Follow these guidelines to understand your topic and gather good sources.
- Define your topic, create your thesis, and gather background information. What you find here will provide context for your topic and help you with locating scholarly/peer reviewed research journal articles related to your topic.
- Make a list of keywords and topics from the background information. Use this to locate scholarly articles.
- When creating a list of keywords, remember to look for words that are similar like: medical, medicine, health, etc.
- Narrow down by a demographic: race, income, education, geographic, type of medicine, etc.
- You may have to think outside the box in terms of where to look for information. Sometimes searching Google first to see how your topic is being talked about in natural language helps.
- You may have to search broadly and in a more theoretical way in the databases to find your sources.
- Email citations and articles as you go!
