Research Success for High School Students
Step Three
FIND BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Before jumping directly into searching for sources to answer your research question, it can be useful to look up some background sources so you can learn more about your topic. Gathering basic knowledge about your topic can help you form a better research question and give you inspiration for more information to search for, such as keywords, important events, important figures, or specific ideas. Keywords are single words or short phrases that represent the main concepts in the topic you’re exploring. They can be combined in various ways to generate different search results.
You can learn more about your topic by reading articles or encyclopedia entries, noting any interesting topics or information in bibliographies, and keeping a research notebook on the related topics and keywords you find. This new information will help you identify the main concepts or keywords in your question.
Complete our ASU Library tutorial "Choosing a Topic with Background Research" to get more information on finding background information and narrowing down a topic.
Google Scholar and Google Advanced Search
If you are not finding appropriate articles from the databases described in this guide, you can try Google Scholar. It is an index to scholarly literature, books, and journals from all subject fields; it uses Google's search algorithm so that you can do natural language searching. It also has some filters according to date and topic relevance, and you can also easily find review articles that provide a comprehensive understanding of existing research.
Google is often a good source for some types of information, such as technical specifications from a manufacturer or information about local government and nonprofit resources, and you can use Google Advanced Search to narrow down your search and make it more specific. For example, you can include specific search terms, phrases, and numbers and filter by languages, regions, or last update. You can also use domain searching to limit your search to a specific site (such as www.asu.edu) or domains (.edu, .gov, .org). This is a good strategy to limit and shape your Google results so you can find very specific or local information.
Limit your searches by adding one of the following to the end of your search string:
- site:.gov
- site:.org
- site:.edu
Examples:
“invasive species” riparian Arizona site:.gov
“Virtual reality” STEM site:.edu
Ask your teacher or ASU librarians if you need help determining the best places to find resources for your topic or research question.
Encyclopedias
You can either browse the most popular topics from the first screen, or you can search by keyword. This is a great place to start, but you need to look at other tools also.
Gale Virtual Reference Library
Contains thousands of online encyclopedias and other reference works. Good for the humanities.