First, there is no one right way to do research, especially across a multitude of disciplines. We will present a series of research strategies and techniques. You will need to experiment and select the ones that work for you.
The general rule of thumb is to start broad and then narrow in. Learn the general information on your topic and then focus in on the details, identifying the key theories, the key researchers, and any missing information.
Overview
To gain an overview of your topic, you may use reference works or review articles. Reference works, such as encyclopedias and dictionaries, may be general or specialized for a discipline. Depending on the discipline, a dictionary may provide only a definition of terminology or it may feature data or short articles concerning a term or phrase. Specialized encyclopedias can vary greatly in content even within a discipline. Chemistry reference books can contain very different content from one to another.
Entries in reference works are usually written by an expert on that topic. Look for publications by that author. They also include references which may be used to gather more information. A good overview can get you started with key theories and concepts.
People
Your colleagues, people you meet at conferences, and your classmates can all be good sources to collect ideas and to critique and help you gather your thoughts. They can be beneficial to suggest key theories and terms known to them that could be investigated or used for additional searching.
However, realize that your colleague may not be an expert on your research question and may not know all of the pertinent theories. So be critical of people as a source of information as much as you would be critical of a book, journal, Web site, or other source. People are fallible and they write books and journal articles.
References & Works Cited
When you find a useful publication, examine its references. They may lead you to more useful publications. They often will include major theories and publications. Take note of frequent authors and institutions that may be conducting research in this area.
One warning is that references will only lead you to the publications that others have already found. They will not lead you to unknown or new publications. You could accidentally cover only one side of a topic as happened to one of my instructors. So do go looking in other disciplines, other sources. and other databases for new or "lost" publications.
Multiple Sources
Be sure to search multiple sources for information. Even a key database in your discipline will not contain all content of that discipline. So try a variety of sources (a) to see if they agree with your first sources ("triangulation") and (b) to see if they contain additional information that you do not already have. Search more than one database. Use more than one search engine and compare results. Check out multiple books and compare their coverage.
edit Introduction to Research Methods in Education (2009)
By Keith F Punch
ISU main Library LB1028 .P85 2009
Doing Your Social Science Dissertation (2009) By Judith Burnett
