topic in a library database like Britannica School or in Student Resources In Context (try the search boxes below).
Second, return to your paper, e-document, or online mapping tool you were using to narrow your broad topic learned in Section 2. Start with your narrowed topic in the center and begin brainstorming all the potential sub-topics or parts to the topic you will be researching.
The image below illustrates how you might brainstorm to map out potential sub-topics for further research. We used the following questions to help map our topic that you see below.
Who?
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Identify the key person(s), event, program, legislation
What?
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Consider the issues surrounding the person, event, program, legislation
When?
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Time frame of the person, event, program, legislation
Where?
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Location of the person, event, program, legislation
Why?
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Impact of the person, event, program, legislation – short and long term
Use these questions to brainstorm and develop a topic map on your topic.
Write Your Research Questions
You'll use the bubbles on your topic map to generate research questions. Each bubble represents a sub-topic of your topic. Your research questions will help you determine what you need to know about each sub-topic.
What questions did you ask yourself about your topic to create each of those bubbles? Those are your research questions!
More bubbles = more research questions.
Here's an example below. Compare our research questions to the topic map we created. Do you see how the research questions try to make the connection from topic to sub-topic?
Now, write your research questions. Record them in your History Day Research Notes.
Record Your Key Concepts
Once you have a list of your research questions, circle the key concepts represented in each of those questions. The key concepts are the most important words within your research questions; likely the nouns and verbs that relate to your sub-topics.
For example, take a look at our research questions, where we've circled the key concepts. These key concepts will become our keywords.
Circle the key concepts within your research questions. Record in your History Day Research Notes.
Generate Search Terms
Using your key concepts you can now create a list of keywords and synonyms that you will use to search resources such as article databases and library catalogs. These will be your search terms.
For example, the image below illustrates how we generated keywords and synonyms from some of the key concepts in our research questions. The key concepts are in the left-hand column and related synonyms are in the right-hand column.
If you need help thinking of synonyms, you may want to try using a thesaurus such as Thesaurus.com.
Once you have your list of keywords and synonyms you have successfully generated a list of search terms. Write your search terms in your History Day Research Notes. You will use these to help you research.
What's Next?
After generating search terms, it's time to do some searching! Let's find out what resources you can research using your search terms by continuing on to the next section.