This course guide has been created in support of Health Professions Capstone project. You will find help with each step of the process of finding peer-reviewed articles about your topic. If you need help at any point, don't hesitate to contact your librarian!
The first step in the research process is choosing a topic. Sometimes this is more difficult than it sounds. Your topic must be narrow enough to be interesting and give you focus, but broad enough to allow you to find enough information. Start by carefully reading the assignment to make sure you know what your professor expects from your final project.
It may help you to draw on your own existing knowledge and experience to come up with a topic for your research assignment. Here are some questions you can ask yourself as you are brainstorming a topic.
It is also important to be flexible throughout your research process. As you look for sources, you may have to broaden, narrow, or tweak your topic based on what you find.
Once you've identified a topic, the next step in the research process is to develop a list of search terms to use in databases. Gathering background information from textbooks and credible websites can help you develop search terms or identify angles of your topic to explore. You can also use open web tools like Google or Wikipedia, as long as you critically evaluate the sources you find.
As you explore these resources, keep a list of important terms and concepts to use when you move on to searching in databases.
