Research Toolkit: Getting Started

Examples:

• "...I ask to what extent [Greene's] apparent resistance to the critiques posed by social justice, and subsequent privileging of whiteness, indicate a larger trend in the archival field toward intellectual, methodological, and racial homogeneity (p. 340)?"
  • Ramirez's research question is prompted by an article published by Greene (2013). Thus he takes Greene's stance (his "resistance") and broadens it to form this question. 

Ramirez, Mario. 2015. "Being assumed not to be: A critique of Whiteness as an archival imperative. The American Archivist, 78 (2), pp. 339-356. doi: 10.17723/0360-9081.78.2.339

• How has climate change impacted farming techniques in the United States over the last 15 years?
• To what extent does racial bias impact the quality of treatment Black cancer patients receive?

When starting your research, you may want to start with broad, general topics. Maybe you know you want to write about race and medical care but aren't sure how to narrow it down. That's okay! You could brainstorm and come up with a mindmap that may help you narrow it down, OR you could start doing preliminary searches on Consult Google and Google Scholar. Check out our example mindmap below!

Utilizing a reference manager like Zotero will help you stay organized and ensure your articles are all in one place! See below for a short demo!