A-level - AQA Extended Project: How to...: 1. Define

This is the Research Process which will be covered in Mrs. Makselon's Extended Project lessons and in this Libguide. 

As you work through the process you will be guided from the initial step of choosing a research topic, through effectively searching for information and organising your sources to presenting your findings with accurate references and citations.

The first step in the research process is to define what your research is going to focus on. 

At this stage you need to explore:

• what are my possible topics?
• what do I know about those topics?
• which words would be good search terms and keywords?
• what is my research question?

Within this section of the libguide you will find ideas for useful resources to help you choose a research topic and where to find them.  

You will also find details of a number of online tools to help organise your thoughts and your work, you can explore some of the options and find the ones which suit your needs best.

Watch the tutorial on this page for some useful information on defining your research topic.

It can be difficult to decide what is a good research topic and what isn't.

Click on the picture below to watch a video, from the South Australia Certificate of Education Website, on choosing a good research topic.

 [When you have viewed the video simply click the back arrow to return to this page]

South Australian Certificate of Education, 2011. Netball Mock Student Interview. [Online] Government of South Australia Available at: http://www.sace.sa.edu.au/subjects/stage-2/cross-disciplinary/research-project/netball-interview-video [Accessed 28 January 2011].

A tutorial with useful information on how to define your research topic.

Collaboratively creating sharable information literacy tutorials, 2011. Tutorials. [Online] CLIP: Cooperative Library Instruction Project Available at: http://clip-il.wetpaint.com/page/Tutorials [Accessed 20 January 2011].