How to begin research for your assignments |LGAW01/04

by Admin Support October 25, 2015

How To Begin Research For Your Assignments

Beginning Research – Approach to writing an A+ grade assignment

Once you have successfully completed brainstorming exercise after you have chosen and analyzed the topic, you should be ready with the basic set of research questions to initiate your actual research project. On this page, you will completely understand what steps are needed to be undertaken to begin your research smoothly as well as effectively. As the word research has the prefix of ‘re’ or again, in front of search, then eventually it is presumed that there is already some ‘search’ conducted by someone in the world for the same or very similar topic. And, ideally you should understand the findings of those ‘searches’ carefully before beginning any research project, to make your contribution novel and effective.

Browse: As already pointed out, the very first step for any good research should be browsing information from the existing literature. For this you can always search in all or some of the following sources depending on how far your objective is getting fulfilled.

  • Libraries: A library, be it online or a physical one on the ground, is the best place to gather sources for your questions. Libraries generally contain in-depth catalogue, listing all of their sources, starting from books, journals, to archival materials. For more on this, you can see an excellent guide by Cornell University called The Seven Steps of Research Process, which focuses on how to use a library.
  • Databases: In addition to libraries, you are recommended to search various available online databases to get more sources published in scholarly academic journals. EBSCOHost and Lexis/Nexis are two of the most prominent databases for this purpose. Except these, if you need information from newspaper then you can also search in the International Coalition on Newspapers, which can include centuries-old newspapers and popular publications along with their book catalogs. The trick to being able to search appropriate content requires that you understand how these search engines work. The underlying logical structure behind most of the search engine is Boolean logic. You can see tutorials on Boolean searching available on the Internet if you want to refine your skills.
  • Websites: Internet is the oceans of information, so if you don’t know how to swim and find your way to the shore, you can very easily drown. So except Google Scholar, you can check Search Engine List to know more about academic search engines.

Evaluate your sources: Once you have enough sources in your hand, the next step should be the evaluation of those sources. Primarily, you should concentrate on the following three steps:

  • Determine the usefulness: You should first focus on the relevance of the sources for your research.
  • Evaluating Credibility: You should pay enough attention to determine the selected sources are all from published sources and can be considered as academic material. For websites, pay attention to the domain name of the site.
  • Detecting Bias: Generally good academic material should not have bias in terms supporting some ideological or political agenda. Still, you should read all the sources critically to detect any biases. Along with reading critically, you are recommended to see other steps to complete assignments.

Use your sources: The next step is to use the sources to begin your actual research. In the process, you should always be open to refine your research questions if necessary. In terms of using the sources, please keep the following two points in mind.

Citing Your Sources: If you directly quote or paraphrase a concept or idea from a paper, you should always cite the source properly.

Using quotations: Don’t over use quotations in your writing. Get familiar with the citation rules regarding how and when to quote directly from research sources.

In addition to the outlined process, it is always good to stop your research periodically and perform checks to make sure that you are still focused on your topic, maintaining deadlines, and on schedule to complete your project or assignment.

If you really find difficult to find some time to read all these steps and complete your assignment, then there are various top assignment help services to help you. You can just approach these assignment providers and give your requirements to them. They will come back to you with the best assignment services.

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