Historical research is like conducting an investigation. Sometimes it can be open-ended and entirely self-directed. For example, you may have been reading in this module and come to a term you didn’t know or a concept you wanted to learn more about. “What is the Mason-Dixon Line, exactly?” or “What was the impact of the Scopes trial? Did it change the way that evolution was taught in textbooks?” or “What percentage or what demographics of Black Americans supported the Back-to-Africa movement?” Other times your instructor may give you a topic or a prompt to start from. For example, the prompt might be, “Evaluate and analyze the ideas, agenda, strategies, and effectiveness of the work done by a 20th-century American reformer or activist.” Or maybe it’s about answering a question with evidence, like “What type of art characterized the Harlem Renaissance?” or “How did the Great Migration lead to the proliferation of Blues music?”

No matter your topic or how you get to the starting line of your research, there are a few helpful steps to follow during your research process. These are guidelines to help you get started, but the steps are meant to be revisited a few times as needed, so you may cycle through these steps several times while working towards your finished product. In this historical hack, we’ll focus on the first 3 steps.

1. Understand the assignment
2. Select a research topic/develop a research question
3. Conduct research: find and evaluate sources
4. Create your claim
5. Synthesize evidence
6. Put it together

Understanding the Assignment

Before you start your research make sure you understand what the assignment is asking you to do. Is it an essay, report, presentation, or case study? Knowing this will help you understand what sort of information you need to include and how to write the assignment. Most written assignments in history classes aren’t actually big research papers, but are response papers or discussion posts where you are asked to reflect on a given topic and share your thoughts. Sometimes you are assigned document-based-questions, where you are given the research materials, or other times, you are asked to go find supporting evidence.

Next, analyze the assignment task to make sure you understand what you are being asked. Look at the task and identify:

• Instruction words – These words tell you what to do. Do you need to analyze, discuss, evaluate, summarize, compare—or something else?
• Topic words – Topic words tell you what to write about. What you need to analyze, argue, discuss, and so on.
• Limiting words – These narrow down and focus your topic. This might be a certain time, place, or part of the topic.

Once you are clear about what you need to do, think about what you already know to help you figure out what to focus on:

• What is the assignment topic?
• What information do you already have?
• What extra information do you need to figure out?
• What questions do you have that will help you respond to the assignment task?

Selecting Your Own Topic

On other occasions, you may be left to choose your own research topic. To make this choice, it can be helpful to think about the things you already know, the things that interest you the most, and the things you are curious about.

First, consider the general topic. Then, look for some aspect of that general topic that is interesting to you. A research project that interests you is much easier (and more fun!) to complete than one that bores you. For example, if your topic is on anything from the 1920s and you are interested in finance, then you may want to focus on the economic circumstances for middle-class Americans during the 1920s. You could also focus on the growth of sports as entertainment. Both could connect with the assignment, but one might be far more interesting to you.

Once you arrive at a general topic, consider a few defining questions to help you get to a research question, which helps you to focus your research. At this point, it’s time to do some preliminary research on your topic. Here your course textbook or a review of a Wikipedia article can provide you with enough general information to ask a more specific, focused research question. You don’t want your question to be too narrow, or something that could be answered with just a sentence or two. For example, research on, “What was the most popular sport during the 1920s?” lends itself to a short, quick answer, rather than a deeply considered analysis. You also want to avoid questions that are too broad, like “What was the American economy like in 1920?”

Finding Sources

Now that you understand the assignment and have chosen your research topic, it’s time to find your sources. First, decide where to look.

Where you look for your sources will depend on the type of information you are looking for; do you need definitions, examples, explanations, visuals, statistics, primary source documents, secondary source analyses, etc? Depending on the type of source you need, you can search out specific databases and websites for what you’re looking for.

Scholarly or Popular?

For academic research, you’ll need to rely mostlyon scholarly sources, not just popular sources you can find from a main Google search. Popular articles or blog posts are typically written by the author to entertain or inform a general audience. These are not considered reliable sources for historical research. Scholarly articles are written by researchers or experts in a particular field. They use specialized vocabulary, have extensive citations, and are often peer-reviewed. These articles are considered reliable sources for historical research. A peer review strengthens the credibility of a source.

The physical appearance of print sources can help you identify the type of source as well. Popular magazines and trade publications are usually glossy with many photos. Scholarly journals are usually smaller and thicker with plain covers and images. In electronic sources, you can check for bibliographies and author credentials or affiliations as potential indicators of scholarly sources.

Finding Scholarly Articles

• America: History & Life with Full Text (EBSCO): Covers the history and culture of the United States and Canada, from prehistory to the present.
• Historical Abstracts with Full Text (EBSCO): Covers the history of the world (excluding the United States and Canada) from 1450 to the present, including world history, military history, women’s history, history of education, and more.
• JSTOR: Full-text access to the archives of 2,600+ journals and 35,000+ books in the arts, humanities, social sciences and sciences.
• Project MUSE: Full-text access to scholarly journals and e-books published by over 120 scholarly societies and university presses.

It’s also important to remember that staff librarians are usually available and only too happy to collaborate with you in figuring out research sources!

Try It

Are these scholarly sources?

• American Heritage
• The Journal of American History
• History is Now Magazine
• Journal of Southern History

Search Tips

Sources might include:

• Course materials – check to see what information you can use for your assignment. Your course might also direct you to other information sources such as key websites, guides and articles.
• Recommended readings or set texts (if your course has any)
• Recommended websites
• Your library has many great resources for you to access, including:
  • E-books – accessible anywhere and anytime, including recommended texts from your course
  • Print books – can be mailed to you free of charge
  • Research databases for access to free articles – journals, newspapers, magazines, and more

Here are some search tips to keep in mind as you use internet search engines and/or databases to find sources for your research topic.

• Use keywords from your assignment topic, to generate search results (don’t just type in your assignment question).
• Expand your terms: Expand on this list by thinking of related terms and synonyms. Your topic may be described in more than one way. 
• Refine your search: Check the limiting words in the assignment task to help refine your searches.
• Seek support: If you need help with your research, contact your school or local library. Like revising your topic, reaching our for support from your school or librarian may take some humility, but asking for help is something that a good research does when they need support.

Try It

Let’s practice finding sources. Use Google Scholar and the search tips above to find 3 sources that could help you write a research paper or presentation on the impact that the Jazz Age/Era had on women.

Show Answer

For your search you should have used keywords and phrases such as: “jazz era women”, “women 1920s”, “gender 1920s”, “flappers”, “roaring twenties flappers”, “flappers united states”. Example of an article you may have come across during your search: “Sociological and cultural reflections upon women’s fashion from 1919 to 1929 in the United States”.

Activity #2

Use your school’s library website and find the page that lists historical databases. Take note of the recommended databases, or take a screenshot of the list, like this screenshot taken of results from the University of North Carolina-Charlotte:

This article explains how to take a screenshot.