Geography & Environmental Studies

The research guides linked here outline useful techniques and tutorials for advanced research:

Here are some additional tips to get you started in OneSearch:

To get more results, broaden your search.

• Use fewer search terms. Look for words not unique to your topic that you could cut from your search string.
• OR Use OR to link synonyms, so you get articles where the authors used other terms to describe the same concept. 
  • (river OR riparian)
  • (city OR urban)

Use an asterisk * to find articles using any of the variants of the same root word.

• geograph* = geography, geographies, geographic
• Use more inclusive search terms.
  • Bigger locations - too few results from los angeles, try california
  • More general terms - too few results from mojave, try desert
• Search as many possible sources at once by using Google Scholar.

To get fewer results, narrow your search.

• " " Use quotation marks to find exact phrases, when you need words next to each other in precise sequence to have the meaning you intend.
  • "social capital"
  • "food insecurity"
• Add more concepts to your search. Consider the who, what, when, where, why, and how.
• Use narrower, more specific concepts or aspects of your original topic.
  • global climate change => sea level rise
• Search fewer sources, one top journal at a time.

The very common challenge when beginning to write a research paper is determining how to narrow down your topic. Even if your professor gives you a specific topic to study, it will almost never be so specific that you won’t have to narrow it down at least to some degree [besides, grading fifty papers that are all about the exact same thing is very boring!].

Here are some strategies to help narrow your topic into something more manageable:

• Aspect -- choose one lens through which to view the research problem, or look at just one facet of it [e.g., rather than studying the role of food in Eastern religious rituals, study the role of food in Hindu ceremonies, or, the role of one particular type of food among several religions].
• Components -- determine if your initial variable or unit of analysis can be broken into smaller parts, which can then be analyzed more precisely [e.g., a study of tobacco use among adolescents can focus on just chewing tobacco rather than all forms of usage or, rather than adolescents in general, focus on female adolescents in a certain age range who choose to use tobacco].
• Methodology -- the way in which you gather information can reduce the domain of interpretive analysis needed to address the research problem [e.g., a single case study can be designed to generate data that does not require as extensive an explanation as using multiple cases].
• Place -- generally, the smaller the geographic unit of analysis, the more narrow the focus [e.g., rather than study trade relations in West Africa, study trade relations between Niger and Cameroon as a case study of problems in the region].
• Relationship -- ask yourself how do two or more different perspectives or variables relate to one another? Designing a study around the relationships between specific variables can help constrict the scope of analysis [e.g., cause/effect, compare/contrast, contemporary/historical, group/individual, male/female, opinion/reason, problem/solution].
• Time -- the shorter the time period of the study, the more narrow the focus [e.g., study of trade relations between Niger and Cameroon during the period of 2010 - 2016].
• Type -- focus your topic in terms of a specific type or class of people, places, or phenomena [e.g., a study of developing safer traffic patterns near schools can focus on SUVs, or just student drivers, or just the timing of stoplights in the area].
• Combination -- use two or more of the above strategies to focus your topic very narrowly.

NOTE: Apply one of the above strategies first to determine if that gives you a manageable research problem to investigate. This is determined by reviewing the literature on this more specific problem and assessing whether prior research on the narrower topic is sufficient to move forward in your study. Be careful, however, because combining multiple strategies risks creating the opposite problem--your problem becomes too narrowly defined and you can't locate enough research or data to support your study.

USC Libraries | Organizing your Social Science Research Paper

• A starter topic: "Universities and their host cities" - way too big!
• Narrowing the topic:  "How large American Universities affect their host city" - still unwieldy!
• The topic understood as a problem: "What is the impact of California State University Northridge on adjacent San Fernando Valley neighborhoods?"
• Even more specific:  "How has economic development and transportation in the central San Fernando Valley changed in recent years, and what role as California State University Northridge played in bringing these changes about?"

University of Minnesota | Department of Geography, Environment & Society Writing and Research Guide