Picking a research topic, developing a research question, or checking a hypothesis are part of a process of searching and exploring the existing conversations around your idea, and often evolving your topic and question based on resources and evidence you find or the state of the scientific conversation that your question is trying to join.
You don't have to go into your research knowing exactly what your topic is, but you'll need to start out with generating keywords that help define your topic and use these as your search terms.
Since database search functions don't use "natural language" (like asking, "what is the relationship between immune system health and vitamin C consumption") and instead asks that we identify search terms or keywords that will help scan all possible results for relevant information (like "immune system" AND "vitamin C" AND "effects"). Generating these keywords can be a process that involves seeing which terms other researchers are using when they ask similar questions and narrowing down specialized vocabularies that different fields and disciplines might use.
In addition to adding in search filters, generating keywords is the best way to search strategically and can also help you in the process of articulating your research question and narrowing down or refining some of your own ideas.
This video from our colleagues at Seattle Central College offers a good example of what this process can look like. Their advice to keep "one idea per search bar" is especially helpful:
As your searches turn up additional results, notice the scholarly conversation happening around your topic. Is the research going in one direction or emphasizing a narrowed-down version of your topic?
Tips for developing keywords:
Tip 1: Highlight the main concepts within your research topic.
Example: How do cigarettes affect one's health? The words I would remove are "how", "do", and "one's". That would leave me with "cigarette," "affect," and "health." For this situation, I would change "affect" to "effects" so that the search will include the health effects of cigarettes.
Tip 2: Make a list of synonyms of those highlighted concepts.
Example: cigarette--nicotine, tobacco products, smoking; health--lungs, heart, body; effects--impacts
Tip 3: Write down questions within your research topic and highlight the concepts within those questions.**
Example: How do cigarettes affect one's health? -- What are cigarettes made of? What chemicals are found in cigarettes? What are the short-term and long-term effects of smoking? What kind of tobacco products are there?
