Best way to get started

• Don't start by searching for scholarly journal articles
• Begin by using the Gale eBooks database (see link below) to poke around in some general areas of research. Your goals now are:
  • To learn enough about that area so you can recognize what is a good question to ask (your research question)
  • To learn basic terminology related to the topic (which you'll need to use when running searches for sources)
• Expect that the actual research question you are researching will need to be as narrowly focused as possible:
  • Needs work: depression in children
  • Better: how depression in children affects schooling
  • Even better: how depression in elementary school children affects their performance in school

Brainstorming for ideas

Picking and refining a topic