The purpose of preliminary research
The reading you do in the beginning of a research process has two important, specific purposes:
1. It helps you to narrow your topic by finding out how much information is out there and, therefore, what is do-able within the page-limits you have been assigned.
2. It helps you get an idea of which specific aspects of your topic you will want to do more detailed reading about.
How to do preliminary research quickly
1. Prioritizing your reading
The biggest mistake most people make when doing preliminary research is doing too much reading [!].� Remember, the point is to narrow things and decide where you want to focus.� This should be a relatively fast process.� Here are some tips to help you make it so:
1. When you find a book, go to the index first to see if your topic is covered on some specific pages.� If it is, turn to those pages and just read those.� [Later, if you decide to use the book, you should also read its introduction, but only enough to get an idea of the author�s overall point.� For a quick way to do this kind of reading, see the reading tips below.]
2. If there�s nothing in the index, read the table of contents to see if it will give you a clue to which section might be most useful to you.
3. If neither of these things works, go to the book�s introductory chapter and do a speed-read of it [see reading tips, below].� This should tell you if any part of the book will be useful to you.� Whatever your results, you should stop at this point and start working with your next source.
4. With an article or Web page, you can�t count on having an index or table of contents, so you should speed-read the first three paragraphs and the last three paragraphs.� That�s where good authors always put their main ideas.
2.� Reading tips: how to go quickly
The type of speed-read I do isn�t skimming.� It isn�t about reading everything fast.� It�s about only reading certain things and thus limiting my reading and the time it takes to do it.� Here�s what I mean:
1. Read the places where authors put their big ideas.� This means reading a source text in the following order:
2. Opening three paragraphs of the introductory chapter or article
3. Closing three paragraphs of the introductory chapter/article
4. Once you�ve proceeded past preliminary reading, if the article or book looks promising, then read the first sentence of each paragraph
5. If that shows promise, then read the rest of the paragraph [i.e., do a complete reading of the text]
1. How does background/ preliminary research help in defining a research topic? 2. What is your understanding of refining the research question?
Example of a Research Process
A good research process should go through these steps:
- Decide on the topic.
- Narrow the topic in order to narrow search parameters.
- Create a question that your research will address.
- Generate sub-questions from your main question.
- Determine what kind of sources are best for your argument.
- Create a bibliography as you gather and reference sources.
Each of these is described in greater detail below.
The research process is messy! Do not start research haphazardly—come up with a plan first.