Overview: In this section you will learn how to choose a topic and refine its description in such a way that it will shorten your time and effort during the search and retrieval of information.
Guidelines
STEP 1: Identify a topic of interest.
You may get inspiration to do research on a topic after reading an article, seeing a documentary on TV, reading a newspaper story, or from many other sources.
Paul S. Frenette and George F. Atweh. Sickle cell disease: old discoveries, new concepts, and future promise. Journal of Clinical Investigation v.117(4); April 2, 2007 pp 850-858.
For instance, this article below helps bioinformatics students a) identify the genes involved in the genetic disease commonly known as sickle cell anemia and b) verify - with silico lab tools - the point mutation that is responsible for the disease
Example2: health and science news usually make their way to the news outlets; the articles included there are mostly accurate but not particularly detailed. Bacteria blamed for Scugog carp kill Jul 11, 2007 04:30 AM
Carola Vyhnak - Staff reporter
A deadly, fast-moving bacteria that thrives in warm water is partially to blame for the thousands of rotting carp that have washed up on the shores of Lake Scugog. That's bad news for cottagers on other lakes in the Trent-Severn Waterway where smelly fish are starting to appear.
The bacteria, called columnaris, are triggered by water temperatures between 13 and 18C, and with the recent heat wave, "you'd expect it to spread," said Barry Radford, spokesperson for the Ministry of Natural Resources.
Click
to see the entire article.You could be intrigued by reading this article and find yourself wanting to know more about the columnaris bacteria or about the particular species of carp that swim in Lake Scugog or about the complete set of factors to blame for the deaths. None of those details are given in the article.
Write your topic of interest in your worksheet.
STEP 2: Elaborate and refine your topic of interest
You already know your subject; now it is time to write some notes about it to help you refine and focus. Ask investigative questions about your subject:
factual: (questions that explore background information to determine what is already know and what is not yet known about a topic)
Example1: what is sickle cell anemia? What is genetic disease? What is mutation?
Example2: what life cycle of columnaris bacteria? Which species of carp swims the waters of Lake Scugog?
or
research (questions that say what line of inquiry you will follow)
Example1: Which gene causes sickle cell disease? What name/ID is it known by?
Example2: Which are the most common bacterial diseases affecting carp in Lake Scugog, which ones could be deadly?
Write investigative questions about your topic of interest in your worksheet:
STEP 3: Write your topic statement
You already know your subject, and you have some written notes that discuss what you think about it. Now is the time to bring your thoughts into focus and to state your topic in a phrase, or at most a sentence. Your statement will likely take one of two forms:
1) If the point of your paper is to provide information about the subject, then the topic statement simply names the subject and indicates what you have to say about it.
Example1: Sickle Cell Anemia is a genetic disease
Example2: The life cycle of the columnaris bacteria
2) More likely, you will want to express a point of view, state an opinion, or make an argument. Then your topic becomes a thesis.
Example1: a mutation in the hemoglobin gene causes sickle cell anemia
Example2: bacterial infection is one of many possible causes of carp deaths in Lake Scugog
You may remember something that you read but did not take notes on. Now you will need to take those notes. You may remember a title that you noticed, but did not read. Now you need to read and take notes on that item. All this work is governed by the topic that you have formulated. It is much more narrowly controlled than the earlier investigation of sources.
Identify and compare the healthy gene against the diseased gene |
That causes sickle cell anemia in the human population to find out how they differ |
Write your topic statement in your worksheet: Don't worry if you don't get it exactly right on the first try; after all, this is an iterative process of topic refinement
STEP 4: Identify main concepts.From the topic sentence above, highlight the concepts in it; i.e. the nouns along with descriptors. Create a table and make a column for each one of the concepts in your topic statement:
Example1:
CONCEPT 1 |
|
CONCEPT 2 |
|
CONCEPT 3 |
Sickle cell anemia |
|
Human gene |
|
Name of gene(s) |
STEP 5: Identify related keywords and subject areas of your topic
Related keywords are synonyms and other terms that relate to each concept you have identified. These may come from your knowledge of the topic. Terms may also evolve when using search strategies you employ to create your search statement, or during the actual literature search process; so this probably won’t be your last encounter with this step.
What are the discipline or subject areas related to your topic (e.g., genetics, microbiology, botany, business)? Knowing this will help you in your selection of information resources to locate your sources.
In the table you created in the previous step, list the related keywords and subject areas for each one of the concepts; list them in the same column as the concept.
Example1:
Complete your table of main concepts with related keywords and subject areas in your worksheet.
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