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Introduction to Research: Humanities and Social Sciences

Develop A Search Plan

Identify key words and phrases and brainstorm alternate spellings, related terms, broader terms, or narrower terms. Identify the subject area or areas which your topic might fall under

For example, for a research paper examining the role that fast food contributes to obesity in adolescents, the important concepts from this topic, reduced to keywords, would be:

fast food AND obesity AND adolescents

Now, think about whether there are other terms that could also be used to describe the topic, including synonyms, related terms, or words and phrases that have similar meaning:

Concept 1

Concept 2

Concept 3

fast food

obesity

adolescents

junk food

fat

teens

mcdonalds

overweight

youth