Preliminary Research

Learning Objectives

Describe strategies for preliminary research on a topic

Use preliminary research to refine and focus a research question

As we have seen, research begins with questions. Thinking about a particular subject, you gather your ideas, experience, and perspective, and formulate questions that can begin to guide your research process.  You’ll probably find, though, that your first questions tend to be too broad and vague to serve as productive research questions. How, then, do we go from our initial expressions of curiosity to a focused and answerable research question?

To get from overview questions to focused research questions, we need to get some more input. This is what we call preliminary research, or the process of finding out what there is to find out. The difference between reading for research and reading for preliminary research is the way you’ll be reading. When you have a fully developed and focused research question, you’ll be reading strategically and purposefully. You’ll view everything you read in the light of your argument: is this useful for my argument? Does it speak for or against my hypothesis? When you’re doing preliminary research, however, you’re reading with an open and even wandering mind. You’re looking for associations, intuitions, unexpected points of connection.

For preliminary research, websites, general-interest articles, and Wikipedia are acceptable—and often helpful—sources. It’s important, however, to pay attention to the credibility of any online sources before you use them as a jumping-off point for your research. See the section on reliable sources for more details about how to assess the quality of online sources. Meanwhile, you’ll probably want to make sure that there are enough scholarly treatments of your topic to support an academic paper. One of the best ways to find out what experts have written about your subject is to find a source with a works cited list—even a Wikipedia article usually has a list of sources—and look up some of the academic sources.

Example: Preliminary Research

James is interested in economic policy, racial inequality, and food systems. So he’s starting with the initial question “how has government policy reduced or increased racial inequality in food production?” This question is far too broad, so he decides to do some preliminary research to narrow it down. He’s curious whether he can work on very recent government policy, so he goes to Wikipedia and looks up the COVID-19 Stimulus Package passed in 2021. A quick control-f search for “agriculture” finds that the bill included $10.4 billion for agriculture and USDA. Below that, though, a line catches his eye:

“$4 billion (39% of total agricultural expenditures) and $1 billion (9.7% of total agricultural expenditures) goes to debt forgiveness and outreach/support, respectively, for socially disadvantaged farmers. Experts identified the relief bill as the most important legislation for African-American farmers since the Civil Rights Act of 1964, benefiting many who were not fully compensated by the Pigford settlements.” (Wikipedia Authors)

Well, James thinks, that’s interesting! Clicking on the link for “Pigford,” he finds that Pigford v. Glickman was a class-action lawsuit in 1999 that led to the largest civil rights settlement in history. Now he feels like he’s really onto something. After skimming a few short online articles about Pigford vs. Glickman, he decides that his research question could be: “How does the framing of support for socially disadvantaged farmers in the Stimulus Package compare to the claims behind the Pigford vs. Glickman case?”

Refining and Focusing your Research Question

The goal of preliminary research is to refine and focus your research question. The following strategies can help you do so:

  1. Skim a variety of sources. Works cited lists can help find scholarly treatments.
  2. As you read, list subtopics that fall under the heading of your main topic.
  3. For each subtopic, think of one or more possible research questions.
  4. For each of your questions, consider what scope of research it would require. Could you answer it in the time and with the resources you have available?
  5. If the scope of your questions is still too large for your project, repeat the process looking for sub-subtopics.

Remember, finding the right research question or topic is as important as the process of researching and writing your term paper. A strong research question is:

  • Interesting: Are you interested in it? Will be of interest to your audience?
  • Relevant:  The topic is relevant to the assignment, the context and your current audience. From preliminary research, you can identify enough valid sources to explore the topic.
  • Nuanced: Your question should not be answerable with a simple yes or no. Instead, you have to elaborate, expand, and analyze in order to come to a conclusion. In other words, you will have to make an argument. A good question is complex.
  • Clear: Your question should be simple and easily stated in clear language.

Maybe you have a topic in mind, but aren’t sure how to form a research question around it. The trick is to think of a question related to your topic, but not answerable with a quick search. Also, try to be specific so that your research question can be fully answered in the final product for your research assignment.

The point here is that you want to use your research to help you refine your research question, just as you use your research question to focus your research. These are not separate processes, so let them operate in a cycle.

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