Research Questions
More to discover ↗Digital archives can put letters, photographs, maps and official records within reach, but finding a useful source takes more than a keyword search. Learn how to choose an archive, build flexible searches, read catalog descriptions and record what you find.
Read article ↗A useful paper can lead you to earlier studies, competing explanations and essential background. Learn how to read its reference list strategically, check whether a cited work fits your question and keep track of what you find.
Read article · 4 min↗A missing title, an uncertain author, or a fragment of a reference list does not have to end your search. Learn how to turn the clues you have into focused searches, check promising matches, and record what you can verify.
Read article · 4 min↗A practical guide to turning a research question into Google Scholar searches, refining results, following citation trails, finding readable copies and keeping a record of what you find.
Read article · 4 min↗A keyword search finds the words you type. A subject heading can also lead you to sources that use different words for the same idea. Learn how to find headings in library catalogs and research databases, combine them with keywords, and avoid common gaps.
Read article · 4 min↗A library catalog can help you move from a broad topic to a useful book, an available copy, or an ebook you can open. Learn how to choose search terms, read records, check access options, and use one good result to find more.
Read article · 4 min↗A search engine, a library catalog, and an academic database can all help you find sources, but they answer different questions. Learn when to use each one, how to move between them, and what to do when a search returns too much—or too little.
Read article · 4 min↗Search fields and filters can make a large set of results manageable, but they can also remove relevant material. Learn when to search titles, abstracts, and subjects; how to apply filters in stages; and how to check what a narrower search may have missed.
Read article · 4 min↗Search operators can make a large set of results more manageable—or accidentally hide useful sources. Learn when to search for an exact phrase, when to expand a word with truncation, and when a wildcard can help with spelling or word variants.
Read article · 4 min↗Boolean operators help you turn a broad search into a more useful one. Learn how AND narrows results, OR connects alternatives, and NOT excludes unwanted meanings, with examples you can adapt to your own research.
Read article · 4 min↗A useful keyword list does more than repeat the words in your research question. Learn how to identify core concepts, add alternative language, distinguish synonyms from related terms, and refine your searches as you find sources.
Read article · 4 min↗A research question is not yet a search strategy. Learn how to identify its core concepts, choose useful alternatives, build a first query and revise it when the results reveal better language.
Read article · 4 min↗A study can collect data carefully and still reach a misleading conclusion if important observations are missing. Learn how to examine dropout rates, ask why data went missing, and judge whether a study’s conclusions remain credible.
Read article · 4 min↗An expert’s judgment can help you make sense of a question, but it is not the same as evidence gathered through observation or measurement. Learn what each can contribute, where each can mislead, and how to use both when assessing a claim.
Read article · 4 min↗A systematic review can offer a broader view than one study, but its conclusions are only as useful as its methods and the studies it includes. Learn when to favor a review, when to inspect individual studies, and how to judge whether either applies to your question.
Read article · 4 min↗When studies disagree, counting how many support each side rarely settles the question. Compare what they asked, who they studied, how they measured outcomes and how much uncertainty remains. A structured approach can reveal whether the disagreement is meaningful—or only apparent.
Read article · 4 min↗A finding becomes more persuasive when people outside the original team can obtain a similar result. Learn what independent replication tests, why it matters, and how to judge both successful and unsuccessful attempts.
Read article · 4 min↗A collection of published studies may not represent every study that was conducted. Learn how publication bias arises, why it can make an effect look stronger than it is, and what to check when evaluating a review of the evidence.
Read article · 4 min↗A report can be accurate about the results it presents and still give a misleading impression by leaving other results out. Learn how to compare a study’s question, methods and findings to spot selective outcome reporting.
Read article · 4 min↗Funding and conflicts of interest can affect how evidence is produced and presented, but neither automatically makes a finding wrong. Learn how to identify relevant relationships, examine their possible influence, and weigh the work on its merits.
Read article · 3 min↗Peer review can help improve a study before publication, but it is not a guarantee that the findings are correct. Learn what reviewers typically assess, what they may miss, and how to evaluate a peer-reviewed study for your own question.
Read article · 4 min↗A vivid story can reveal a question worth investigating, but it cannot show how often an outcome occurs or what caused it. Learn how to use anecdotes as starting points while looking for the broader evidence needed to identify a pattern.
Read article · 3 min↗What people say they do and what an observer records can differ without either account being useless. Learn how to judge self-reports and behavioral observations by matching each method to the question, checking how the evidence was collected, and interpreting disagreements carefully.
Read article · 4 min↗A finding can be sound for the people studied yet uncertain for the people you care about. Learn how to compare populations, settings, and outcome measures before applying research beyond its original sample.
Read article · 4 min↗A study can measure its participants carefully and still give a misleading picture if the people included differ in important ways from those left out. Learn how to inspect recruitment, exclusions and response patterns before deciding what a result applies to.
Read article · 4 min↗A larger sample can make an estimate more precise, but it cannot fix a biased sample or a flawed study. Learn how to judge sample size alongside variation, sampling methods and the claim being made.
Read article · 4 min↗A control group helps show what might have happened without an intervention, but only if it offers a fair comparison. Learn how to check group selection, starting conditions, treatment differences and missing data before trusting a study’s conclusion.
Read article · 4 min↗A study can find a real association and still give a misleading impression of cause and effect. Learn how confounding variables work, how to spot plausible alternatives, and how to describe findings with appropriate caution.
Read article · 4 min↗A randomized trial and an observational study can examine the same question yet support different conclusions. Learn how assignment, confounding, study quality and context affect what the evidence can establish.
Read article · 4 min↗A study can collect data carefully and still miss the idea it set out to investigate. Learn how to compare a research claim with its actual measures, spot the limits of common proxies and decide how much a finding supports its conclusion.
Read article · 4 min↗A headline can describe a real study and still give the wrong impression. Learn how to trace a claim to its source, compare its wording with the study’s methods and results, and explain what the evidence actually supports.
Read article · 4 min↗A survey, a forecast, and a comparison between groups can each provide useful evidence, but they answer different questions. Learn how to identify whether a claim describes a pattern, predicts an outcome, or argues that one thing causes another—and what to check before accepting it.
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