LibGuides: National American University Online Library: Research Process

Research Process Tutorials

Choosing a Topic
This tutuorial will explain how to select a topic and narrow it down, if needed.
Refining Your Topic
Learn strategies for selecting and refining your topic by narrowing or broadening it, and how to control the number of results by adding or removing search terms.
How to Find Reliable Websites
Also known as Finding Credible Websites: Evaluating Internet Sources (7 min.)
Research Process Tutorial
This tutorial explains finding and refining a topic, finding and evaluating information, and preparing your argument.

Research Process Handouts

Scholarly or Peer-Reviewed Articles
This handout explains what scholarly or peer-reviewed articles are and how to find them.
Find Peer-Reviewed Articles
How to limit your search to full text and peer reviewed journal articles in EBSCO library databases.
Determining Credible Sources
Handout with questions to help you determine the credibility of your sources.

Keyword Searching

Unlike Google, library databases can't understand an entire sentence. So you'll need to break your topic down into the most important ideas - the KEYWORDS.

Example Topic: What was the effect of social media on candidate preference in the 2016 US presidential election?

The specifics of your topic will matter when selecting sources, but for searching you only need the most essential components.

Keywords: social media, candidate preference, 2016 US presidential election

Tutorial - Finding Keywords

If you find you need to practice choosing keywords, try the Finding Keywords tutorial.

Research Process Flowchart

Source Evaluation

You can evaluate any source using the 5 W's

Who: ...wrote it? Are they an expert?
What: ...is the purpose of this resource?
Where: ...was this information published? ...does the information come from?
When: ...was this published or last updated?
Why: ...is this resource useful? ...is this resource better than other ones?