As you research, you will likely encounter hundreds or even thousands of resources that could be relevant to your research project. Ultimately, you want to choose sources that best support your thesis, hypothesis, or research question. You should also consider sources that challenge any preconceived notions you may have so that your project is balanced and adequately addresses all aspects of your topic.
Research is a time-consuming and repetitive process that will engage your critical thinking skills. There are no “perfect” sources for any assignment; and in fact, if you find a source that says exactly what you want to say, you may want to reconsider your research question to ensure that your work is original. You must make decisions as you work about which sources will be most useful for your research, which to reject, and which you may want to revisit. The type of information that you need will likely change as you progress with your research,. When choosing sources, you have to weigh a variety of factors in order to decide which ones best suit your needs.
Engaging with research material by critically evaluating it is one of the most important aspects of your research project. You should never cherry-pick quotes and drop them into predetermined placeholders in your paper or use entire quoted sentences in place of your own writing. Nor should you quote a source unless you thoroughly understand it and are certain that you can accurately represent the author’s intent. Quotes and paraphrased evidence should be smoothly integrated into your writing to support your ideas in such a way that attribution is clear, sentence structures are logical, and the quoted references enhance the point you are trying to make. Thoroughly evaluating sources helps you to:
If you are new to research or need a refresher, visit the Getting Started with Library Research guide before exploring the other tabs on this page.