Research Fundamentals

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Language of Research

Define the Research Topic and Determine
Information Needs

Problem Definition

The first -- and most important -- element of developing an effective research strategy is to clearly define and understand the problem. Business students are sometimes unclear in regard to the specific information needed.

In many cases, this results in collecting enormous amounts of data and sifting through it hoping to find relevant information. This is not a good approach!

There are several proven techniques that will help you develop an effective search strategy.

State Your Topic as a Question

The formulation of research questions and hypotheses helps to clarify a topic. For example, if your topic is about the handheld device industry, you could ask the following questions:

Who are the major players in the industry?
What is the market share? Has it changed in the past three years?
What do industry sales indicate for the market?
What were the total sales for this industry during the past year? past five years?
Describe Nokia's marketing strategy?
How much does Motorola spend on advertising?
Why did the PDA market shift?
Who are the target markets?
How segmented is the industry?

Identify Concepts and Key Terms

Once you have stated your topic as a question, identify the main concepts, phrases, or keywords. Do this by highlighting the significant terms and create a weighted list. For example:

Handheld devices
Market share
Industry trends
Advertising

Create a Word Bank of Related Terms and Concepts

Once you have identified key terms and concepts in your questions, make a list of synonyms and related terms. This list provides additional terms to use when searching for information. It may also suggest ways to narrow or broaden your topic. For example:

Narrow or broaden your topic

Often finding too much or too little information may mean that you have to narrow or broaden your topic or search terms.

For example, if you get too many hits from a search (over 100 hits or results is too many!) you must narrow the search down. One way to narrow a search is to add more search terms.

The following search sample was executed in Factiva:

pda and sales (18,000 hits)

pda and sales and Nokia (2,000 hits)

pda and sales and Nokia and forecasts (175 hits)

Many times students can not find information on a topic because their search is too specific. Create a word bank and concept bank and experiment with related search terms. For example:

pda and psychodemographics and target markets and california and new venture

The above search will probably not yield many hits - it always best to start as broad as possible and narrow down the search results by utilizing advanced search techniques such as Boolean connectors, proximity limiters, and field searching.