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Research Writing and Analysis

This page contains information to support researchers with various research tools..

Step 1: Seek Out Evidence

 

A hand holding a gazing ball

The first step toward improving your scholarly research writing is to develop clear questions (foreground questions) about your research issue/topic of interest.

  • By having clear questions (foreground questions), you can use them to begin searching the NU library databases. 

 

A man organizing post it notes on a white board

The process for developing questions:

1. List as many questions you can think of about your research topic.
2. Categorize your questions into themes. 
3. Next under each theme, order your questions from most to least important or broad to narrow.
4. Seek out evidence by turning each question into database search terms.
5. Aim to answer your questions while reading the articles you selected.
6. Finally, seek enough evidence to start your research writing.

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