Questions? Ask me!
Develop Your Topic
To develop a research topic or question, you'll need to do some background reading first.
These are good places to find topic ideas and gather some general information on them:
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Once you have an idea you'd like to pursue, move on to refining your topic.
Adapted from: https://libguides.kennesaw.edu/education
Now that you've done some background research, it's time to narrow your topic.
Here are some suggestions for narrowing and defining your topic:
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Use this framework to help you describe and develop your topic in some detail:
(p.49) Booth, W. C., Booth, W. C., Colomb, G. G., Williams, J. M., & FitzGerald, W. T. (2016). The craft of research (Fourth edition.). University of Chicago Press.
Adapted from: https://libguides.kennesaw.edu/education
Identify Keywords and Search Terms
| Identify the most important ideas or aspects of your research question. You will use those as your keywords to start searching for information about your topic. |  |
What other words might be used to describe those main ideas or concepts?
Find Articles
Find Journal Articles - Also called "Academic Articles," "Scholarly Articles," or "Peer-Reviewed Articles".
Why You Should Use Them
- Current Information - Journal articles are typically published monthly and therefore contain current research on a subject.
- Written by Scholars - Journal articles are written and reviewed by subject area scholars and provide new research, analysis, or information about a specific topic.
- Peer-Reviewed - This means the article is approved by other subject area experts before it is published.
- Focused - Academic articles tend to be focused on a narrow subject or research question.
Adapted from: https://libguides.kennesaw.edu/education
| Use Databases - Find credible, peer-reviewed articles to support your answer to your research question. |  |
Why You Should Use Them
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Credibility - Data provide meaningful and replicable information about a topic, condition, or population.
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"Free" - your tuition dollars pay for you to have access to a wealth of research publications.
Adapted from: https://libguides.kennesaw.edu/education
Where to Look -
Click on the information icon 
to see what kind of articles are included in each database.
- Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window Multi-disciplinary full-text database with more than 8,500 full-text periodicals, including more than 7,300 peer-reviewed journals. Indexes and abstracts more than 12,500 journals and a total of more than 13,200 publications including monographs, reports, and conference proceedings.
- ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) [EBSCOhost] Consists of two files: the Resources in Education (RIE) file of ERIC document citations and the Current Index to Journals in Education (CIJE) file of journal article citations from over 1,000 journals. Both files provide abstracts. In addition, ERIC now contains over 2,200 ERIC Digest records that feature the full-text of the original document. Also provides coverage of conferences, meetings, government documents, theses, dissertations, reports, audiovisual media, bibliographies, directories, books and monographs.
- PsycINFO Provides access to abstracts, citations, articles, books, and dissertations in the psychological, social, and behavioral sciences. Includes all American Psychological Association journals.
- PubMed (University of Kentucky) Provides abstracts to articles in medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, allied health, and the pre-clinical sciences. Includes biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Also includes links to articles available through UK Libraries' subscriptions.
- ScienceDirect 1.4 million articles on ScienceDirect are open access. Broad areas covered are physical sciences and engineering, life sciences, health sciences, and social sciences and humanities.
- A-Z Database ListComplete list of academic databases available from UK Libraries. Use your Link Blue account to access them.
- Research Guides by TopicComplete list of research guides available from UK Libraries.
Find Books and Stats
| Find Books - At the college level, use books written for an academic audience instead of those written for popular reading. |  |
Why You Should Use Them
- Depth - books provide in-depth analysis of a topic.
- Broad Coverage - books generally provide broad coverage of one or more topics.
- Extended Research - books can be an invaluable source for extended research.
Adapted from: https://libguides.kennesaw.edu/education
Click on a link below to find all books we have on these topics:
| Find Data and Statistics - Providing facts and figures from scholarly research lends support to your argument or position. | |
Why You Should Use Them
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Credibility - Data provide meaningful and replicable information about a topic, condition, or population.
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Visual - Sometimes a picture or a chart or a graph really is worth a thousand words.
Adapted from: https://libguides.kennesaw.edu/education
Where to Look
- Child StatsProvides data on key national indicators of our children's well-being and monitors changes in these indicators.
- County Health Rankings & RoadmapsThe annual County Health Rankings measure vital health factors, including high school graduation rates, obesity, smoking, unemployment, access to healthy foods, the quality of air and water, income, and teen births in nearly every county in America. The annual Rankings provide a revealing snapshot of how health is influenced by where we live, learn, work and play.
- Data - CDCOpen datasets made available by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
- Google Dataset SearchSearch for datasets using this tool developed at Google.
- Healthy People 2030Healthy People 2030 sets data-driven national objectives to improve health and well-being over the next decade.
- National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)NCES is the primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education in the U.S.
- National Center for Health Statisitics - Mental HealthFast facts data for the US.
- NIH Mental Health StatsIncludes currently available statistics on the prevalence and treatment of mental illnesses among the U.S. population.
- Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services AdministrationUses data to support a better understanding of mental illness and substance use disorders in America.
How to Format References [APA 7th ed.]
Remember that no one expects you to be an expert in everything. You are, therefore, expected to give credit where credit is due. Citing sources makes you look more knowledgeable and professional. When in doubt, cite it.
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APA Formatting and Style Guide |
| Visual guide to citing books, articles, websites, blogs, and more in APA format. |
In depth guidance from Purdue University's Online Writing Lab (OWL). |
