 Welcome. We're going to talk about how to write a research question today. It's going to be pretty straightforward, not very long, and then we'll leave time for questions at the end. And as you can see, our session is going to be recorded. This first time as I'm going through the slides, we will have it recorded and then we will, for the Q&A section, we will stop recording. So just so you know that, so if you have a question or anything, put it in the chat if you don't want your name or your camera in view, and we'll make sure to monitor those. And so I'm Sarah Johnson. I'm a Commons librarian. We also have Kat Brooks here with us who is also a Commons librarian, one of my colleagues. And we tend to do a lot of stuff here in the library. We work at the Public Services Desk. We do research assistance. So if you ever have chatted in with us, that's us behind the behind the computer screen. We do instruction and we do a lot of engagement for you guys. So a little bit about us. Today, let me move my camera, sorry. Today, we're going to be talking about how to define your research question or the scope of your research. And then we'll walk through some questions that will help you turn the topic that you've picked into your research question. And then once you got your question down, we'll go over your research strategy and how you can, how I can help you get started in that process. So when you're picking your topic, when you start your research, pick something that you're interested in. It sounds so silly, but it really does make a difference. It makes your research more fun. And it also makes it easier because you're not dreading it. And professors will typically give some kind of parameters when you're selecting a different topic, you know, what kind of sources you can use, that kind of thing. So that should also help. But if you're still having trouble, one suggestion could be to browse a subject specific database or one of our reference databases. And so an example of both of those could be a subject specific one could be our database psych info, and it's focused on psychology. And then our reference databases, one of those is like CQ researcher, and it gives you a bunch of topics that you can browse, and it will give you kind of either side of an argument. So that can kind of help you spark interest in what you might want to talk about in your paper or your project, whatever you're doing. Another thing is don't start too narrow. A lot of times we help students who are looking for specific articles that meet all of that, all of their needs, all of the research needs that they need met in one go. This isn't the best way to start out, because you really limit the number of sources that you can apply to your research. It's also, it's not very common to find that one article that has everything you need. It's pretty rare. You're usually going to be pulling pieces from a lot of different articles to create that argument. So try not to pigeonhole yourself into a too narrow topic. And then another thing is, you know, explore what's out there as it goes hand in hand with not being too narrow. Exploring your options before deciding your question will really help prevent limiting that research and the number of relevant sources that you can use. Okay. And some of these clarifying questions that I think can help kind of build that research question. So like you have your topic, you're trying to narrow it down just a bit. These can kind of help formulate that. So the who, it's describing the individual or the population you're investigating. The what is a specific element or aspect that impacts the who. When is a time frame that you either are looking at specifically or you're intentionally limiting it to that time frame for your investigation? Where is your geographical location? Pretty easy. And then the why is, you know, why is this important or meaningful? And the why may not find its way into your formal research question. But it will help define the scope and help you kind of narrow it down a bit even more. And then as I said, this is going to be pretty simple, straightforward because we're almost done. Clearly plenty of times to ask questions that is probably what most of the time will be used for anyways. But so this last bit is to help you get started after you, you know, you figured out your research questions, like where do I go from here? How can I find those relevant sources? And it sounds simple, but you know, brainstorm. Cry and think about related themes and ideas that you could build into your research paper or project. And it also like the second piece is the key words. So our databases have a ton of great information in them. But sometimes they can be challenging to use because they're not Google. And they respond best to keyword searching rather than like using whole phrases that you can in Google and Google will pick it up immediately. And so this image here for either of those exercises, you can create a concept map. And so like if you're you're doing the brainstorming and you're trying trying to connect to the themes and ideas, you can take the you're really, you know, your main focus and have it here in the middle. And I really like how this one actually looks. It wasn't intentional. I didn't pick this one for this reason, but they have, you know, the color color separated. So like if you have an idea that could be connected to a smaller idea, you can have that here. And it can be, you know, I think of these things as being really messy and just trying to connect the dots before like you create that outline for either your paper or project. And you can also use these concept maps for the keyword situation. So when I, you know, going back to like the database is being kind of challenging to use, one thing I really like to do when I'm starting out my own research is I've got a keyword and I know it's going to work. But I'm not sure if it's going to pick up all of the relevant or any or all the sources that I think I might need. And so I'll sit and I'll write down synonyms or I'll Google, you know, synonyms of this word. And you can use a concept map for that, for that thing too. And so you can take down the note and or the word and then write down all the synonyms, or even just like related phrases, it doesn't have to be an exact synonym. But then you can take a database and you can search for all of those words together in parentheses. And that will definitely bring that will bring up a whole lot more results than just using that one word. And so from there, you can kind of see what words are used best in either that database or in some time like databases will change, you know, the language that they use. So this activity can be used for for both the brainstorming piece and the keyword piece or the idea piece. And that's about it.