Video: Pre-Research Strategies to Begin Any Assignment

Pre-research is a way to brainstorm and gather information about a topic of interest before you commit to your topic or define your argument. It can help you develop your research question, build your keyword searches, redirect your focus to learn about other aspects of your topic, and find out how different people talk about your topic.

• Transcript

  NC State University Libraries presents Pre-Research Strategies To Begin Any Assignment. Today, we will practice a pre-research activity to help you develop a research question and plan. In this lesson, we will define pre-research, introduce a pre-research strategy, and discuss how to use pre-research to develop a focused research question.

  Often, new researchers begin their work on an assignment by immediately trying to find sources to support an idea or argument they've already defined before diving into the available information on a topic. This can cause researchers to miss out on learning about and representing the full nuance of a subject.

  Finding good sources to cite is a very important part of the research process. But it's usually not an effective way to begin. So how should you get started?

  Pre-research is a way to brainstorm and gather broad information about a topic of interest before you commit to your topic or define your argument. This happens before finding specific sources to cite in a paper because you are familiarizing yourself with the information landscape in general. Pre-research can help you in a lot of different ways. For example, develop a research question, build a keyword search, redirect your focus to learn about a different aspect of your topic, or find new forms to explore how different people talk about your topic.

  So where should you look to find information during pre-research? Begin anywhere. With any sources. As long as you are analyzing what you can learn to help uncover more questions, any of these could be a great place to begin-- news sites, culture or lifestyle sites, blogs, social media. All of these are great places to start. But each will have a different focus.

  Here's a strategy to get started. You're probably familiar with the five W questions, who, what, when, where, why. We are going to use them as a pre-research strategy for guided brainstorming. As you answer these broad questions, it will help you narrow your research focus and develop key search terms.

  Here's an example of how you might use the five W questions. You might ask, who is affected by this topic, what different factors and subtopics make up this topic, when did key events or developments take place, where do important conversations happen, why does this matter to you and your audience?

  Let's try an example-- say I want my topic to be houseplants. I'm interested in the subject, but not sure what to research or how to make it meaningful. Let's use the five W's to get started.

  Let's start with our first question, who is affected by this topic? I am affected because I love houseplants. Besides myself, other owners of houseplants would be interested, but also anyone with a stake in this topic, like people who grow houseplants commercially.

  We can also think about the influences that have made houseplants rise as a trend. And since I've heard about the health benefits of caring for houseplants, I'll include the medical community in this list. I'm getting the sense that thinking about the audience can help me decide how I want to focus and narrow my research.

  What different factors and subtopics make up this topic? When I start to break this topic into components, I can think of many related categories, like health benefits, both physical and mental; different varieties of houseplants; growing conditions and necessary care; trendy or popular houseplants; influences on this trend such, as social media, industry of growing houseplants, and environmental impact. And this is just the beginning of the list.

  When did key events or developments take place? I'm not sure. But I have heard of an anecdotal connection to millennials and Gen Z. To learn more, I can quickly search the web for terms like history of houseplants, popularity of houseplants, or houseplants and health.

  This part of the activity has led me to more questions that I can explore. Where do important conversations about this topic take place? There is broad coverage of this topic on news sites, plant blogs, culture and lifestyle websites, and social media.

  I need to keep in mind the intended audience for each of these sources and how that might influence the information presented. Who the publishers think they are reaching impacts the type and depth of information presented. I also want to be aware of advertisements and sponsored pages as I look for information on this topic.

  Why does this topic matter to you and to your audience? Well, for me, I want to take care of my plants so they live. Plants can be expensive and require meticulous care. As I learn more, there are many reasons this topic matters to me, like improved air quality and mental health. I'm also intrigued by the rise in interest in houseplants.

  What now? At this point, I've laid a good foundation for my topic by doing pre-research. I've learned a lot informally, while being guided by strategic questions to gain a more comprehensive working knowledge of my topic.

  Now, depending on my assignment, I can take that knowledge in a number of directions. As I went through my five W questions, I gained a better understanding of the topic and directions I can take while researching.

  In the future, I will know that, as I develop a research question, it can help me build a keyword search. And good keywords will make it easier to find new subtopics, as well as new forums or sources to explore my topic. I expect to continue this process of asking strategic questions through multiple phases of research until I've refined my questions and clarified my knowledge base.

  So to recap, pre-research is any search in which you begin to learn more about your topic by engaging with sources and asking strategic questions. The five W questions are one set of strategic questions you might find useful. Pre-research is an iterative process, meaning it will be repeated many times to help you develop and refine your topic. And if you need help, Ask US.