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The Research Process

On this page

Understanding your Assessment

Breakdown your Assessment Question

Developing an Argument

Searching

Reading

Notetaking

Understanding your Assessment

Before you begin your research, you must first make sure that you understand what you are looking for. To do this, you must understand what your assessment is asking of you. Spend some time reading and rereading your assessment question and instructions. When trying to understand your assessment task, see if you can answer these questions:

  • What kind of assessment is it? Is it an essay, literature review, annotated bibliography, report, etc. If you are not familiar with the requirements of the assessment type, we provide guidance on all kinds. Visit Academic Writing and find the guide relevant to your particular type of assessment.
  • How many words are you expected to write? This will indicate how much research you need to do. For example, an assessment of 2000 words will require a far deeper level of research than an assessment of 500 words.
  • What will you be marked on? Check the marking guide or rubric in your Learning and Assessment Guide, and look at the specific criteria you are expected to meet.
  • Do you understand all the words in your assessment question? If there are any words you don’t understand, or concepts you aren’t familiar with, reflect on the content you’ve been learning about in your subject, or ask your lecturer for further clarification.
  • Are you told to use specific sources? Some assessments will instruct the use of a specific text or texts. Make sure you use the required sources, and that you know where to find them. Also consider whether any of the prescribed and recommended readings in your subject could act as a starting point.

Tip: Rewrite the question in your own words. This will give you a clear idea of whether or not you understand the task yourself!

Breakdown your Assessment Question

Sometimes it can be helpful to breakdown your assessment question into parts. Your question may be a single sentence, or it may have multiple questions/instructions. If there are multiple parts to your question, make sure you answer all of them.

The words used in your question will provide the starting point for your research. When breaking down your question, identify the following words:

Task Words

These are verbs, or ‘doing’ words, that tell you how to answer the question. They will often guide the structure of your assessment.

Here are a few examples of Task Words:

Analyse Break an issue down into parts, and look at how they are related or affect each other.
Compare and Contrast Look at the similarities and differences between two or more things or ideas. If the question only asks you to Contrast, focus on the differences.
Discuss Present more than one perspective on a topic, providing evidence to support each perspective. This will require you to weigh the evidence for and against, and possibly determine which side you agree with.
Evaluate Form a judgment. Use your research to determine the value or validity of something. Present an argument, backed up by evidence (research).
Examine Similar to ‘Analyse.’ Investigate a topic thoroughly, perhaps look at strengths or weaknesses of an argument.
Content Words

These words indicate the subject or topic your assessment should focus on. They will likely guide your research and will often be useful keywords to search with, or a starting place to brainstorm more keywords.

Limiting Words

Limiting words narrow down the focus of your question. For example, “In Australia” or “Since 2010” would provide the context around your Content Words.

However, you may be given a very general topic, or the opportunity to shape your own assessment question. If so, first consider what you’ve already learned about in class, and whether you have an area you’re interested to learn more about. It’s helpful to like your topic! Are there existing debates in this area that you’d like to investigate further? Or perhaps an emerging trend that you think is worth exploring? You will need to choose your own Content and Limiting words to narrow down your focus area, and then select a Task word that chooses how you would like to approach the information. Would you like to analyse it, discuss it, evaluate it?

Remember: If you do select your own question or topic, always run it by your lecturer to make sure it is suitable for your assessment.

Developing an Argument

Some assessments will require you to explore the various perspectives of a topic, and you will need to research widely enough to present a thorough investigation in your assessment. However, some assessments will require you to defend a specific position or make a judgment on a proposed topic. You will spend the length of your assessment making your argument and defending it with relevant evidence. You may already have an idea of the position you want to take before you begin your assessment, but it is not essential to know right away. In fact, it is best to keep your initial position very loose, and allow it to be shaped by what you discover during the research process. Research will expose you to the different arguments around a topic, and it is during this process that you will likely determine your final position.

You should investigate material that both supports and opposes your initial position. It can be easy to only include material that supports your position, but in order to make a well-rounded argument, it’s important to explore material that doesn’t. Consider these questions:

  • What arguments could be made against your position?
  • Do you have evidence to counter those arguments and reaffirm your position?
  • Does the opposing argument mean that you may need to change your position?

These questions will help you strengthen your own argument. The more knowledge you have of all perspectives, the better you can justify your final position.

It’s important to understand the connection between your evidence and your argument. How does the evidence you present prove your argument? It’s your responsibility to identify those connections in your assessment – you can’t assume your audience will make the connection themselves. Anytime you include evidence in your work, you must also explain its relevance, so that it is clear you have included it for a reason. Evidence is great, but it is only useful if you tell us why.

Searching

Research at a university level requires you to find sources of a scholarly nature. The best place to find these sources is right here at NTI:

  • Library Catalogue: Search the catalogue for all the library’s physical resources, including books, some journals, CDs and DVDs.
  • Online Databases: Access the online databases via the Student Portal for all the library’s electronic subscriptions, including journal articles, theses and ebooks.

You may occasionally need to search more widely on the internet. See our guide for Research on the Internet to learn how you can identify reliable sources online.

Keywords

Before you conduct your search, you must first identify the keywords for your search. Remember, the Content Words in your assessment question are a good place to start!

Tip: For guidance on keywords and searching, see our video Search Tips for Online Databases.

Reading

It is important to read strategically in the early stages of your research. It’s very easy to use up your valuable research time reading entire articles or books, when only a small part of the text will be relevant to your task.

Once you’ve conducted your search, you should first identify which results (if any) may contain information relevant to your research question. This will ensure you only spend significant time with those sources that are most useful to you.

Remember: Research is a repetitive process. You will need to conduct more than one search to find relevant sources, and you may revisit sources more than once. This is not a waste of time, rather this is part of a thorough research process.

Reading should be done in four stages:

1. Skimming Grasp the main ideas and purpose of a text to determine whether it is relevant in its entirety or in part. Read the abstract/summary, contents, introduction and conclusion, topic sentences or headings. Skip any text that provides details or data.
2. Scanning Look over the body of a text or sections of a text to find keywords that signal your topic is being discussed. You can then focus your reading here. For electronic sources, perform a word search of your keywords to identify relevant sections of a text. For physical sources, check the index.
3. Close Reading This is where you read a text carefully, slowly, paying attention to detail in order to understand the text and collect supporting evidence for your argument. Read critically, decide if the text is biased, if the author has provided enough evidence to support their claims. You may need to do a close reading of an entire text, or just sections/chapters. See the next section on Notetaking for tips on how to gather information during Close Reading.
4. Revision Reading Revisit sections of a text you’ve already read to reinforce or clarify information.

Notetaking

Notetaking is an essential part of the research process, and of the academic experience more generally. You will need to read a wide variety of sources for each assessment and learning how to take good notes will help you absorb and use the material you read. Good notes should:

  • Keep you focused while reading
  • Help you understand the material
  • Organise the information you need
  • Draw connections between the different sources you read

Notetaking is a very individual process, and different people will find different methods most helpful to them. The most important thing to avoid when taking notes is simply copying down information you read. Copying doesn’t require you to think about what you are reading, it uses up a lot of time, and you will still need to transform the information when it is time to write your assessment. When taking notes, try these strategies to actively engage in the texts you read:

Annotate the text

Highlight or underline key points, or write notes, questions and thoughts for yourself in the margins. Be careful of how much you highlight; this is another point where students can forget to think about and engage with the text. It’s easy to highlight everything you consider relevant to your topic, but you should keep your annotations focused. Highlight key phrases or sentences.

Tip: Only begin highlighting after you have read the entire paragraph or section. Read, identify the key point(s) and then only highlight them. This will help you avoid highlighting too generously. 

Some people find print outs or physical copies easier to work with, but remember never to annotate a copy that belongs to somebody else, or a public copy like a library book!

Most PDF files allow highlight and comments within the document.

Visit this guide to learn more. 

NTI’s Ebook Central database allows users to highlight and create notes to revisit later.

Visit Online Databases to
learn more.

Your internet browser may have extensions that allow highlighting and notetaking online. Visit the Chrome Web Store, Firefox Add-Ons or Safari Extensions.

Take notes from memory

To avoid copying down information without reading closely, try to summarise what you have read from memory. Read a paragraph, or a page, and then try to explain what youhave read without looking back at the original text . This will require you to think about what you read, and make sure you understand it so you can summarise it in your own words. This will also help you focus on the key points from the original text. You don’t need to remember everything, only the points most useful in answering your own research question.

Tip: Save any quotes that you think might be useful to make your own argument but remember your assessment should primarily be built on your own words, on your interpretation of the evidence found in your research. Quotations are one type of evidence, and they should only be used when the exact words of the author are necessary.
Reference as you read

You may not end up using every source you read during the research process, but this will save you having to retrace your steps and find the source of any evidence you include in your final assessment. Keep the reference for every idea your summarise, quote you save, or piece of information you consider worth keeping.

Categorise your evidence as you go

When the research stage is complete your evidence will already be grouped together, according to the structure of your assessment. The categories may not be clear right away. Once you’ve started gathering your evidence, you will find some pieces of evidence relate to the same key point in your argument. You can identify your categories in different ways:

  • Try assigning each category a colour. Use different colour highlighters, pens or post-its to identify them.
  • Write a few headings and group your evidence beneath each heading.

Tip: Categories may evolve further into the research process, or evidence you’ve assigned to one category may seem more relevant to another category as more information is gathered. This is okay—this may keep changing until you’ve finished outlining your assessment.

Continually refer back to your research question throughout the research process. Make sure you haven’t strayed away from the question you are supposed to answer.

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