Plan your research

Discover the best ways to get started so you get great results.

Unpack your assessment

Do background reading

Plan your search

Evaluate the information you find

Reference your sources

Use information ethically

Unpack your assessment

1. Look in detail at the assessment task and the marking criteria

• Who is the audience?
• What needs to be covered?
• When is it due?
• What is the purpose of this assessment?
• What learning outcomes does it cover?
• How are marks allocated?
• Where is the relevant information found?

2. Analyse the terms/words used in the assessment task

• What are you being asked to do? Circle the task words, for example discuss or argue.
• What are the main concepts, keywords or subjects? These may be used as your search terms.
• Do the main concepts (or ideas) need to be interpreted to represent a keyword or phrase?
• Are there any limits to the topic or question? For example, date or type of resource.

Do background reading

Do some background reading around your topic. This will increase your understanding of the area and help you to find alternative keywords and assist in evaluating resources you find.

Good sources for background reading include:

• lecture slides and recordings
• your textbook/s
• texts and references in the unit outline
• reference sources such as encyclopaedias and dictionaries.

Plan your search

• List keywords
• Think of alternative or related keywords to add to your list
• Develop a concept table or use a mind mapping tool to organise your search terms (such as Credo Reference)
• Start with Library search

Use a concept table

A concept table will help to develop your search terms and concepts. Use the table to:

• think about keywords that could be used in addition to your main concepts
• identify synonyms and/or alternative words
• identify alternative spellings.

Library concept table (DOC, 63KB)

Organise your search terms into a table, like the one below, in preparation for database searching.

Enter each main concept at the top of a column and list synonyms or related terms under each heading.

Note: you combine the synonyms and related concepts with OR and you combine different concepts with AND.

Concept table example

Topic: How does understanding the common good and inequality impact society?

For example

• Concept 1 - common good OR public good OR public benefit
• Concept 2 - inequality OR disparity OR unfairness OR imbalance
• Concept 3 - society OR community OR social groups

Database search techniques such as truncation, wildcards, phrase searching and Boolean can improve your results. See Search smarter for more information on these techniques.

Evaluate the information you find

Evaluate resources you find for your assessments to ensure they are suitable for use.

Reference your sources

Use the Referencing library guide to help you correctly cite resources you use in your assessment.

Use information ethically

Find resources and services by the Academic Skills Unit about different referencing systems and how you can meet the requirements of academic integrity.