SOCL 1246 Environment and Society

Getting Started with Research

with a tutorial on Using Sage Research Methods to do a Literature Review
NOTE: It is normal for your research question to change or evolve as you work on the literature review and find more information about your topic.

Looking for a topic?

Global Issues in Context --  Browse Issues link in the upper left side of webpage includes topics such as    
                         Air Pollution, Agribusiness, Climate Change, Fracking,  Nuclear Energy, Oil Spills, Recycling, etc.    

If you use Google--remember to evaluate the source--the search below found articles from National Geographic, NPR and the New York Times.
 

​A quick read of popular (non-academic) articles can provide some research leads and links to reports, studies, journal articles. The National Geographic article mentioned an engineer who wrote a report on the topic of recycling plastic..

Keep your search simple

• Search the most obvious, broad term first; see what you get. You can narrow your results from there.
• Don't complicate your search. 1-2 terms may suffice.
• If you need to retrieve more information, then expand the number of terms you use
   

This is when it helps to keep track of your search terms and resources. Here's a sample search table on this research topic

Part of the research process is asking the question "what about . . . .. ?" to narrow down the topic.

A possible approach could be researching zero-waste--read about a zero-waste city Kamikatsu, Japan or

reducing the use of plastic--