Your topic is, for example, fantasy literature. What is fantasy literature? How is it defined? Where do you start your search?
To search for background information you can use a wide range of electronic reference works and handbooks offered by the Turku University Library. Most of these are not freely available online but can be accessed in Turku University network and remotely with UTU credentials.
Use reference works to search for background information:
Often the most neglected part of an initial analysis of any research topic is identifying the key concepts.
You should consider all possible ways of expressing the central ideas (concepts) of your topic at this stage. This will help you define and outline your topic. You will be better prepared to search a variety of databases and search tools, and ask better questions about the topic, if you develop your search vocabulary early and keep expanding and refining your list of synonyms, alternative and related terms, broader terms, and more specific terms.
You can for example use a mind-map to generate key concepts and words related to your topic and represent their connections.
Free software to create mind-maps:
Example topic: Trends and changes in the Pacific Northwest's natural environment brought about by economic development in the 21st century.
1. Look at the research question and pick out the main ideas.
Words like "trends," "changes," "effects," etc. are pretty meaningless in the scheme of most topics. Often, you will get this information (the trends, changes, and effects) by finding information on the topic anyway. So, overlook these kind of abstract terms.
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Concept 1
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Concept 2
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Concept 3
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| Pacific Northwest | environment | economic development |
Identifying the key concepts of a research topic is at least as much "art" as "science". Different people will use different words for describing the same topic. If you identified other concepts than what is mentioned above, it doesn't necessarily mean that you are "wrong".
Sometimes, depending on what database you are searching, you can ignore some of the concepts. For example, if we were to do a search on this topic in the database "GreenFILE", we wouldn't perhaps have to worry about specifying the concept "environment", because this perspective is inherent in all the materials in the database.
For a reasonable handle on your research, your topic should probably contain somewhere between 2 and 4 concepts.
The 'Key concepts' and 'Example 1: Identifying key concepts' boxes are based on the LibGuide created by Washington State University Library.
