When doing research on something what should you look for?

Question

Im starting school tommorrow and im sure we will have a paper sooner or later and I want mines to be perfect and I want to investigate my subject untill I can find no more information and I was wondering what kind of things should I look for and where should I go to find these things? Are their any websites that give helpful tips on how to research or are there any books that I may want to check out? I look foward to reading your advice it should prove to be very helpful.

Answer 1

You can research on http://scholar.google.com and impress your teachers with the latest knowledge from latest journals and research papers.

Answer 2

If you're taking a first-year composition course, you will probably have a textbook that provides you with advice on research issues like where to start your research, how to tell if a source is credible, and so on. If you're not taking a composition course this semester, or your composition course doesn't ask you to buy such a book, I'd recommend the most recent edition you can find of _The Little Brown Compact Handbook_, which in addition to research advice also gives you assistance with things like complying to Standard American English (so-called "good spelling and good grammar") and how to format your paper in the professional style formats you'll be expected to use in college such as MLA, APA, and so on.

You should also go to your campus library and see if the librarians there offer some sort of seminar or individual tutoring on how to conduct research; most campus libraries offer such a service for free. The tutoring takes about an hour, and usually covers both how to use the campus library (which will probably be catalogued by the Library of Congress cataloguing system, instead of the Dewey Decimal System you're probably used to from high school), as well as using Internet sources, including special Internet services that the library subscribes to such as EBSCOhost and JStor. Be sure to ask your instructor how to tell whether or not a given article or book has been peer-reviewed; using peer-reviewed materials should greatly increase your standing in the eyes of your professors.

Answer 3

You look for all the information on the subject that you can handle (there will be more than you will need). I have gone to the library to research and in the section of my subject just pulled out a book at a time, I would scan it and decide if it would work for my paper. On the Internet I'd type in my subject and spend time looking at the results that came up. Some of your resources gathered will be used more extensively than others. You must spend time on the process to end up with a good paper. My advice from all my experience: gather, skim the material, read some in-depth, write an outline to follow and then start writing.

Answer 4

this is a little too difficult to answer, because the approach u take to research something will differ based on the topic. at least tell us what field...medicine, chemistry, business, etc. then we can comment on what general references are the best in that specific field.