LibGuides: Human Development & Family Sciences Subject Guide: Selecting a Topic

Selecting a Topic and Search Terms

Below are some useful links and handouts that help you develop your topic. Check the handouts in this page. They are useful to help you develop keywords/search terms or to learn the best way to search databases to find articles and books for your research.

UVA-Thinking Tool: Choosing a Topic and Search Terms
Mapping Cloud handout that is good to help students to start working on their topic and building keywords.
Database Searching Tips
A nice handout with good tips for students to improve their results when searching any database. Created by Barry Brown from University of Montana (Barry.Brown@umontana.edu) Thanks to Carolyn Mills to sharing this with us.

UCLA: Broadering a Topic
Useful tips on how to broaden your topic when you are getting few results in your search. From the librarians at UCLA.
UCLA: Narrowing a Topic
Useful tips on how to narrow a topic when you are getting too many results in your search. From the librarians at UCLA.

Concept Mapping

Concept mapping, a way to visualize a topic possible dimensions, is a helpful tool to narrow down a very broad topic. This is an excellent video to introduce you to this tool, a way to brainstorm to develop keywords that you can use when searching for articles and books in databases

Mind Mapping (also known as Concept Mapping)
A helpful handout to show step by step how to create a concept map to map out a topic.

Human Development & Family Sciences Subject Guide — Selecting a Topic

Selecting a Topic and Search Terms

Concept Mapping