Navigating Your Library

Research Types

At different stages of our research, we need different things and will rely on different sources. Research is often an iterative process. Don't expect to always start with background research and progress through the others one at a time. It's normal and often helpful to bounce between research types as needed.

Background Research

Performing background research is the process of getting up to speed on a topic or area of study that is new to you. This kind of research is helpful as students. We may be asked to research in new disciplines often. During this process, we will learn discipline-specific language or jargon. We will learn about major advancements in our field. We will explore what previous scholars generally agreed or disagreed about. Doing this type of research can also help us learn enough about a topic to narrow a broad topic.

Tertiary sources help us do background research, but we can learn some of these things from other sources, too. Look for encyclopedias, dictionaries, and other tertiary sources to do background research. When performing background research, we're doing pre-research. We're not looking for sources to cite in our papers, we're learning enough about a topic to do in-depth research effectively.

In-Depth Research

When we perform in-depth research we look for individual studies that explore our topic. We want to use the analysis and evidence found by these researchers to build our argument and support our case. These are the sources we will cite in our bibliographies.

Primary Research

Some folks will never do primary research, and that's okay! When we do primary research, we design a study, collect data, then write up our findings usually for publication.