What is a research question?
In short, it is what you're trying to answer or discover in your research.
You will answer this question through a combination of a literature review (to discover what others have discovered on your topic, or topics very similar to yours) and, for most of you, some form of primary research.
What is primary research?
Research that you carry out yourself (with the help of others), rather than reading and drawing conclusions from the research of others.
Primary research can take the form of field observations, field study/sampling, lab study, numerical data analysis, interviews, case study, archival record study, or many other formats, depending on your subject.
What is a literature review and how do I get started?
Review the playlist of videos below. In particular, the first, second, and last videos will be particularly helpful. You can skip videos 5-8 if you're already familiar with the concepts.
You can do a basic, broad search of almost all of the articles we have, using Research @ UWW on our homepage.
Alternately, Google Scholar is an even bigger search. Not all of the articles are full-text, though -- use the directions on the Google Scholar tab to link to UW-W and see what we have subscriptions to.
These are both very big searches and you will probably have to filter through many results.
Or, use these specific Library databases to find articles relevant to one specific area:
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Request it for FREE via Interlibrary Loan.
Log in above, and make a New Request for an Article or Book.
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