writing a thesis statement is an example of which component of information literacy

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

Information Literacy

11 A Beginner’s Guide to Information Literacy

By emily metcalf.

Introduction

Welcome to “A Beginner’s Guide to Information Literacy,” a step-by-step guide to understanding information literacy concepts and practices.

This guide will cover each frame of the “ Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education ,” a document created by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) to help educators and librarians think about, teach, and practice information literacy (see Figure 11.1). The goal of this guide is to break down the basic concepts in the Framework and put them in accessible, digestible language so that we can think critically about the information we’re exposed to in our daily lives.

To start, let’s look at the ACRL definition of “information literacy,” so we have some context going forward:

Information Literacy is the set of integrated abilities encompassing the reflective discovery of information, the understanding of how information is produced and valued, and the use of information in creating new knowledge and participating ethically in communities of learning.

Boil that down and what you have are the essentials of information literacy: asking questions, finding information, evaluating information, creating information, and doing all of that responsibly and ethically.

We’ll be looking at each of the frames alphabetically, since that’s how they are presented in the framework. None of these frames is more important than another, and all need to be used in conjunction with the others, but we have to start somewhere, so alphabetical it is!

In order, the frames are

• Authority is constructed and contextual
• Information creation as a process
• Information has value
• Research as inquiry
• Scholarship as conversation
• Searching as strategic exploration

Just because we’re laying this out alphabetically does not mean you have to go through it in order. Some of the sections reference frames previously mentioned, but for the most part you can jump to wherever you like and use this guide however you see fit. You can also open up the framework using the link above or in the attached resources to read the framework in its original form and follow along with each section.

The following sections originally appeared as blog posts for the Texas A&M Corpus Christi’s library blog. Edits have been made to remove institutional context, but you can see the original posts in the Mary and Jeff Bell Library blog archives .

Authority is Constructed and Contextual

The first frame is “ Authority is Constructed and Contextual .” There’s a lot to unpack in that language, so let’s get started.

Start with the word “authority.”

At the root of “authority” is the word “author.” So start there: who wrote the piece of information you’re reading? Why are they writing? What stake do they have in the information they’re presenting? What are their credentials (You can straight up google their name to learn more about them)? Who are they affiliated with? A public organization? A university? A company trying to make a profit? Check it out.

Now let’s talk about how authority is “constructed.”

Have you ever heard the phrase “social construct”? Some people say gender is a social construct or language, written and spoken, is a construct. “Constructed” basically means humans made it up at some point to instill order in their communities. It’s not an observable, scientifically inevitable fact. When we say “authority” is constructed, we’re basically saying that we as individuals and as a society choose who we give authority to, and sometimes we might not be choosing based on facts.

A common way of assessing authority is by looking at an author’s education. We’re inclined to trust someone with a PhD over someone with a high school diploma because we think the person with a PhD is smarter. That’s a construct. We’re conditioned to think that someone with more education is smarter than people with less education, but we don’t know it for a fact.

There are a lot of reasons someone might not seek out higher education. They might have to work full time or take care of a family or maybe they just never wanted to go to college. None of these factors impact someone’s intelligence or ability to think critically.

If aliens land on South Padre Island, TX, there will be many voices contributing to the information collected about the event. Someone with a PhD in astrophysics might write an article about the mechanical workings of the aliens’ spaceship. Cool; they are an authority on that kind of stuff, so I trust them.

But the teenager who was on the island and watched the aliens land has first-hand experience of the event, so I trust them too. They have authority on the event even though they don’t have a PhD in astrophysics.

So, we cannot think someone with more education is inherently more trustworthy or smarter or has more authority than anyone else. Some people who are authorities on a subject are highly educated, some are not.

Likewise, let’s say I film the aliens landing and stream it live on Facebook. At the same time, a police officer gives an interview on the news that says something contradicting my video evidence. All of a sudden, I have more authority than the police officer. Many of us are raised to trust certain people automatically based on their jobs, but that’s also a construct. The great thing about critical thinking is that we can identify what is fact and fiction, and we can decide for ourselves who to trust.

The final word is “contextual.”

This one is a little simpler. If I go to the hospital and a medical doctor takes out my appendix, I’ll probably be pretty happy with the outcome. If I go to the hospital and Dr. Jill Biden, a professor of English, takes out my appendix, I’m probably going to be less happy with the results.

Medical doctors have authority in the context of medicine. Dr. Jill Biden has authority in the context of education. And Doctor Who has authority in the context of inter-galactic heroics and nice scarves.

This applies when we talk about experiential authority, too. If an eighth-grade teacher tells me what it’s like to be a fourth-grade teacher, I will not trust their authority. I will, however, trust a fourth-grade teacher to tell me about teaching fourth grade.

The Takeaway

Basically, when we think about authority, we need to ask ourselves, “Do I trust them? Why?” If they do not have experience with the subject (like witnessing an event or holding a job in the field) or subject expertise (like education or research), then maybe they aren’t an authority after all.

P.S. I’m sorry for the uncalled-for dig, Dr. Biden. I’m sure you’d do your best with an appendectomy.

Ask Yourself

• In what context are you an authority?
• If you needed to figure out how to do a kickflip on a skateboard, who would you ask? Who’s an authority in that situation?

Information Creation as a Process

The second frame is “ Information Creation as a Process .”

Information Creation

So first of all, let’s get this out of the way: everyone is a creator of information. When you write an essay, you’re creating information. When you log the temperature of the lizard tank, you’re creating information. Every Word Doc, Google Doc, survey, spreadsheet, Tweet, and PowerPoint that you’ve ever had a hand in? All information products. That YOU created. In some way or another, you created that information and put it out into the world.

One process you’re probably familiar with if you’re a student is the typical research paper. You know your professor wants about five to eight pages consisting of an introduction that ends in a thesis statement, a few paragraphs that each touch on a piece of evidence that supports your thesis, and then you end in a conclusion paragraph which starts with a rephrasing of your thesis statement. You save it to your hard drive or Google Drive and then you submit it to your professor.

This is one process for creating information. It’s a boring one, but it’s a process.

Outside of the classroom, the information-creation process looks different, and we have lots of choices to make.

One of the choices you’ll need to make is the mode or format in which you present information. The information I’m creating right now comes to you in the mode of an Open Educational Resource . Originally, I created these sections as blog posts. Those five-page essays I mentioned earlier are in the mode of essays.

When you create information (outside of a course assignment), it’s up to you how to package that information. It might feel like a simple or obvious choice, but some information is better suited to some forms of communication. And some forms of communication are received in a certain way, regardless of the information in them.

For example, if I tweet “Jon Snow knows nothing,” it won’t carry with it the authority of my peer-reviewed scholarly article that meticulously outlines every instance in which Jon Snow displays a lack of knowledge. Both pieces of information are accurate, but the processes I went through to create and disseminate the information have an effect on how the information is received by my audience.

And that is perhaps the biggest thing to consider when creating information: your audience.

The Audience Matters

If I just want my twitter followers to know Jon Snow knows nothing, then a tweet is the right way to reach them. If I want my tenured colleagues and other various scholars to know Jon Snow knows nothing, then I’m going to create a piece of information that will reach them, like a peer-reviewed journal article.

Often, we aren’t the ones creating information; we’re the audience members ourselves. When we’re scrolling on Twitter, reading a book, falling asleep during a PowerPoint presentation—we’re the audience observing the information being shared. When this is the case, we have to think carefully about the ways information was created.

Advertisements are a good example. Some are designed to reach a 20-year old woman in Corpus Christi through Facebook, while others are designed to reach a 60-year old man in Hoboken, NJ over the radio. They might both be selling the same car, and they’re going to put the same information (size, terrain, miles per gallon, etc.) in those ads, but their audiences are different, so their information-creation process is different, and we end up with two different ads for different audiences.

Be a Critical Audience Member

When we are the audience member, we might automatically trust something because it’s presented a certain way. I know that, personally, I’m more likely to trust something that is formatted as a scholarly article than I am something that is formatted as a blog. And I know that that’s biased thinking and it’s a mistake to make that assumption.

It’s risky to think like that for a couple of reasons:

• Looks can be deceiving. Just because someone is wearing a suit and tie doesn’t mean they’re not an axe murderer and just because something looks like a well-researched article, doesn’t mean it is one.
• Automatic trust unnecessarily limits the information we expose ourselves to. If I only ever allow myself to read peer-reviewed scholarly articles, think of all the encyclopedias and blogs and news articles I’m missing out on!

If I have a certain topic I’m really excited about, I’m going to try to expose myself to information regardless of the format and I’ll decide for myself (#criticalthinking) which pieces of information are authoritative and which pieces of information suit my needs.

Likewise, as I am conducting research and considering how best to share my new knowledge, I’m going to consider my options for distributing this newfound information and decide how best to reach my audience. Maybe it’s a tweet, maybe it’s a Buzzfeed quiz, or maybe it’s a presentation at a conference. But whatever mode I choose will also convey implications about me, my information creation process, and my audience.

You create information all of the time. The way you package and share it will have an effect on how others perceive it.

• Is there a form of information you’re likely to trust at first glance? Either a publication like a newspaper or a format like a scholarly article?
• Can you think of some voices that aren’t present in that source of information?
• Where might you look to find some other perspectives?
• If you read an article written by medical researchers that says chocolate is good for your health, would you trust the article?
• Would you still trust their authority if you found out that their research was funded by a company that sells chocolate bars? Funding and stakeholders have an impact on the creation process, and it’s worth thinking about how this can compromise someone’s authority.

Information Has Value

Onwards and upwards! We’re onto frame 3: “ Information Has Value .”

What Counts as Value?

There are a lot of different ways we value things. Some things, like money, are valuable to us because we can exchange them for goods and services. On the other hand, some things, like a skill, are valuable to us because we can exchange them for money (which we exchange for more goods and services). Some things are valuable to us for sentimental reasons, like a photograph or a letter. Some things, like our time, are valuable because they are finite.

The Value of Information

Information has all kinds of value.

One kind is monetary. If I write a book and it gets published, I’m probably going to make some money off of that (though not as much money as the publishing company will make). So that’s valuable to me.

But I’m also getting my name out into the world, and that’s valuable to me too. It means that when I apply for a job or apply for a grant, someone can google me and think, “Oh look! She wrote a book! That means she has follow-through and will probably work hard for us!” That kind of recognition is a sort of social value. That social value, by the way, can also become monetary value. If I’ve produced information, a university might give me a job, or an organization might fund my research. If I’ve invented a machine that will floss my teeth for me, the patent for my invention could be worth a lot of money (plus it’d be awesome. Cool factor can count as value.).

In a more altruistic slant, information is also valuable on a societal level. When we have more information about political candidates, for example, it influences how we vote, who we elect, and how our country is governed. That’s some really valuable information right there. That information has an effect on the whole world (plus outer space, if we elect someone who’s super into space exploration). If someone is trying to keep information hidden or secret, or if they’re spreading misinformation to confuse people, it’s probably a sign that the information they’re hiding is important, which is to say, valuable.

On a much smaller scale, think about the information on food packages. If you’re presented with calorie counts, you might make a different decision about the food you buy. If you’re presented with an item’s allergens, you might avoid that product and not end up in an Emergency Room with anaphylactic shock. You know what’s super valuable to me? NOT being in an Emergency Room!

But if you do end up in the Emergency Room, the information that doctors and nurses will use to treat your allergic reaction is extremely valuable. That value of that information is equal to the lives it’s saved.

Acting Like Information is Valuable

When we create our own information by writing papers and blog posts and giving presentations, it’s really important that we give credit to the information we’ve used to create our new information product for a couple of reasons.

First, someone worked really hard to create something, let’s say an article. And that article’s information is valuable enough to you to use in your own paper or presentation. By citing the author properly, you’re giving the author credit for their work, which is valuable to them. The more their article is cited, the more valuable it becomes because they’re more likely to get scholarly recognition and jobs and promotions.

Second, by showing where you’re getting your information, you’re boosting the value of your new information product. On the most basic level, you’ll get a higher grade on your paper, which is valuable to you. But you’re also telling your audience, whether it’s your professor or your boss or your YouTube subscribers, that you aren’t just making stuff up—you did the work of researching and citing, and that makes your audience trust you more. It makes the audience value your information more.

Remember early on when I said the frames all connect? “Information Has Value” ties into the other information literacy frames we’ve talked about, “Information Creation as a Process” and “Authority as Constructed and Contextual.” When I see you’ve cited your sources of information, then I, as the audience, think you’re more authoritative than someone who doesn’t cite their sources. I also can look at your information product and evaluate the effort you’ve put into it. If you wrote a tweet, which takes little time and effort, I’ll generally value it less than if you wrote a book, which took a lot of time and effort to create. I know that time is valuable, so seeing that you were willing to dedicate your time to create this information product makes me feel like it’s more valuable.

Information is valuable because of what goes into its creation (time and effort) and what comes from it (an informed society). If we didn’t value information, we wouldn’t be moving forward as a society, we’d probably have died out thousands of years ago as creatures who never figured out how to use tools or start a fire.

So continue to value information because it improves your life, your audiences’ lives, and the lives of other information creators. More importantly, if we stop valuing information a smarter species will eventually take over and it’ll be a whole Planet of the Apes thing and I just don’t have the energy for that right now.

• Can you think of some ways in which a YouTube video on dog training has value? Who values it? Who profits from it?
• Think of some information that would be valuable to someone applying to college. What does that person need to know?

Research as Inquiry

Easing on down the road, we’ve come to frame number 4: “ Research as Inquiry .”

“Inquiry” is another word for “curiosity” or “questioning.” I like to think of this frame as “Research as Curiosity,” because I think it more accurately captures the way our adorable human brains work.

Inquiring Minds Want to Know

When you think to yourself, “How old is Madonna?” and you google it to find out she’s 62 (as of the creation of this resource), that’s research! You had a question (“how old is Madonna?”), you applied a search strategy (googling “Madonna age”) and you found an answer (62). That’s it! That’s all research has to be!

But it’s not all research can be. This example, like most research, is comprised of the same components we use in more complex situations. Those components are a question and an answer, inquiry and research, “how old is Madonna?” and “62.” But when we’re curious, we go back to the inquiry step again and ask more questions and seek more answers. We’re never really done, even when we’ve answered the initial question and written the paper and given the presentation and received accolades and awards for all our hard work. If it’s something we’re really curious about, we’ll keep asking and answering and asking again.

If you’re really curious about Madonna, you don’t just think, “How old is Madonna?” You think “How old is Madonna? Wait, really ? Her skin looks amazing! What’s her skincare routine? Seriously, what year was she born? Oh my god, she wrote children’s books! Does my library have any?” Your questions lead you to answers which, when you’re really interested in a topic, lead you to more and more questions. Humans are naturally curious ; we have this sort of instinct to be like, “huh, I wonder why that is?” and it’s propelled us to learn things and try things and fail and try again! It’s all research as inquiry.

And to satisfy your curiosity, yes, the library I currently work at does own one of Madonna’s children’s books. It’s called The Adventures of Abdi , and you can find it in our Juvenile Collection on the second floor at PZ8 M26 Adv 2004. And you can find a description of her skincare routine in this article from W Magazine: https://www.wmagazine.com/story/madonna-skin-care-routine-tips-mdna . You’re welcome.

Identifying an Information Need

One of the tricky parts of research as inquiry is determining a situation’s information need. It sounds simple to ask yourself, “What information do I need?” and sometimes we do it unconsciously. But it’s not always easy. Here are a few examples of information needs:

• You need to know what your niece’s favorite Paw Patrol character is so you can buy her a birthday present. Your research is texting your sister. She says, “Everest.” And now you’re done. You buy the present, you’re a rock star at the birthday party. Your information need was a short answer based on a three-year old’s opinion.
• You’re trying to convince someone on Twitter that Nazis are bad. You compile a list of opinion pieces from credible news publications like the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times , gather first-hand narratives of Holocaust survivors and victims of hate crimes, find articles that debunk eugenics, etc. Your information need isn’t scholarly publications, it’s accessible news and testimonials. It’s articles a person might actually read in their free time, articles that aren’t too long and don’t require access to scholarly materials that are sometimes behind paywalls.
• You need to write a literature review for an assignment, but you don’t know what a literature review is. So first you google “literature review example.” You find out what it is, how one is created, and maybe skim a few examples. Next, you move to your library’s website and search tool and try “oceanography literature review,” and find some closer examples. Finally, you start conducting research for your own literature review. Your information need here is both broader and deeper. You need to learn what a literature review is, how one is compiled, and how one searches for relevant scholarly articles in the resources available to you.

Sometimes it helps to break down big information needs into smaller ones. Take the last example, for instance: you need to write a literature review. What are the smaller parts?

• Information Need 1: Find out what a literature review is
• Information Need 2: Find out how people go about writing literature reviews
• Information Need 3: Find relevant articles on your topic for your own literature review

It feels better to break it into smaller bits and accomplish those one at a time. And it highlights an important part of this frame that’s surprisingly difficult to learn: ask questions. You can’t write a literature review if you don’t know what it is, so ask. You can’t write a literature review if you don’t know how to find articles, so ask. The quickest way to learn is to ask questions. Once you stop caring if you look stupid, and once you realized no one thinks poorly of people who ask questions, life gets a lot easier.

So, let’s add this to our components of research: ask a question, determine what you need in order to thoroughly answer the question, and seek out your answers. Not too painful, and when you’re in love with whatever you’re researching, it might even be fun.

• When you have a question, ask it.
• When you’re genuinely interested in something, keep asking questions and finding answers.
• When you have a task at hand, take a second to think realistically about the information you’ll need to accomplish that task. You don’t need a peer-reviewed article to find out if praying mantises eat their mates, but you might if you want to find out why.
• What’s the last thing you looked up on Wikipedia? Did you stop when you found an answer, or did you click on another link and another link until you learned about something completely different?
• If you can’t remember, try it now! Search for something (like a favorite book or tv show) and click on linked words and phrases within Wikipedia until you learn something new!
• What was the last thing you researched that you were really excited about? Do you struggle when teachers and professors tell you to “research something that interests you”? Instead, try asking yourself, “What makes me really angry?” You might find you have more interests than you realized!

Scholarship as Conversation

We’ve made it friends! My favorite frame: “ Scholarship as Conversation .” Is it weird to have a favorite frame of information literacy? Probably. Am I going to talk about it anyway? You betcha!

What does “Scholarship as Conversation” mean?

Scholarship as conversation refers to the way scholars reference each other and build off of one another’s work, just like in a conversation. Have you ever had a conversation that started when you asked someone what they did last weekend and ended with you telling a story about how someone (definitely not you) ruined the cake at your mom’s dog’s birthday party? And then someone says, “but like I was saying earlier…” and they take the conversation back to a point in the conversation where they were reminded of a different point or story? Conversations aren’t linear, they aren’t a clear line to a clear destination, and neither is research. When we respond to the ideas and thoughts of scholars, we’re responding to the scholars themselves and engaging them in conversation.

Why do I Love this Frame so Much?

Let me count the ways.

I really enjoy the imagery of scholarship as a conversation among peers. Just a bunch of well-informed curious people coming together to talk about something they all love and find interesting. I imagine people literally sitting around a big round table talking about things they’re all excited about and want to share with each other. It’s a really lovely image in my head. Eventually the image kind of reshapes and devolves into that painting of dogs playing poker, but I love that image too!

It harkens back to pre-internet scholarship, which sounds excruciating and exhausting, but it was all done for the love of a subject. Scholars used to literally mail each other manuscripts seeking feedback. Then, when they got an article published in a journal, scholars interested in the subject would seek out and read the article in the physical journal it was published in. Then they’d write reviews of the article, praising or criticizing the author’s research or theories or style. As the field grew, more and more people would write and contribute more articles to criticize and praise and build off of one another.

So, for example, if I wrote an article that was about Big Foot and then Joe wrote an article saying, “Emily’s article on Big Foot is garbage; here’s what I think about Big Foot,” Sam and I are now having a conversation. It’s not always a fun one, but we’re writing in response to one another about something we’re both passionate about. Later, Jaiden comes along and disagrees with Joe and agrees with me (because I’m right) and they cite both me and Joe. Now we’re all three in a conversation. And it just grows and grows and more people show up at the table to talk and contribute, or maybe just to listen.

Reason Three

You can roll up to the table and just listen if you want to. Sometimes we’re just listening to the conversation. We’re at the table, but we’re not there to talk. We’re just hoping to get some questions answered and learn from some people. When we’re reading books and articles or listening to podcasts or watching movies, we’re listening to the conversation. You don’t have to do groundbreaking research to be part of a conversation. You can just be there and appreciate what everyone’s talking about. You’re still there in the conversation.

Reason Four

You can contribute to the conversation at any time. The imagery of a conversation is nice because it’s approachable: just pull up a chair and start talking. With any new subject, you should probably listen a little at first, ask some questions, and then start giving your own opinion or theories, but you can contribute at any time. Since we do live in the age of internet research, we can contribute in ways people 50 years ago never dreamed of. Besides writing essays in class (which totally counts because you’re examining the conversation and pulling in the bits you like and citing them to give credit to other scholars), you can talk to your professors and friends about a topic, you can blog about it, you can write articles about it, you can even tweet about it (have you ever seen Humanities folk on Twitter? They go nuts on there having actual, literal scholarly conversations). Your ways for engaging are kind of endless!

Reason Five

Yep, I’m listing reasons.

Conversations are cyclical. Like I said above, they’re not always a straight path and that’s true of research too. You don’t have to engage with who spoke most recently; you can engage with someone who spoke ten years ago, someone who spoke 100 years ago, you can even respond to the person who started the conversation! Jump in wherever you want. And wherever you do jump in, you might just change the course of the conversation. Because sometimes we think we have an answer, but then something new is discovered or a person who hadn’t been at the table or who had been overlooked says something that drastically impacts what we knew, so now we have to reexamine it all over again and continue the conversation in a trajectory we hadn’t realized was available before.

Lastly, this frame is about sharing and responding and valuing one another’s work. If Joe, my Big Foot nemesis, responds to my article, they’re going to cite me. If Jaiden then publishes a rebuttal, they’re going to cite both Joe and me, because fair is fair. This is for a few reasons: 1) even if Jaiden disagrees with Joe’s work, they respect that Joe put effort into it and it’s valuable to them. 2) When Jaiden cites Joe, it means anyone who jumps into the conversation at the point of Jaiden’s article will be able to backtrack and catch up using Jaiden’s citations. A newcomer can trace it back to Joe’s article and trace that back to mine. They can basically see a transcript of the whole conversation so they can read Jaiden’s article with all of the context, and they can write their own well-informed piece on Big Foot.

There’s a lot to take away from this frame, but here’s what I think is most important:

• Be respectful of other scholars’ work and their part in the conversation by citing them.
• Start talking whenever you feel ready, in whatever platform you feel comfortable.
• Make sure everyone who wants to be at the table is at the table. This means making sure information is available to those who want to listen and making sure we lift up the voices that are at risk of being drowned out.
• What scholarly conversations have you participated in recently? Is there a Reddit forum you look in on periodically to learn what’s new in the world of cats wearing hats? Or a Facebook group on roller skating? Do you contribute or just listen?
• Think of a scholarly conversation surrounding a topic—sharks, ballet, Game of Thrones. Who’s not at the table? Whose voice is missing from the conversation? Why do you think that is?

Searching as Strategic Exploration

You’ve made it! We’ve reached the last frame: Searching as Strategic Exploration .

“Searching as Strategic Exploration” addresses the part of information literacy that we think of as “Research.” It deals with the actual task of searching for information, and the word “Exploration” is a really good word choice, because it’s evocative of the kind of struggle we sometimes feel when we approach research. I imagine people exploring a jungle, facing obstacles and navigating an uncertain path towards an ultimate goal (Note: the goal is love and it was inside of us all along). I also kind of imagine all the different Northwest Passage explorations, which were cool in theory, but didn’t super-duper work out as expected.

But research is like that! Sometimes we don’t get where we thought we were headed. But the good news is this: You probably won’t die from exposure or resort to cannibalism in your research. Fun, right?

Step 1: Identify a Goal

The first part of any good exploration is identifying a goal. Maybe it’s a direct passage to Asia or the diamond the old lady threw into the ocean at the end of Titanic. More likely, the goal is to satisfy an information need. Remember when we talked about “Research as Inquiry?” All that stuff about paw patrol and Madonna’s skin care regimen? Those were examples of information needs. We’re just trying to find an answer or learn something new.

So great! Our goal is to learn something new. Now we make a strategy.

Step 2: Make a Strategy

For many of your information needs you might just need to Google a question. There’s your strategy: throw your question into Google and comb through the results. You might limit your search to just websites ending in .org, .gov, or .edu. You might also take it a step further and, rather than type in an entire question fully formed, you just type in keywords. So “Who is the guy who invented mayonnaise?” becomes “mayonnaise inventor.” Identifying keywords is part of your strategy and so is using a search engine and limiting the results you’re interested in.

Step 3: Start Exploring

Googling “mayonnaise inventor” probably brings you to Wikipedia where we often learn that our goals don’t have a single, clearly defined answer. For example, we learn that mayonnaise might have gotten its name after the French won a battle in Port Mahon, but that doesn’t tell us who actually made the mayonnaise, just when it was named. Prior to being named, the sauce was called “aioli bo” and was apparently in a Menorcan recipe book from 1745 by Juan de Altimiras. That’s great for Altimiras, but the most likely answer is that mayonnaise was invented way before him and he just had the foresight to write down the recipe. Not having a single definite answer is an unforeseen obstacle tossed into our path that now affects our strategy.  We know we have a trickier question than when we first set sail.

But we have a lot to work with! We now have more keywords like “Port Mahon,” “the French,” and Wikipedia taught us that the earliest known mention of “mayonnaise” was in 1804, so we have “1804” as a keyword too.

Let’s see if we can find that original mention. Let’s take our keywords out of Wikipedia where we found them and voyage to a library’s website! At my library we have a tool that searches through all of our resources. We call it the “Quick Search.” You might have a library available to you, either at school, on a university’s campus, or a local public library. You can do research in any of these places!

So into the Quick Search tool (or whatever you have available to you) go our keywords: “1804,” “mayonnaise,” and “France.” The first result I see is an e-book by a guy who traveled to Paris in 1804, so that might be what we’re looking for. I search through the text and I do, in fact, find a reference to mayonnaise on page 99! The author (August von Kotzebue) is talking about how it’s hard to understand menus at French restaurants, for “What foreigner, for instance, would at first know what is meant by a mayonnaise de poulet, a galatine de volaille, a cotelette a la minute, or even an epigramme d’agneau?” He then goes on to recommend just ordering the fish, since you’ll know what you’ll get (Kotzebue 99).

So that doesn’t tell us who invented mayonnaise, but I think it’s pretty funny! So I’d call that detour a win.

Step 4: Reevaluate

When we hit ends that we don’t think are successful, we can always retrace our steps and reevaluate our question. Dead ends are a part of exploration! We’ve learned a lot, but we’ve also learned that maybe “who invented mayonnaise?” isn’t the right question. Maybe we should ask questions about the evolution of French cuisine or about ownership of culinary experimentation.

I’m going to stick with the history of mayonnaise, for just a little while longer, but my “1804 mayonnaise France” search wasn’t as helpful as I’d hoped, so I’ll try something new. Let’s try looking at encyclopedias.

I searched in a database called Credo Reference (which is a database filled with encyclopedia entries) and just searching “mayonnaise.” I can see that the first entry, “Minorca or Menorca” from The Companion to British History , doesn’t initially look helpful, but we’re exploring, so let’s click on it. It tells us that mayonnaise was invented in 1756 by a French commander’s cook and its name comes from Port Mahon where the French fended off the British during a siege ( Arnold-Baker, 2001 ). That’s awesome! It’s what Wikipedia told us! But let’s corroborate that fact. I click on The Hutchinson Chronology of World History entry for 1756, which says mayonnaise was invented in France in 1756 by the duc de Richelieu ( Helicon, 2018 ). I’m not sure I buy it. I could see a duke’s cook inventing mayonnaise, but I have a hard time imagining a duke and military commander taking the time to create a condiment.

But now I can go on to research the duc de Richelieu and his military campaigns and his culinary successes. Just typing “Duke de Richelieu” into the library’s Quick Search shows me a TON of books (16,742 as of writing this) on his life and he influence on France. So maybe now we’re actually exploring Richelieu or the intertwined history of French cuisine and the lives of nobility.

What Did We Just Do?

Our strategy for exploring this topic has had a lot of steps, but they weren’t random. It was a wild ride, but it was a strategic one. Let’s break the steps down real quick:

• We asked a question or identified a goal
• We identified keywords and googled them
• We learned some background information and got new keywords from Wikipedia and had to reevaluate our question
• We followed a lead to a book but hit a dead end when it wasn’t as useful as we’d hoped
• We identified an encyclopedia database and found several entries that support the theory we learned in Wikipedia, which forced us to reevaluate our question again
• We identified a key player in our topic and searched for him in the library’s Quick Search tool and the resources we found made us reevaluate our question yet again

Other strategies could include looking through an article’s reference list, working through a mind map , outlining your questions, or recording your steps in a research log so you don’t get lost—whatever works for you!

Exploration is tricky. Sometimes you circle back and ask different questions as new obstacles arise. Sometimes you have a clear path and you reach your goal instantly. But you can always retrace your steps, try new routes, discover new information, and maybe you’ll get to your destination in the end. Even if you don’t, you’ve learned something.

For instance, today we learned that if you can’t understand a menu in French, you should just order the fish.

• Where do you start a search for information? Do you start in different places when you have different information needs?
• If your research question was “What is the impact of fast fashion on carbon emissions?” What keywords would you use to start searching?

The Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education is one heck of a document. It’s complicated, its frames intertwine, it’s written in a way that can be tricky to understand. But essentially, it’s just trying to get us to understand that the ways we interact with information are complicated and we need to think about our interactions to make sure we’re behaving in an ethical and responsible way.

Why do your professors make you cite things? Because those citations are valuable to the original author, and they prove your engagement with the scholarly conversation. Why do we need to hold space in the conversation for voices that we haven’t heard from before? Because maybe no one recognized the authority in those voices before. The old process for creating information shut out lots of voices while prioritizing others. It’s important for us to recognize these nuances when we see what information is available to us and important for us to ask, “Whose voice isn’t here? Why? Am I looking hard enough for those voices? Can I help amplify them?” And it’s important for us to ask, “Why is the loudest voice being so loud? What motivates them? Why should I trust them over others?”

When we think critically about the information we access and the information we create and share, we’re engaging as citizens in one big global conversation. Making sure voices are heard, including your own voice, is what moves us all towards a more intelligent and understanding society.

Of course, part of thinking critically about information means thinking critically about both this guide and the framework. Lots of people have criticized the framework for including too much library jargon. Other folks think the framework needs to be rewritten to explicitly address how information seeking systems and publishing platforms have arisen from racist, sexist institutions. We won’t get into the criticisms here, but they’re important to think about. You can learn more about the criticism of the framework in a blog post by Ian Beilin , or you can do your own search for criticism on the framework to see what else is out there and form your own opinions.

The Final Takeaway

Ask questions, find information, and ask questions about that information.

Attributions

“A Beginner’s Guide to Introduction to Information Literacy” by Emily Metcalf is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA

Writing Arguments in STEM Copyright © by Jason Peters; Jennifer Bates; Erin Martin-Elston; Sadie Johann; Rebekah Maples; Anne Regan; and Morgan White is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book

Feedback/errata.

Comments are closed.

Information Literacy and Library Instruction: How Do I Write A Thesis Statement?

• IL Program - Documents, Procedures, and Policies
• Lessons and Exercises
• Professional Development
• Where Do I Start?
• How Do I Choose a Topic?
• Where Do I Find Information?
• How Do I Evaluate Sources?
• What Counts As Evidence?
• How Do I Write A Thesis Statement?
• How Do I Organize My Argument?
• How Do I Avoid Plagiarism and Find My Own Voice?
• What Do I Look For When I Revise?
• ResearchPath

Use Information - Part 6: How Do I Write A Thesis Statement?

Learning Objectives

• Researchers will know how to create a main claim, or thesis, that is debatable and provable.
• Researchers will understand how to narrow their thesis statement so that it's hard to refute.
• Researchers will understand how to use their thesis statement to forecast their arguments o  rganization.

Thesis Statements as Debatable Claims

• Defines what a thesis statement is; must be debatable, not statement of fact
• Best for beginning level classes
• A good thesis statement must be provable
• Do not commit to a claim before research
• Best for beginning research instruction

Difficult to Refute

• A good thesis statement is difficult to prove wrong
• Explains how to narrow the scope of the topic
• Best for beginning to intermediate research instruction

Addresses Competing Claims

• Explains how to address alternative explanations of the thesis

Educates Readers

• Thesis should tell reader what to expect from paper

The Mechanics of Writing a Good Thesis Statement

• How to construct clear, concise thesis; one or two sentences
• Importance of thesis as outline of paper for reader
• Okay to tweak thesis throughout process
• Beginning level

Relevance Test

• Thesis helps determine what is relevant information
• Best for beginning and intermediate research instruction
• Gather and review a wide range of sources on your topic
• Look fir the key arguments in these sources
• Settle on a main claim that is provable with evidence you've found
• Make sure your main claim resists easy refutation by narrowing your scope and addressing competing claims
• Formulate your main claim in a one-to-two sentence thesis statement
• Revise your thesis statement to make sure it accurately reflects the organization of your argument
• Debatable Claims
• Thesis Statement
• << Previous: What Counts As Evidence?
• Next: How Do I Organize My Argument? >>
• Last Updated: Sep 14, 2023 5:34 PM
• URL: https://libguides.wmich.edu/info_lit

Information Literacy Resources

• Introduction
• Co-Curricular Activities
• Getting Started with Research
• Choosing a Topic
• Finding Information
• Evaluating Information
• Gathering Evidence
• Writing a Thesis Statement
• Organizing Your Argument
• Avoiding Plagiarism
• Making Revisions
• Faculty Resources

Learning Objectives:

• Researchers will know how to create a main claim, or thesis, that is debatable and provable.
• Researchers will understand how to narrow their thesis statement so that it’s hard to refute
• Researchers will know how to acknowledge and address counterarguments in their thesis statement
• Researchers will understand how to use their thesis statement to forecast their argument’s organization
• Learning Module - Writing a thesis statement

Video Playlist Includes:

• Thesis statements as debatable claims (2:01)
• Provable (1:51)
• Difficult to refute (2:00)
• Addresses competing claims (1:50)
• Educates readers (0:52)
• The mechanics of writing a good thesis statement (1:44)
• Relevance test (1:00)
• << Previous: Gathering Evidence
• Next: Organizing Your Argument >>
• Last Updated: Mar 4, 2024 4:48 PM
• URL: https://guides.lib.rpi.edu/InfoLit

• Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
• 110 Eighth Street | Troy, NY USA 12180
• (518) 276-6000
• Web Privacy
• Student Consumer Information
• Acessibility

Copyright © 2023 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)

Developing a Thesis Statement

Many papers you write require developing a thesis statement. In this section you’ll learn what a thesis statement is and how to write one.

Keep in mind that not all papers require thesis statements . If in doubt, please consult your instructor for assistance.

What is a thesis statement?

A thesis statement . . .

• Makes an argumentative assertion about a topic; it states the conclusions that you have reached about your topic.
• Makes a promise to the reader about the scope, purpose, and direction of your paper.
• Is focused and specific enough to be “proven” within the boundaries of your paper.
• Is generally located near the end of the introduction ; sometimes, in a long paper, the thesis will be expressed in several sentences or in an entire paragraph.
• Identifies the relationships between the pieces of evidence that you are using to support your argument.

Not all papers require thesis statements! Ask your instructor if you’re in doubt whether you need one.

Identify a topic

Your topic is the subject about which you will write. Your assignment may suggest several ways of looking at a topic; or it may name a fairly general concept that you will explore or analyze in your paper.

Consider what your assignment asks you to do

Inform yourself about your topic, focus on one aspect of your topic, ask yourself whether your topic is worthy of your efforts, generate a topic from an assignment.

Below are some possible topics based on sample assignments.

Sample assignment 1

Analyze Spain’s neutrality in World War II.

Identified topic

Franco’s role in the diplomatic relationships between the Allies and the Axis

This topic avoids generalities such as “Spain” and “World War II,” addressing instead on Franco’s role (a specific aspect of “Spain”) and the diplomatic relations between the Allies and Axis (a specific aspect of World War II).

Sample assignment 2

Analyze one of Homer’s epic similes in the Iliad.

The relationship between the portrayal of warfare and the epic simile about Simoisius at 4.547-64.

This topic focuses on a single simile and relates it to a single aspect of the Iliad ( warfare being a major theme in that work).

Developing a Thesis Statement–Additional information

Your assignment may suggest several ways of looking at a topic, or it may name a fairly general concept that you will explore or analyze in your paper. You’ll want to read your assignment carefully, looking for key terms that you can use to focus your topic.

Sample assignment: Analyze Spain’s neutrality in World War II Key terms: analyze, Spain’s neutrality, World War II

After you’ve identified the key words in your topic, the next step is to read about them in several sources, or generate as much information as possible through an analysis of your topic. Obviously, the more material or knowledge you have, the more possibilities will be available for a strong argument. For the sample assignment above, you’ll want to look at books and articles on World War II in general, and Spain’s neutrality in particular.

As you consider your options, you must decide to focus on one aspect of your topic. This means that you cannot include everything you’ve learned about your topic, nor should you go off in several directions. If you end up covering too many different aspects of a topic, your paper will sprawl and be unconvincing in its argument, and it most likely will not fulfull the assignment requirements.

For the sample assignment above, both Spain’s neutrality and World War II are topics far too broad to explore in a paper. You may instead decide to focus on Franco’s role in the diplomatic relationships between the Allies and the Axis , which narrows down what aspects of Spain’s neutrality and World War II you want to discuss, as well as establishes a specific link between those two aspects.

Before you go too far, however, ask yourself whether your topic is worthy of your efforts. Try to avoid topics that already have too much written about them (i.e., “eating disorders and body image among adolescent women”) or that simply are not important (i.e. “why I like ice cream”). These topics may lead to a thesis that is either dry fact or a weird claim that cannot be supported. A good thesis falls somewhere between the two extremes. To arrive at this point, ask yourself what is new, interesting, contestable, or controversial about your topic.

As you work on your thesis, remember to keep the rest of your paper in mind at all times . Sometimes your thesis needs to evolve as you develop new insights, find new evidence, or take a different approach to your topic.

Derive a main point from topic

Once you have a topic, you will have to decide what the main point of your paper will be. This point, the “controlling idea,” becomes the core of your argument (thesis statement) and it is the unifying idea to which you will relate all your sub-theses. You can then turn this “controlling idea” into a purpose statement about what you intend to do in your paper.

Look for patterns in your evidence

Compose a purpose statement.

Consult the examples below for suggestions on how to look for patterns in your evidence and construct a purpose statement.

• Franco first tried to negotiate with the Axis
• Franco turned to the Allies when he couldn’t get some concessions that he wanted from the Axis

Possible conclusion:

Spain’s neutrality in WWII occurred for an entirely personal reason: Franco’s desire to preserve his own (and Spain’s) power.

Purpose statement

This paper will analyze Franco’s diplomacy during World War II to see how it contributed to Spain’s neutrality.

• The simile compares Simoisius to a tree, which is a peaceful, natural image.
• The tree in the simile is chopped down to make wheels for a chariot, which is an object used in warfare.

At first, the simile seems to take the reader away from the world of warfare, but we end up back in that world by the end.

This paper will analyze the way the simile about Simoisius at 4.547-64 moves in and out of the world of warfare.

Derive purpose statement from topic

To find out what your “controlling idea” is, you have to examine and evaluate your evidence . As you consider your evidence, you may notice patterns emerging, data repeated in more than one source, or facts that favor one view more than another. These patterns or data may then lead you to some conclusions about your topic and suggest that you can successfully argue for one idea better than another.

For instance, you might find out that Franco first tried to negotiate with the Axis, but when he couldn’t get some concessions that he wanted from them, he turned to the Allies. As you read more about Franco’s decisions, you may conclude that Spain’s neutrality in WWII occurred for an entirely personal reason: his desire to preserve his own (and Spain’s) power. Based on this conclusion, you can then write a trial thesis statement to help you decide what material belongs in your paper.

Sometimes you won’t be able to find a focus or identify your “spin” or specific argument immediately. Like some writers, you might begin with a purpose statement just to get yourself going. A purpose statement is one or more sentences that announce your topic and indicate the structure of the paper but do not state the conclusions you have drawn . Thus, you might begin with something like this:

• This paper will look at modern language to see if it reflects male dominance or female oppression.
• I plan to analyze anger and derision in offensive language to see if they represent a challenge of society’s authority.

At some point, you can turn a purpose statement into a thesis statement. As you think and write about your topic, you can restrict, clarify, and refine your argument, crafting your thesis statement to reflect your thinking.

As you work on your thesis, remember to keep the rest of your paper in mind at all times. Sometimes your thesis needs to evolve as you develop new insights, find new evidence, or take a different approach to your topic.

Compose a draft thesis statement

If you are writing a paper that will have an argumentative thesis and are having trouble getting started, the techniques in the table below may help you develop a temporary or “working” thesis statement.

Begin with a purpose statement that you will later turn into a thesis statement.

Assignment: Discuss the history of the Reform Party and explain its influence on the 1990 presidential and Congressional election.

Purpose Statement: This paper briefly sketches the history of the grassroots, conservative, Perot-led Reform Party and analyzes how it influenced the economic and social ideologies of the two mainstream parties.

Question-to-Assertion

If your assignment asks a specific question(s), turn the question(s) into an assertion and give reasons why it is true or reasons for your opinion.

Assignment : What do Aylmer and Rappaccini have to be proud of? Why aren’t they satisfied with these things? How does pride, as demonstrated in “The Birthmark” and “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” lead to unexpected problems?

Beginning thesis statement: Alymer and Rappaccinni are proud of their great knowledge; however, they are also very greedy and are driven to use their knowledge to alter some aspect of nature as a test of their ability. Evil results when they try to “play God.”

Write a sentence that summarizes the main idea of the essay you plan to write.

Main idea: The reason some toys succeed in the market is that they appeal to the consumers’ sense of the ridiculous and their basic desire to laugh at themselves.

Make a list of the ideas that you want to include; consider the ideas and try to group them.

• nature = peaceful
• war matériel = violent (competes with 1?)
• need for time and space to mourn the dead
• war is inescapable (competes with 3?)

Use a formula to arrive at a working thesis statement (you will revise this later).

• although most readers of _______ have argued that _______, closer examination shows that _______.
• _______ uses _______ and _____ to prove that ________.
• phenomenon x is a result of the combination of __________, __________, and _________.

What to keep in mind as you draft an initial thesis statement

Beginning statements obtained through the methods illustrated above can serve as a framework for planning or drafting your paper, but remember they’re not yet the specific, argumentative thesis you want for the final version of your paper. In fact, in its first stages, a thesis statement usually is ill-formed or rough and serves only as a planning tool.

As you write, you may discover evidence that does not fit your temporary or “working” thesis. Or you may reach deeper insights about your topic as you do more research, and you will find that your thesis statement has to be more complicated to match the evidence that you want to use.

You must be willing to reject or omit some evidence in order to keep your paper cohesive and your reader focused. Or you may have to revise your thesis to match the evidence and insights that you want to discuss. Read your draft carefully, noting the conclusions you have drawn and the major ideas which support or prove those conclusions. These will be the elements of your final thesis statement.

Sometimes you will not be able to identify these elements in your early drafts, but as you consider how your argument is developing and how your evidence supports your main idea, ask yourself, “ What is the main point that I want to prove/discuss? ” and “ How will I convince the reader that this is true? ” When you can answer these questions, then you can begin to refine the thesis statement.

Refine and polish the thesis statement

To get to your final thesis, you’ll need to refine your draft thesis so that it’s specific and arguable.

• Ask if your draft thesis addresses the assignment
• Question each part of your draft thesis
• Clarify vague phrases and assertions
• Investigate alternatives to your draft thesis

Consult the example below for suggestions on how to refine your draft thesis statement.

Sample Assignment

Choose an activity and define it as a symbol of American culture. Your essay should cause the reader to think critically about the society which produces and enjoys that activity.

• Ask The phenomenon of drive-in facilities is an interesting symbol of american culture, and these facilities demonstrate significant characteristics of our society.This statement does not fulfill the assignment because it does not require the reader to think critically about society.

Drive-ins are an interesting symbol of American culture because they represent Americans’ significant creativity and business ingenuity.

Among the types of drive-in facilities familiar during the twentieth century, drive-in movie theaters best represent American creativity, not merely because they were the forerunner of later drive-ins and drive-throughs, but because of their impact on our culture: they changed our relationship to the automobile, changed the way people experienced movies, and changed movie-going into a family activity.

While drive-in facilities such as those at fast-food establishments, banks, pharmacies, and dry cleaners symbolize America’s economic ingenuity, they also have affected our personal standards.

While drive-in facilities such as those at fast- food restaurants, banks, pharmacies, and dry cleaners symbolize (1) Americans’ business ingenuity, they also have contributed (2) to an increasing homogenization of our culture, (3) a willingness to depersonalize relationships with others, and (4) a tendency to sacrifice quality for convenience.

This statement is now specific and fulfills all parts of the assignment. This version, like any good thesis, is not self-evident; its points, 1-4, will have to be proven with evidence in the body of the paper. The numbers in this statement indicate the order in which the points will be presented. Depending on the length of the paper, there could be one paragraph for each numbered item or there could be blocks of paragraph for even pages for each one.

Complete the final thesis statement

The bottom line.

As you move through the process of crafting a thesis, you’ll need to remember four things:

• Context matters! Think about your course materials and lectures. Try to relate your thesis to the ideas your instructor is discussing.
• As you go through the process described in this section, always keep your assignment in mind . You will be more successful when your thesis (and paper) responds to the assignment than if it argues a semi-related idea.
• Your thesis statement should be precise, focused, and contestable ; it should predict the sub-theses or blocks of information that you will use to prove your argument.
• Make sure that you keep the rest of your paper in mind at all times. Change your thesis as your paper evolves, because you do not want your thesis to promise more than your paper actually delivers.

In the beginning, the thesis statement was a tool to help you sharpen your focus, limit material and establish the paper’s purpose. When your paper is finished, however, the thesis statement becomes a tool for your reader. It tells the reader what you have learned about your topic and what evidence led you to your conclusion. It keeps the reader on track–well able to understand and appreciate your argument.

Writing Process and Structure

This is an accordion element with a series of buttons that open and close related content panels.

Getting Started with Your Paper

Interpreting Writing Assignments from Your Courses

Generating Ideas for

Creating an Argument

Thesis vs. Purpose Statements

Architecture of Arguments

Working with Sources

Quoting and Paraphrasing Sources

Using Literary Quotations

Citing Sources in Your Paper

Drafting Your Paper

Generating Ideas for Your Paper

Introductions

Paragraphing

Developing Strategic Transitions

Conclusions

Revising Your Paper

Peer Reviews

Reverse Outlines

Revising an Argumentative Paper

Revision Strategies for Longer Projects

Finishing Your Paper

Twelve Common Errors: An Editing Checklist

How to Proofread your Paper

Writing Collaboratively

Collaborative and Group Writing

Information Literacy Basics

Introduction, ebooks + books, suggested websites.

• What is information literacy?

Information literacy is the set of integrated abilities encompassing the reflective discovery of information, the understanding of how information is produced and valued, and the use of information in creating new knowledge and participating ethically in communities of learning.

Information literacy forms the basis for lifelong learning. It is common to all disciplines, to all learning environments, and to all levels of education. It enables learners to master content and extend their investigations, become more self-directed, and assume greater control over their own learning. 

Association of College & Research Libraries

Image Credit: Pixabay   

• Why Information Literacy is Important
• Choosing a Topic
• Pre-Research & Research
• Gathering Information About Your Topic
• The Thesis Statement
• Using Information Ethically
• Evaluating Sources

  The skills of an information literate person extend beyond school and application to academic problems--such as writing a research paper--and reaches right into the workplace. Information literacy is also important to an effective and enlightened citizenry, and has implications that can impact the lives of many people around the globe.

The ability to use information technologies effectively to find and manage information, and the ability to critically evaluate and ethically apply that information to solve a problem are some of the hallmarks of an information literate individual. Other characteristics of an information literate individual include the spirit of inquiry and perseverance to find out what is necessary to get the job done.

We live in the Information Age, and "information" is increasing at a rapid pace. We have the Internet, television, radio, and other information resources available to us 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. However, just because so much  information is so easily and quickly available does not mean that all of it is worthwhile or even true. 

 Because of resources like the Internet, finding high-quality information is now harder than ever, not easier!  Finding the good stuff is not always quick.  And the good stuff does not always come cheaply, either. 

Today's employers are looking for people who understand and can adapt to the characteristics of the Information Age. If a student has "learned how to learn," upon graduation, they are a much more attractive job candidate. An information literate individual--with their strong analytical, critical thinking and problem-solving skills--can be expected to be an adaptable, capable and valuable  employee, with much to contribute. 

Philadelphia University

1. "Brainstorm" possible topics. This is often a successful way for you to get ideas down on paper. Jot down several ideas you may have - anything that comes to mind - any topic you want to explore. When you are done, see if anything stands out. This is a place to start. It is important to keep in mind that the initial topic you come up with may not be the topic you end up writing about. As you do research, you may change your mind and that's OK. It is part of the process.

2.  An instructor may give you a list of acceptable topics to choose from. Pick one that interests you and decide what angle to take.

3.  Go over lecture notes or textbook chapters for ideas.

4.  Read current news stories in newspapers and magazines.

5.  Check out the library's Research Guides (LibGuides).

Choose a topic that you are interested in. The research process is more relevant if you care about your topic! 

Narrow your topic to something manageable. If your topic is too broad, you will find too much information and not be able to focus. Background reading can help you choose and limit the scope of your topic.

University of Michigan-Flint

Pre-Research

The beginning stages of research are often referred to as "pre-research." While you might be tempted to begin searching before completing these steps, the pre-research process will save you valuable time and effort. The first step in the pre-research process is to choose an interesting topic and create a research question. Next, using your research question, you can perform some background research to learn more about your topic. The background research will enable you to refine your topic and write a strong, focused thesis statement. Your thesis statement is what you will ultimately use to choose keywords and create search statements.

All of these steps are in preparation for using search tools, creating targeted searches, and retrieving the best information to use in your paper, project, or speech.

Research, in simplest terms, is information seeking. However, research is not just finding a piece of information. Instead, we can see research as a thorough examination of a topic. This process includes locating information, but also reflecting on what you've learned, adapting your ideas, organizing thoughts into a logical order, and then using those sources and ideas to produce a project or come to a decision.

Research in college is required for many papers, projects, and speeches. This does not mean you will be responsible for primary, or original, research. Primary research refers to collecting original data through surveys, experiments, interviews, or observations. Instead, the research you will conduct includes using search tools, like the library catalog, library databases, and the Web, to find existing credible research on a topic.

Seminole State College LIbrary

Finding background information on your topic is important if you are unfamiliar with the subject area. A background search can provide:

• A broad overview of the subject
• Definitions of the topic
• Introduction to key issues
• Names of people who are authorities in the subject field
• Major dates and events
• Keywords and subject-specific vocabulary terms that can be used for database searches
• Bibliographies that lead to additional resources

Encyclopedias are important sources to consider when initially researching a topic. General encyclopedias provide basic information on a wide range of subjects in an easily readable and understandable format. 

 If you are certain about what subject area you want to choose your topic from, you might want to use a specialized or subject encyclopedia instead. Subject encyclopedias limit their scope to one particular field of study, offering more detailed information about the subject.

Periodicals (also known as serials) are publications printed "periodically", either daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or on an annual basis. Journals, magazines, and newspapers are different types of periodicals. Examples of  periodicals include the following: newspapers, popular magazines, scholarly, peer-reviewed journals, trade publications.

Using search interfaces like Google can lead you to an ocean of good and bad information.  Being critical of everything you see on the Internet is crucial when getting background information for an academic writing assignment.  Instructors often prohibit students from citing Internet sites on a research paper so be careful that you understand what is acceptable and unacceptable to quote.

University of Buffalo LIbraries

Now that you've learned about your topic through background research and developed your topic into a research question, you can formulate a solid thesis statement. The thesis statement can be looked at as the answer to your research question. It guides the focus of your research and the direction of your arguments, and also prevents any unnecessary tangents within your project. A strong thesis statement will always make it easier to maintain a clear direction while conducting your information search.

Thesis statements are one sentence long and are focused, clear, declarative, and written in third person voice.

A good thesis statement should be:

Focus on a single position or point of view in your thesis statement. You cannot effectively address multiple perspectives within a single paper, as you want to make coherent points to support your position.

Present your argument or position clearly and precisely. A clear thesis statement will avoid generalizations and make your position known.

3. DECLARATIVE

   Present your position or point of view as a statement or declarative sentence. Your research question helped guide your initial searching so you could learn more about your topic. Now that you have completed that step, you can extract a thesis statement based on the research you have discovered.

4. THIRD PERSON

Write your thesis statement in third person voice. Rather than addressing "I," "we," "you," "my," or "our" in your thesis, look at the larger issues that affect a greater number of participants. Think in terms like "citizens," "students," "artists," "teachers," "researchers," etc.

OWL Purdue Online Writing Lab

In a research project, you will use information and ideas from your research sources to support the statements you make. Whether those sources are books, articles, government documents, web pages, email, images, or any other types of sources, you must use them fairly and credit them appropriately.

You document, or cite, the information and ideas you use from your sources to give credit to the author or creator and to allow your readers to follow your research path.

Keep a record of all the information you will need from each source for your bibliography--author, title, journal title, date of publication, publisher and place of publication of a book, volume and issue number of a journal, page numbers. If your source is from the internet, such as a web page or email, record the address and date you accessed the document. You may want to save the document or print it out so you will have it as it existed on the date you accessed it.

Claremont Colleges Library

Need More Help? 

When you need help with your research project, talk to your Instructor, stop by the library and ask for assistance from the librarian or make an appointment to get help from someone in the Writing Center on your campus.

How do you know if you have found “good” information?  The CRAAP Test is a list of questions that you can use to evaluate the information that you find. These  can be applied to websites, articles, and other information sources to help you determine if the information is reliable.

Evaluation Criteria

Currency: The timeliness of the information.

When was the information published or posted?

Has the information been revised or updated?

Does your topic require current information, or will older sources work as well?

Are the links functional?

Relevance: The importance of the information for your needs.

Does the information relate to your topic or answer your question?

Who is the intended audience?

Is the information at an appropriate level (i.e. not too elementary or advanced for your needs)?

Have you looked at a variety of sources before determining this is one you will use?

Would you be comfortable citing this source in your research paper?

Authority: The source of the information.

Who is the author/publisher/source/sponsor?

What are the author's credentials or organizational affiliations?

Is the author qualified to write on the topic?

Is there contact information, such as a publisher or email address?

Does the URL reveal anything about the author or source?

examples: .com .edu .gov .org .net

Accuracy: The reliability, truthfulness and correctness of the content.

Where does the information come from?

Is the information supported by evidence?

Has the information been reviewed or refereed?

Can you verify any of the information in another source or from personal knowledge?

Does the language or tone seem unbiased and free of emotion?

Are there spelling, grammar or typographical errors?

Purpose: The reason the information exists.

What is the purpose of the information? Is it to inform, teach, sell, entertain or persuade?

Do the authors/sponsors make their intentions or purpose clear?

Is the information fact, opinion or propaganda?

Does the point of view appear objective and impartial?

Are there political, ideological, cultural, religious, institutional or personal biases?

Adelphi University 

Explore library databases .

Discover eBook collections or find print books/materials through the catalog for each campus:

Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education

A professional development resource that can be used and adapted by both individuals and groups in order to foster understanding and use of the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education.

Project Information Literacy

A nonprofit research institute that conducts ongoing, national studies on what it is like being a student in the digital age. 

• Introduction to Media Literacy
• Digital Literacy

First thing’s first: what is media literacy? Jay breaks this question down and explains how we’re going to use it to explore our media saturated world.

Learn how to find the information you need online in this episode of our Digital Literacy course – part of our 'Go The Distance' course, giving you the skills and knowledge you need to be a top-class distance learner!

• Last Updated: Apr 6, 2023 8:10 AM
• URL: https://libguides.cccneb.edu/infolit

Thesis Statements

What this handout is about.

This handout describes what a thesis statement is, how thesis statements work in your writing, and how you can craft or refine one for your draft.

Introduction

Writing in college often takes the form of persuasion—convincing others that you have an interesting, logical point of view on the subject you are studying. Persuasion is a skill you practice regularly in your daily life. You persuade your roommate to clean up, your parents to let you borrow the car, your friend to vote for your favorite candidate or policy. In college, course assignments often ask you to make a persuasive case in writing. You are asked to convince your reader of your point of view. This form of persuasion, often called academic argument, follows a predictable pattern in writing. After a brief introduction of your topic, you state your point of view on the topic directly and often in one sentence. This sentence is the thesis statement, and it serves as a summary of the argument you’ll make in the rest of your paper.

What is a thesis statement?

A thesis statement:

• tells the reader how you will interpret the significance of the subject matter under discussion.
• is a road map for the paper; in other words, it tells the reader what to expect from the rest of the paper.
• directly answers the question asked of you. A thesis is an interpretation of a question or subject, not the subject itself. The subject, or topic, of an essay might be World War II or Moby Dick; a thesis must then offer a way to understand the war or the novel.
• makes a claim that others might dispute.
• is usually a single sentence near the beginning of your paper (most often, at the end of the first paragraph) that presents your argument to the reader. The rest of the paper, the body of the essay, gathers and organizes evidence that will persuade the reader of the logic of your interpretation.

If your assignment asks you to take a position or develop a claim about a subject, you may need to convey that position or claim in a thesis statement near the beginning of your draft. The assignment may not explicitly state that you need a thesis statement because your instructor may assume you will include one. When in doubt, ask your instructor if the assignment requires a thesis statement. When an assignment asks you to analyze, to interpret, to compare and contrast, to demonstrate cause and effect, or to take a stand on an issue, it is likely that you are being asked to develop a thesis and to support it persuasively. (Check out our handout on understanding assignments for more information.)

How do I create a thesis?

A thesis is the result of a lengthy thinking process. Formulating a thesis is not the first thing you do after reading an essay assignment. Before you develop an argument on any topic, you have to collect and organize evidence, look for possible relationships between known facts (such as surprising contrasts or similarities), and think about the significance of these relationships. Once you do this thinking, you will probably have a “working thesis” that presents a basic or main idea and an argument that you think you can support with evidence. Both the argument and your thesis are likely to need adjustment along the way.

Writers use all kinds of techniques to stimulate their thinking and to help them clarify relationships or comprehend the broader significance of a topic and arrive at a thesis statement. For more ideas on how to get started, see our handout on brainstorming .

How do I know if my thesis is strong?

If there’s time, run it by your instructor or make an appointment at the Writing Center to get some feedback. Even if you do not have time to get advice elsewhere, you can do some thesis evaluation of your own. When reviewing your first draft and its working thesis, ask yourself the following :

• Do I answer the question? Re-reading the question prompt after constructing a working thesis can help you fix an argument that misses the focus of the question. If the prompt isn’t phrased as a question, try to rephrase it. For example, “Discuss the effect of X on Y” can be rephrased as “What is the effect of X on Y?”
• Have I taken a position that others might challenge or oppose? If your thesis simply states facts that no one would, or even could, disagree with, it’s possible that you are simply providing a summary, rather than making an argument.
• Is my thesis statement specific enough? Thesis statements that are too vague often do not have a strong argument. If your thesis contains words like “good” or “successful,” see if you could be more specific: why is something “good”; what specifically makes something “successful”?
• Does my thesis pass the “So what?” test? If a reader’s first response is likely to  be “So what?” then you need to clarify, to forge a relationship, or to connect to a larger issue.
• Does my essay support my thesis specifically and without wandering? If your thesis and the body of your essay do not seem to go together, one of them has to change. It’s okay to change your working thesis to reflect things you have figured out in the course of writing your paper. Remember, always reassess and revise your writing as necessary.
• Does my thesis pass the “how and why?” test? If a reader’s first response is “how?” or “why?” your thesis may be too open-ended and lack guidance for the reader. See what you can add to give the reader a better take on your position right from the beginning.

Suppose you are taking a course on contemporary communication, and the instructor hands out the following essay assignment: “Discuss the impact of social media on public awareness.” Looking back at your notes, you might start with this working thesis:

Social media impacts public awareness in both positive and negative ways.

You can use the questions above to help you revise this general statement into a stronger thesis.

• Do I answer the question? You can analyze this if you rephrase “discuss the impact” as “what is the impact?” This way, you can see that you’ve answered the question only very generally with the vague “positive and negative ways.”
• Have I taken a position that others might challenge or oppose? Not likely. Only people who maintain that social media has a solely positive or solely negative impact could disagree.
• Is my thesis statement specific enough? No. What are the positive effects? What are the negative effects?
• Does my thesis pass the “how and why?” test? No. Why are they positive? How are they positive? What are their causes? Why are they negative? How are they negative? What are their causes?
• Does my thesis pass the “So what?” test? No. Why should anyone care about the positive and/or negative impact of social media?

After thinking about your answers to these questions, you decide to focus on the one impact you feel strongly about and have strong evidence for:

Because not every voice on social media is reliable, people have become much more critical consumers of information, and thus, more informed voters.

This version is a much stronger thesis! It answers the question, takes a specific position that others can challenge, and it gives a sense of why it matters.

Let’s try another. Suppose your literature professor hands out the following assignment in a class on the American novel: Write an analysis of some aspect of Mark Twain’s novel Huckleberry Finn. “This will be easy,” you think. “I loved Huckleberry Finn!” You grab a pad of paper and write:

Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn is a great American novel.

You begin to analyze your thesis:

• Do I answer the question? No. The prompt asks you to analyze some aspect of the novel. Your working thesis is a statement of general appreciation for the entire novel.

Think about aspects of the novel that are important to its structure or meaning—for example, the role of storytelling, the contrasting scenes between the shore and the river, or the relationships between adults and children. Now you write:

In Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain develops a contrast between life on the river and life on the shore.

• Do I answer the question? Yes!
• Have I taken a position that others might challenge or oppose? Not really. This contrast is well-known and accepted.
• Is my thesis statement specific enough? It’s getting there–you have highlighted an important aspect of the novel for investigation. However, it’s still not clear what your analysis will reveal.
• Does my thesis pass the “how and why?” test? Not yet. Compare scenes from the book and see what you discover. Free write, make lists, jot down Huck’s actions and reactions and anything else that seems interesting.
• Does my thesis pass the “So what?” test? What’s the point of this contrast? What does it signify?”

After examining the evidence and considering your own insights, you write:

Through its contrasting river and shore scenes, Twain’s Huckleberry Finn suggests that to find the true expression of American democratic ideals, one must leave “civilized” society and go back to nature.

This final thesis statement presents an interpretation of a literary work based on an analysis of its content. Of course, for the essay itself to be successful, you must now present evidence from the novel that will convince the reader of your interpretation.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Anson, Chris M., and Robert A. Schwegler. 2010. The Longman Handbook for Writers and Readers , 6th ed. New York: Longman.

Lunsford, Andrea A. 2015. The St. Martin’s Handbook , 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St Martin’s.

Ramage, John D., John C. Bean, and June Johnson. 2018. The Allyn & Bacon Guide to Writing , 8th ed. New York: Pearson.

Ruszkiewicz, John J., Christy Friend, Daniel Seward, and Maxine Hairston. 2010. The Scott, Foresman Handbook for Writers , 9th ed. Boston: Pearson Education.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Make a Gift

Reference management. Clean and simple.

How to write a thesis statement + examples

What is a thesis statement?

Is a thesis statement a question, how do you write a good thesis statement, how do i know if my thesis statement is good, examples of thesis statements, helpful resources on how to write a thesis statement, frequently asked questions about writing a thesis statement, related articles.

A thesis statement is the main argument of your paper or thesis.

The thesis statement is one of the most important elements of any piece of academic writing . It is a brief statement of your paper’s main argument. Essentially, you are stating what you will be writing about.

You can see your thesis statement as an answer to a question. While it also contains the question, it should really give an answer to the question with new information and not just restate or reiterate it.

Your thesis statement is part of your introduction. Learn more about how to write a good thesis introduction in our introduction guide .

A thesis statement is not a question. A statement must be arguable and provable through evidence and analysis. While your thesis might stem from a research question, it should be in the form of a statement.

Tip: A thesis statement is typically 1-2 sentences. For a longer project like a thesis, the statement may be several sentences or a paragraph.

A good thesis statement needs to do the following:

• Condense the main idea of your thesis into one or two sentences.
• Answer your project’s main research question.
• Clearly state your position in relation to the topic .
• Make an argument that requires support or evidence.

Once you have written down a thesis statement, check if it fulfills the following criteria:

• Your statement needs to be provable by evidence. As an argument, a thesis statement needs to be debatable.
• Your statement needs to be precise. Do not give away too much information in the thesis statement and do not load it with unnecessary information.
• Your statement cannot say that one solution is simply right or simply wrong as a matter of fact. You should draw upon verified facts to persuade the reader of your solution, but you cannot just declare something as right or wrong.

As previously mentioned, your thesis statement should answer a question.

If the question is:

What do you think the City of New York should do to reduce traffic congestion?

A good thesis statement restates the question and answers it:

In this paper, I will argue that the City of New York should focus on providing exclusive lanes for public transport and adaptive traffic signals to reduce traffic congestion by the year 2035.

Here is another example. If the question is:

How can we end poverty?

A good thesis statement should give more than one solution to the problem in question:

In this paper, I will argue that introducing universal basic income can help reduce poverty and positively impact the way we work.

• The Writing Center of the University of North Carolina has a list of questions to ask to see if your thesis is strong .

A thesis statement is part of the introduction of your paper. It is usually found in the first or second paragraph to let the reader know your research purpose from the beginning.

In general, a thesis statement should have one or two sentences. But the length really depends on the overall length of your project. Take a look at our guide about the length of thesis statements for more insight on this topic.

Here is a list of Thesis Statement Examples that will help you understand better how to write them.

Every good essay should include a thesis statement as part of its introduction, no matter the academic level. Of course, if you are a high school student you are not expected to have the same type of thesis as a PhD student.

Here is a great YouTube tutorial showing How To Write An Essay: Thesis Statements .

Think of yourself as a member of a jury, listening to a lawyer who is presenting an opening argument. You'll want to know very soon whether the lawyer believes the accused to be guilty or not guilty, and how the lawyer plans to convince you. Readers of academic essays are like jury members: before they have read too far, they want to know what the essay argues as well as how the writer plans to make the argument. After reading your thesis statement, the reader should think, "This essay is going to try to convince me of something. I'm not convinced yet, but I'm interested to see how I might be."

An effective thesis cannot be answered with a simple "yes" or "no." A thesis is not a topic; nor is it a fact; nor is it an opinion. "Reasons for the fall of communism" is a topic. "Communism collapsed in Eastern Europe" is a fact known by educated people. "The fall of communism is the best thing that ever happened in Europe" is an opinion. (Superlatives like "the best" almost always lead to trouble. It's impossible to weigh every "thing" that ever happened in Europe. And what about the fall of Hitler? Couldn't that be "the best thing"?)

A good thesis has two parts. It should tell what you plan to argue, and it should "telegraph" how you plan to argue—that is, what particular support for your claim is going where in your essay.

Steps in Constructing a Thesis

First, analyze your primary sources.  Look for tension, interest, ambiguity, controversy, and/or complication. Does the author contradict himself or herself? Is a point made and later reversed? What are the deeper implications of the author's argument? Figuring out the why to one or more of these questions, or to related questions, will put you on the path to developing a working thesis. (Without the why, you probably have only come up with an observation—that there are, for instance, many different metaphors in such-and-such a poem—which is not a thesis.)

Once you have a working thesis, write it down.  There is nothing as frustrating as hitting on a great idea for a thesis, then forgetting it when you lose concentration. And by writing down your thesis you will be forced to think of it clearly, logically, and concisely. You probably will not be able to write out a final-draft version of your thesis the first time you try, but you'll get yourself on the right track by writing down what you have.

Keep your thesis prominent in your introduction.  A good, standard place for your thesis statement is at the end of an introductory paragraph, especially in shorter (5-15 page) essays. Readers are used to finding theses there, so they automatically pay more attention when they read the last sentence of your introduction. Although this is not required in all academic essays, it is a good rule of thumb.

Anticipate the counterarguments.  Once you have a working thesis, you should think about what might be said against it. This will help you to refine your thesis, and it will also make you think of the arguments that you'll need to refute later on in your essay. (Every argument has a counterargument. If yours doesn't, then it's not an argument—it may be a fact, or an opinion, but it is not an argument.)

This statement is on its way to being a thesis. However, it is too easy to imagine possible counterarguments. For example, a political observer might believe that Dukakis lost because he suffered from a "soft-on-crime" image. If you complicate your thesis by anticipating the counterargument, you'll strengthen your argument, as shown in the sentence below.

Some Caveats and Some Examples

A thesis is never a question.  Readers of academic essays expect to have questions discussed, explored, or even answered. A question ("Why did communism collapse in Eastern Europe?") is not an argument, and without an argument, a thesis is dead in the water.

A thesis is never a list.  "For political, economic, social and cultural reasons, communism collapsed in Eastern Europe" does a good job of "telegraphing" the reader what to expect in the essay—a section about political reasons, a section about economic reasons, a section about social reasons, and a section about cultural reasons. However, political, economic, social and cultural reasons are pretty much the only possible reasons why communism could collapse. This sentence lacks tension and doesn't advance an argument. Everyone knows that politics, economics, and culture are important.

A thesis should never be vague, combative or confrontational.  An ineffective thesis would be, "Communism collapsed in Eastern Europe because communism is evil." This is hard to argue (evil from whose perspective? what does evil mean?) and it is likely to mark you as moralistic and judgmental rather than rational and thorough. It also may spark a defensive reaction from readers sympathetic to communism. If readers strongly disagree with you right off the bat, they may stop reading.

An effective thesis has a definable, arguable claim.  "While cultural forces contributed to the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, the disintegration of economies played the key role in driving its decline" is an effective thesis sentence that "telegraphs," so that the reader expects the essay to have a section about cultural forces and another about the disintegration of economies. This thesis makes a definite, arguable claim: that the disintegration of economies played a more important role than cultural forces in defeating communism in Eastern Europe. The reader would react to this statement by thinking, "Perhaps what the author says is true, but I am not convinced. I want to read further to see how the author argues this claim."

A thesis should be as clear and specific as possible.  Avoid overused, general terms and abstractions. For example, "Communism collapsed in Eastern Europe because of the ruling elite's inability to address the economic concerns of the people" is more powerful than "Communism collapsed due to societal discontent."

Copyright 1999, Maxine Rodburg and The Tutors of the Writing Center at Harvard University

Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

Tips and Examples for Writing Thesis Statements

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.

Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

Tips for Writing Your Thesis Statement

1. Determine what kind of paper you are writing:

• An analytical paper breaks down an issue or an idea into its component parts, evaluates the issue or idea, and presents this breakdown and evaluation to the audience.
• An expository (explanatory) paper explains something to the audience.
• An argumentative paper makes a claim about a topic and justifies this claim with specific evidence. The claim could be an opinion, a policy proposal, an evaluation, a cause-and-effect statement, or an interpretation. The goal of the argumentative paper is to convince the audience that the claim is true based on the evidence provided.

If you are writing a text that does not fall under these three categories (e.g., a narrative), a thesis statement somewhere in the first paragraph could still be helpful to your reader.

2. Your thesis statement should be specific—it should cover only what you will discuss in your paper and should be supported with specific evidence.

3. The thesis statement usually appears at the end of the first paragraph of a paper.

4. Your topic may change as you write, so you may need to revise your thesis statement to reflect exactly what you have discussed in the paper.

Thesis Statement Examples

Example of an analytical thesis statement:

The paper that follows should:

• Explain the analysis of the college admission process
• Explain the challenge facing admissions counselors

Example of an expository (explanatory) thesis statement:

• Explain how students spend their time studying, attending class, and socializing with peers

Example of an argumentative thesis statement:

• Present an argument and give evidence to support the claim that students should pursue community projects before entering college

Research Foundations: Information Literacy

• Information Literacy
• The Information Timeline
• Popular, Scholarly, & Trade Publications
• Primary, Secondary, & Tertiary Materials
• Information Formats
• Evaluate Information
• Chapter 1 Self Quiz
• The Pre-Research Process
• Decide on a Topic
• Find Background Information
• Refine Your Topic
• Develop a Thesis Statement
• Choose Keywords
• Create Search Statements
• Chapter 2 Self Quiz
• Search the Library Catalog
• Call Numbers
• Request Books
• Book Research Streamlined
• Viewing eBooks
• Access Media
• Chapter 3 Self Quiz
• About Library Databases
• Find Articles in Databases
• Modify Your Search
• Reading Scholarly Articles
• Chapter 4 Self Quiz
• Citation Styles
• Locate Citation Information
• Copyright & Fair Use
• Creative Commons
• Find & Attribute Images
• Chapter 5 Self Quiz

What is information literacy?

The term "information literacy" describes a set of abilities that enables an individual to acquire, evaluate, and use information. You can think of information literacy as having five components: identify, find, evaluate, apply, and acknowledge sources of information. Information literacy is a lifelong learning process, something beginning before you arrive at college and developing as you grow. While each skill is individually important, understanding how they fit together is essential to becoming an information literate person.

Acknowledge

=  Components of Information Literacy

Why is information literacy important?

Every day we encounter an increasingly large and diverse sea of information through the Web, mass media, and published works. You can find information in many different formats, from an endless number of sources. The quality of information varies greatly between the available information choices. Just think of a typical internet search; it is common to retrieve authoritative, current, and reliable sources alongside biased, outdated, misleading, or false sources. Furthermore, an online search is likely to result in more information than can be effectively handled. The sheer amount and variety of information available to us makes information literacy competencies important to master!

Information literacy skills are vital to success in your personal, professional, and academic life. In college, you use these skills to perform well on research papers, projects, and presentations. At work you will likely encounter situations where you must seek out new information to make logical decisions. In the home, you are constantly faced with deciding consumer issues and forming opinions on social and political topics. Each situation requires engagement in the information literacy process.

5 Components of Information Literacy video

The video below will walk you through the five components of information literacy including academic and real-life examples.

• << Previous: 1. Information Basics
• Next: The Information Timeline >>
• Last Updated: May 2, 2024 9:24 AM
• URL: https://libguides.seminolestate.edu/researchfoundations

What are your chances of acceptance?

Calculate for all schools, your chance of acceptance.

Your chancing factors

Extracurriculars.

How to Write a Strong Thesis Statement: 4 Steps + Examples

What’s Covered:

What is the purpose of a thesis statement, writing a good thesis statement: 4 steps, common pitfalls to avoid, where to get your essay edited for free.

When you set out to write an essay, there has to be some kind of point to it, right? Otherwise, your essay would just be a big jumble of word salad that makes absolutely no sense. An essay needs a central point that ties into everything else. That main point is called a thesis statement, and it’s the core of any essay or research paper.

You may hear about Master degree candidates writing a thesis, and that is an entire paper–not to be confused with the thesis statement, which is typically one sentence that contains your paper’s focus. 

Read on to learn more about thesis statements and how to write them. We’ve also included some solid examples for you to reference.

Typically the last sentence of your introductory paragraph, the thesis statement serves as the roadmap for your essay. When your reader gets to the thesis statement, they should have a clear outline of your main point, as well as the information you’ll be presenting in order to either prove or support your point. 

The thesis statement should not be confused for a topic sentence , which is the first sentence of every paragraph in your essay. If you need help writing topic sentences, numerous resources are available. Topic sentences should go along with your thesis statement, though.

Since the thesis statement is the most important sentence of your entire essay or paper, it’s imperative that you get this part right. Otherwise, your paper will not have a good flow and will seem disjointed. That’s why it’s vital not to rush through developing one. It’s a methodical process with steps that you need to follow in order to create the best thesis statement possible.

Step 1: Decide what kind of paper you’re writing

When you’re assigned an essay, there are several different types you may get. Argumentative essays are designed to get the reader to agree with you on a topic. Informative or expository essays present information to the reader. Analytical essays offer up a point and then expand on it by analyzing relevant information. Thesis statements can look and sound different based on the type of paper you’re writing. For example:

• Argumentative: The United States needs a viable third political party to decrease bipartisanship, increase options, and help reduce corruption in government.
• Informative: The Libertarian party has thrown off elections before by gaining enough support in states to get on the ballot and by taking away crucial votes from candidates.
• Analytical: An analysis of past presidential elections shows that while third party votes may have been the minority, they did affect the outcome of the elections in 2020, 2016, and beyond.

Step 2: Figure out what point you want to make

Once you know what type of paper you’re writing, you then need to figure out the point you want to make with your thesis statement, and subsequently, your paper. In other words, you need to decide to answer a question about something, such as:

• What impact did reality TV have on American society?
• How has the musical Hamilton affected perception of American history?
• Why do I want to major in [chosen major here]?

If you have an argumentative essay, then you will be writing about an opinion. To make it easier, you may want to choose an opinion that you feel passionate about so that you’re writing about something that interests you. For example, if you have an interest in preserving the environment, you may want to choose a topic that relates to that. 

If you’re writing your college essay and they ask why you want to attend that school, you may want to have a main point and back it up with information, something along the lines of:

“Attending Harvard University would benefit me both academically and professionally, as it would give me a strong knowledge base upon which to build my career, develop my network, and hopefully give me an advantage in my chosen field.”

Step 3: Determine what information you’ll use to back up your point

Once you have the point you want to make, you need to figure out how you plan to back it up throughout the rest of your essay. Without this information, it will be hard to either prove or argue the main point of your thesis statement. If you decide to write about the Hamilton example, you may decide to address any falsehoods that the writer put into the musical, such as:

“The musical Hamilton, while accurate in many ways, leaves out key parts of American history, presents a nationalist view of founding fathers, and downplays the racism of the times.”

Once you’ve written your initial working thesis statement, you’ll then need to get information to back that up. For example, the musical completely leaves out Benjamin Franklin, portrays the founding fathers in a nationalist way that is too complimentary, and shows Hamilton as a staunch abolitionist despite the fact that his family likely did own slaves. 

Step 4: Revise and refine your thesis statement before you start writing

Read through your thesis statement several times before you begin to compose your full essay. You need to make sure the statement is ironclad, since it is the foundation of the entire paper. Edit it or have a peer review it for you to make sure everything makes sense and that you feel like you can truly write a paper on the topic. Once you’ve done that, you can then begin writing your paper.

When writing a thesis statement, there are some common pitfalls you should avoid so that your paper can be as solid as possible. Make sure you always edit the thesis statement before you do anything else. You also want to ensure that the thesis statement is clear and concise. Don’t make your reader hunt for your point. Finally, put your thesis statement at the end of the first paragraph and have your introduction flow toward that statement. Your reader will expect to find your statement in its traditional spot.

If you’re having trouble getting started, or need some guidance on your essay, there are tools available that can help you. CollegeVine offers a free peer essay review tool where one of your peers can read through your essay and provide you with valuable feedback. Getting essay feedback from a peer can help you wow your instructor or college admissions officer with an impactful essay that effectively illustrates your point.

Related CollegeVine Blog Posts

1 Introduction to Information Literacy

Academic research is a form of structured inquiry with specific rules and techniques. There is no single “right” way to do it. As with any other complex activity, like learning a language, the best way to learn is by doing: the more you practice, the more fluent you will become. Expectations about academic research often mistakenly assume that a) one can rely solely on the Internet, and b) research simply means gathering and summarizing sources, but this is an oversimplification. The research process requires information literacy skills, and vice versa.

This introduction will provide you with an explanation of what information literacy is and its applications in school, in the workplace, and in everyday life. This chapter will also provide information on your options for meeting Weber State University’s (WSU) information literacy requirement.

Before we address questions about information literacy, we first need to define information. Michael Buckland (1991) stated that there are three main definitions for information: Information-as-knowledge , Information-as-process , and Information-as-thing . As-knowledge, information is what you perceive in your consciousness; it is what you think you know. As-process, information you receive alters, dismisses, or supports what you know. Finally, as-thing are objects that are vehicles that transmit information. Information-as-thing includes documents, data, recordings, or any other purveyor of information. These three forms of information work together as a system. Let’s examine how it works.

You have a lifelong interest in a particular subject. You are not an expert, but you know quite a bit about it ( Information-as-knowledge ). Upon deciding that this subject is something you would like to pursue even further, you begin to research it. You collect books, magazine articles, journal articles, and videos ( Information-as-thing ) of the subject to further your own knowledge. As you interact with the materials, you find that some are credible, and others are not. You take in these new materials and compare them and contrast them to what you already know, and it furthers your knowledge of the subject ( Information-as-process ). Knowing how to successfully navigate the relationships between these three forms of information to gain insights to further your knowledge is much of the process of information literacy.

INFORMATION LITERACY DEFINITIONS

The Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) recently expanded its definition of information literacy to emphasize flexibility, individual growth, critical self-reflection, and collaboration. According to ACRL (2016), information literacy is a “set of integrated abilities encompassing the reflective discovery of information, the understanding of how information is produced and valued, and the use of information in creating new knowledge and participating ethically in communities of learning” (p. 8). In 2018, the UK’s Information Literacy Group, the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP), released an updated definition of information literacy, including the following:

Information literacy incorporates a set of skills and abilities which everyone needs to undertake information-related tasks; for instance, how to discover, access, interpret, analyse, manage, create, communicate, store and share information. But it is much more than that: it concerns the application of the competencies, attributes and confidence needed to make the best use of information and to interpret it judiciously. It incorporates critical thinking and awareness, and an understanding of both the ethical and political issues associated with using information…. Importantly, information literacy is empowering, and is an important contributor to democratic, inclusive, participatory societies; as interpreted by UNESCO, it is a universal human right. (p. 3)

These are two widely accepted definitions of information literacy from respected organizations that share common themes around the use of information from the perspective of consumer, collaborator, creator, and life-long learner.

BECOMING INFORMATION LITERATE: APPLICATIONS IN EVERYDAY LIFE, SCHOOL, & THE WORKPLACE

In a nutshell, information literacy forms the basis for lifelong learning . It is common to all disciplines, to all learning environments, and to all levels of education. It refers to a set of characteristics that transforms an ordinary student into a wise information consumer/creator and life-long learner.

Everyone has a certain level of information literacy. For instance, school children know that if they need help, they can ask their parents or teachers. As they get older, they become more independent and learn how to find other sources of information through libraries and the Internet. By the time students enter college, they should have a set of basic information literacy competencies. However, these skills will continue to increase and improve through college, the workplace, and beyond.

Some aspects of information literacy involve using various information technologies. Others include critical evaluation of the information you find and the ethical use of information. An information literate individual can problem solve by using technologies to find and manage information, as well as critically evaluate and ethically apply information. They possess a spirit of inquiry and perseverance to find out what is necessary to solve problems or complete tasks.

Information literacy is more than just a general education requirement; information literate is something you become. This happens through your coursework, through personal experiences and interactions with information at home, throughout life, and in the workplace. At school you will use the research process extensively, write research papers, learn about your field of study, and use information technologies to find sources. Through experiences with information at home, you may need to choose the safest car for your teenager, which doctor would be best for your family, or which roofing contractor does the best quality work. Throughout your life, you will make many decisions that affect your future and the future of those around you. You may be looking for a new job, need to relocate to a different state due to a poor local economy, or educate yourself on the candidates for political office in an upcoming election. In the workplace, you may be presented with customer-service issues and expected to solve them by finding data, drawing conclusions, and presenting your findings to upper management. Because information literacy skills in the workplace make an individual a much more attractive job applicant, we are going to discuss this in more detail in the following paragraphs.

Today’s employers are looking for people who can understand and adapt to the characteristics of the information age. “In a world in which information is the very lifeblood of business and the professions, the quality of performance is dependent on the ability to use that information efficiently, effectively and creatively” (Forster, 2017, p. 2). Lawyers, doctors, nurses, teachers, social workers, or those that work in the financial or business sectors, deal with information every day. In order to address issues or problems at work, they must know when legal, business, personal or other information is required, how to conduct complex information searches, know how to critically evaluate and ethically use information, and then synthesize the information into their own knowledge base. Employees without these skills, that are information illiterate, could potentially cause significant financial or legal problems for themselves or their employers (Forster, 2017).

Information literate employees have strong analytical skills, critical thinking skills, and problem solving skills, and make valuable contributions because they are prepared to adapt to a changing environment and think through work assignments or problems. An employee with information literacy skills can also help build professionalism and set themselves apart from their co-workers. In the business world you are expected to do your “due diligence,” which is basically your research. If you work in the cell phone industry and your team has been assigned to improve a phone’s liquid crystal display, your research must back up your recommendations and strategies, but you are also expected to evaluate your research for credibility . If you are using another person’s work, or ideas, you must understand how to ethically use it. The stakes are a lot higher when you conduct research in the business world, and a competent information literate professional understands the need to use and develop these skills.

CONSTRUCT OF INFORMATION LITERACY

For our purposes, the construct of information literacy is made up of a set of six interconnected core concepts that cover ideas about information, communication, research, and scholarship, and focuses on students as both consumers as well as creators of information (ACRL, 2016). (A construct is a complex idea made up of many simpler elements.) The following are the six core concepts of this course:

1. Authority Is Constructed and Contextual A person who is information literate will always consider the source(s) of the information they use. Authority is constructed in that what is considered an authority in one field may differ from what is considered an authority in another field; different people will have different opinions about what makes a person an “expert.” It is contextual in that the information need may help someone determine the level of authority required. For example, sometimes it is necessary to limit a search to materials created by people with advanced degrees or extensive experience; other times it may be appropriate to consider a source whose credentials are not academic.

2. Information Creation as a Process Information in any format is produced to convey a message and is shared via a selected delivery method. The iterative (involving repetition) processes of researching, creating, revising, and disseminating information vary, and the resulting product reflects these differences. Sometimes the quality of a source can be determined by the process used to create it. For example, consider the process that goes into formulating and creating a tweet versus a peer-reviewed article.

3. Information Has Value Information possesses several dimensions of value, including as a commodity, as a means of education, as a means to influence, and as a means of negotiating and understanding the world. One way we acknowledge the value of information is through copyright and citation. Some information is not free, and some people cannot afford to pay for it; this is an example of the monetary value of information. Another example of the value of information is its personal value. For example, some share information about themselves freely, while others are more private. The information you share via your online presence can be manipulated by others for specific purposes.

4. Research as Inquiry Research is iterative and depends upon asking increasingly complex or new questions whose answers in turn develop additional questions or lines of inquiry in any field. When investigating a topic, it is important to consult multiple sources, and multiple kinds of sources.

5. Scholarship as Conversation Communities of scholars, researchers, or professionals engage in sustained discourse with new insights and discoveries occurring over time as a result of varied perspectives and interpretations. In other words, scholarship is a result of the interaction of people through technology, through publication, or person to person. Some of it happens in the hallway at work, some of it happens through social media or blogs , and sometimes it happens through formal publications in scholarly journals . Both formal and informal interactions play a part in developing scholarship.

6. Searching as Strategic Exploration Searching for information is often non-linear and iterative, requiring the evaluation of a range of information sources and the mental flexibility to pursue alternate avenues as new understanding develops. While it typically begins with a topic or question, it is not a simple series of steps that you follow from beginning to end.

At WSU, the general education information literacy requirement is based on these six core concepts, which have been summarized in the learning outcomes for this course. These learning outcomes are listed in your class syllabus.

MEETING WEBER STATE UNIVERSITY’S INFORMATION LITERACY REQUIREMENT

• LIBS 1704: Information Navigator. This is a one credit hour course for students in all majors.
• LIBS/EDUC 2604: Information Resources in Education. This is a one credit hour course intended for education majors or those interested in this field.
• LIBS/BSAD 2704: Information Resources in the Business Disciplines. This one credit hour course is cross-listed in business administration and is intended for business majors or persons interested in this field.
• LIBS 2804: Information Resources in the Social Sciences. This one credit hour course is intended for those majoring in or interested in the social science disciplines.
• LIBS/HTHS 2904: Information Resources in the Health Professions. This one credit hour course is cross-listed in health professions and is intended for those majoring in or interested in the health professions fields.
• ENGL 2015: Intermediate College Writing & Research. This four credit hour course combines elements of English 2010 with the information literacy content of LIBS 1704.

If you aren’t sure which is the best option for you, contact a library representative via phone or email and discuss your options:

• 801-626-7068
• Relay Utah 711; en Español 1-888-346-3162
• Via email: [email protected]

STUDENT SUPPORT SERVICES

Along with offering student assistance at the library, there are a number of free resources available to assist you with all stages of the research process , from searching to writing to formatting to general support.

FOR WRITING

Writing Center https://www.weber.edu/WritingCenter Elizabeth Hall, Room 210 (801) 626-6463 Email help: [email protected]

Free drop-in and appointment tutoring, during day, evening, and weekend hours

FOR RESEARCH

Stewart Library Reference and Research Assistance The Research and Technical Help desk is located on the second floor of the Stewart Library. (801) 626-6545 Email help: [email protected]

Subject Librarians Contact a subject specialist for research assistance in your field of study: https://libguides.weber.edu/SubjectLibrarians

FOR GENERAL SUPPORT

Military-Affiliated Student Center https://weber.edu/veterans Shepherd Union, 322 (801) 626-6039 Email: [email protected]

Disability Services https://www.weber.edu/disabilityservices Student Services Center, Room 181 (Ogden) (801) 626-6413 (Ogden) Davis D2, 256 (Davis) (801) 395-3442 (Davis) Email: [email protected] (Ogden) [email protected] (Davis)

Centers for Belonging and Cultural Engagement https://www.weber.edu/cultural-engagement/ Student Services Bldg. Suite 150 (801) 626-7006

Weber Cares Pantry https://weber.edu/ccel/pantry.html Stewart Library, Room 224 (801) 626-7737 Email: [email protected]

Hourly Child Care https://www.weber.edu/nontrad/childcare.html Shepherd Union, Room 322 (Ogden) (801) 626-7798 (Ogden) Davis D2, 307 (Davis) (801) 395-3464 (Davis) Email: [email protected]

LGBT Resource Center https://www.weber.edu/lgbtresourcecenter Shepherd Union, Room 323 Email: [email protected]

Undocumented Student Resources https://www.weber.edu/undocumented Email: [email protected]

Women’s Center https://www.weber.edu/womenscenter Shepherd Union, Room 323 (801) 626-6090 Email: [email protected]

Nontraditional Student Center https://www.weber.edu/nontrad Shepherd Union, Room 322 (Ogden) (801) 626-7794 (Ogden) Davis D2, Room 307 (Davis) (801) 395-3464 (Davis)

Student Support Services https://www.weber.edu/SSS/ Student Services Center, Room 260 (Ogden) Davis D2, Room 220 (Davis) (801) 626-7009 Email: [email protected]

Tutoring Services https://www.weber.edu/Tutoring/default.html

International Student & Scholar Center https://www.weber.edu/issc Student Services Center, Room 143 (801) 626-6853 Email: [email protected]

Counseling & Psychological Services Center https://www.weber.edu/CounselingCenter/ Student Services Center, Room 280 (Ogden) Davis D2, Room 262 (Davis) (801) 626-6406 (Ogden and Davis)

Using your own words to restate and condense information from a source; summarized passages will often be shorter than the original passage.

The concept of scientific inquiry as a nonlinear and iterative process composed of several components, including Investigate , Search , Locate , Evaluate , Document , and Utilize .

A Construct defined by the American Library Association as the skills necessary to know when information is needed, and to find, evaluate, and utilize it effectively.

One of three parts of Michael Buckland’s concept of Information; the information contained in your own mind; what you know.

One of three parts of Michael Buckland’s concept of Information; the information you receive that supports, contradicts, or alters what you know.

One of three parts of Michael Buckland’s concept of Information; a vehicle of information that allows it to be transmitted, such as a document or website.

Formal and informal learning that occurs throughout life for employment, advancement, and personal fulfillment.

One of the components of the Research Process , which involves the practice of appraising the value of an information source both in its own right and as it relates to your topic, typically by investigating its Authority , Credibility , Currency , Bias , and Documentation .

The quality of believability; the ability of an author or work to inspire trust based on the author’s expertise, training, credentials, objectivity, or other factors of Authority . An important consideration in the Evaluation of Information .

An idea or theory composed of several conceptual elements.

One of the criteria used in the Evaluation of Information , which considers the qualifications of the author to write with Credibility on the topic in question; these may include academic credentials, extensive work experience, or other considerations.

Involving repetition. Utilizing repetition of a sequence of operations, steps, or procedures.

One of the Short Formats of information: a brief message posted by a user on the social media platform, Twitter .

A process some scholarly articles go through prior to publication, where scholars in that field read and review articles submitted for publication, usually with the option to require edits, approve, or deny publication, and often without knowing the name of the authors.

The exclusive legal right of the creator of a work, such as a poem, story, video, or song, to print, perform, record, publish, post online, or profit from the work, whether or not the creator has published it, which limits the work’s use by others to activities allowed under Fair Use . In the United States copyright is assigned automatically to all new works, with a few exceptions including facts, statistical data, and government publications, and may be sold, transferred, or modified, by using a Creative Commons or Open Access license. When copyright expires, a work enters the Public Domain .

One of the components of the Research Process , which involves understanding the information need and articulating it in the form of a Research Question or Thesis Statement .

A regularly updated website or web page written in an informal or conversational style, usually by one person or a small group of contributors; short for “Web Log.” One of the Long Formats of information.

A type of Periodical containing articles written by experts in specific disciplines, often Peer Reviewed .

One of the components of the Research Process , which involves discovering information sources to fulfill the information need identified during the Investigation component.

Information Navigator Copyright © 2022 by Weber State University Stewart Library is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book

Research Guides

Information Literacy & Library Research: Writing a Research Question

• Table of Contents
• Information Literacy
• Research Process
• Topics and Background Research

Writing a Research Question

• Source Types
• Keyword Basics
• Research: A Journey in Small Steps
• Keywords and Boolean Logic
• Using Databases
• How to Find Books and eBooks
• Popular vs Scholarly
• "Search the Library" through the EBSCO Discovery Service
• Applying the CRAAP Test to Sources
• Citing with MLA 9
• Information Synthesis
• How to Critically Read Academic Articles
• Information Has Value
• How to Avoid Plagiarism
• Module 6. Reflecting
• Academic Honesty and Plagiarism
• Copyright and Fair Use
• Creative Commons Licenses
• Information has Value
• Joining the Scholarly Conversation
• Library Classification Systems
• Google Scholar
• Subject Databases
• Find Journal by Title
• Advanced Search Strategies
• MLA Style Examples
• APA Style Examples

The Purpose of Research Questions

Research questions are the focal point of what you are researching. They are the motivating force that gives you something tangible to research, rather than just a vague idea of a topic. Research questions define what you want to know about your topic and guide your search for answers. If you are researching for a paper, your thesis statement will then become the answer to your research question, which is the foundation of your argument.

Having a research question will help you stay focused in your research, which will help you be more effective and efficient. When you are done with college, framing any search for knowledge with a research question can help you figure out exactly what information you need. When you have a clear question describing what you are looking for, you can get to your answer much more easily, rather than searching aimlessly and hoping you find what you need.

Note for INFO 1010

In the Plan: Module 2 Assignment of INFO 1010, you will be asked to choose a specific research topic and write a research question. If you are in a co-required ENGL 2010/INFO 1010 class, the topic and research question should relate to the theme of the English class. Make sure to use these tips to create a research question that can guide you through the research process.

Narrowing Research Topic

Picking a research topic.

Coming up with a topic for a research paper might be one of the hardest parts of the whole process. There are so many different topics you might be interested in and it takes time and effort to make sure that your topic of interest will work for an academic paper that requires research-based writing. Picking and refining your topic to something that will work for your research assignment makes the rest of the process easier.

Some things to consider when choosing a topic:

• Scope - There has to be enough information on a topic in order to write an engaging paper about it. Conversely, if there is too much information on your topic, your paper might end up being superficial because it is difficult to cover your topic in a single paper. A broad topic refers to the focus being on more general things (e.g college students) while a narrow topic refers to focusing on a few specific things that are a subset of the broader topic (e.g. eating habits of college students). Kind of like zooming in a picture to a smaller section that you can see more clearly. The more you zoom in or narrow your focus, the less you will be able to write about (e.g. eating habits of left-handed college students), so you want to find that scope that will allow you to write 10 pages on the topic.
• Researchability -  If scholars aren’t researching and writing about a topic, you will have a difficult time finding information on it.This could happen for many reasons, but especially if your topic is too new. Publishing in academic sources takes time, and if your topic is very recent there may not be enough research done to allow you to write a paper. Similarly, if your topic is very specific there might be very little research on that niche topic. Without sources you cannot write a research-based paper.
• Appropriate Level - Some topics are too basic for college-level work. Research questions at the university level are typically complex and multi-faceted without an obvious answer. Answers to these questions are not black and white but have a lot of nuance and often start with “it depends.” Academic research is more than writing a report on a specific topic. It is a deep dive into the scholarly conversation on that topic, which requires thorough investigation into what is known about a topic. It involves the use of sources written by academics or other experts, generally called scholarly or academic sources.  
• Making sure it fits the theme of the class or parameters of the assignment - You want to make sure that the topic you choose actually works for the assignment and has to do with the topic of the class. If you are taking an American History class, your topic should be about the right time period of American History. If you are taking the English 2010 section on writing about fairy tales, your topic should be about fairy tales.
• Making sure it's interesting to you - Whatever you choose to write about, it better be something that you won't mind spending a lot of time with. You will not only have to read a bunch of books and articles about your subject, but you will also have to write about it. If you aren't interested in the topic, or even hate it, engaging with the research might be a struggle.

Refining the Scope of Your Topic

The more broad the scope of your topic is, the more results you’ll get (i.e. pages and pages of articles). The results will likely be general and unfocused. There will be enough resources to write books on the topic.

The narrower the scope of your topic is, the more specific your results will be, so there will be less information or fewer search results, depending on how narrow your topic gets. If your topic is too narrow, you might not get any results at all.

It's okay to start with a broad topic you are interested in and then narrow it down to a manageable/researchable size, until it is just right for your assignment's parameters. For example:

Start with a broad topic you are interested in, such as: dogs. Then you can think of things about dogs that are interesting to you and narrow it down, etc. Once you have a topic, you can frame it into a question that will help direct your research.

Broad topic: Dogs

Narrow Topic: Dogs and mental health benefits.

Question example: How can dogs improve the mental health of a person?

Narrower Topic: Dogs and their effect on the mental health of College Students.

Question example: How can dogs improve the mental health of college students?

As you are narrowing your topic, consider these points as ways to potentially focus it:

• Time : limiting your topic to a time period (This decade? Last decade? This year?)
• Place : a geographic emphasis (In the United States? In the Western United States? In Utah?)
• Population : this could be age, occupation, race or ethnicity, gender, etc.
• Viewpoint : this could be discipline specific, looking at it from a medical, social, cultural, or political standpoint.

In the above example, the interest was in dogs and mental health, which is a medical viewpoint of dogs, but then we further limited the question to the population of college students, to narrow the focus to something relatable to our demographic population.

Note for INFO 1010:

Your topic needs to be focused and narrow enough to work for a 7-10 page paper, and should relate to the topic of your ENGL 2010 class (if you are taking INFO 1010 and ENGL 2010 together). The more you narrow down your topic, the fewer pages you will be able to write, so you want enough to fill those 10 pages without stretching. At the same time your topic has to be focused enough to make a good argument and fully discuss your topic. Take time to play with your topic to explore options on how to broaden or narrow it. The SUU librarians can help you with this process. Come to the Questions Desk or use online help.

What is a Research Question?

A research question is the starting point. It poses the point of your research by asking exactly what you are trying to figure out.

When you write a paper, most will require a Thesis Statement. Your thesis statement is the answer you will explain or prove in your research paper. A good research question is the starting point for a good thesis statement, which leads to a good paper.

Question:  How can dogs improve the mental health of college students?

Thesis Statement:  Interaction with dogs can reduce stress and anxiety in college students.

How to Write a Research Question

Your research question is what you are curious about researching, put into a formal question. This question will help you articulate what you are trying to research and focus your topic. It will also help you when brainstorming your keywords and search statements.

Your question needs to be broad enough to cover your whole topic and fill your required number of pages. But it also needs to be narrow enough to actually be answered in that same number of pages.

Here are the basics of what makes a good research question:

• Cannot be answered with a YES or NO response
• Should not be two questions squished into one
• Cannot be answered by a number, word, or phrase (e.g. definition, statistic, etc.)
• Cannot be answered using a single source (e.g. dictionary or Wikipedia article)
• States precisely what is to be answered
• Should not be too broad or too narrow
• Should not be biased, subjective, or leading
• Should represent a topic that is interesting to you
• Should generate a discussion

You want your question to say exactly what you want to research in the simplest way possible. Extra words or fillers can really bog down your question. So try to be simple and straightforward. That is why working from the more basic or broadest part of your topic and narrowing down can be a good method. If you go too narrow, then take it a step back.

Identifying the Main Concepts of Your Question

To make your research question clear and concise, identify your main concepts. Can you distill your topic or question down to just a few keywords or concepts? What is the relationship between these concepts? Is there a correlation? Or a cause and effect relationship? Identifying your main concepts will be helpful as you write a good research question, since it will help you add just what you need and leave out the extra words and phrases that will just confuse your question.

For example, if you wanted to write about dogs and how they can help with mental health issues, the most important concepts of this topic would be dogs and mental health. You can then use those main concepts to write a question that will show the relationship between those two concepts in a clear way. Such as:

How can dogs affect the mental health of a person?

As we saw in the example in the Narrowing Your Topic section earlier, that question is too broad, you could add another concept in, such as those suggested earlier (time, place, population, viewpoint). A common way to narrow your question would be to pick a specific population for the people potentially affected by dogs. Such as the college students in the previous example: 

How can dogs affect the mental health of college students ?

Most questions need at least two main concepts, and some larger topics will need a further way to narrow or refine the topic, such as a population.

Good Questions and Bad Questions

Getting the phrasing right on a question really affects the direction of the question, so make sure you use clear and precise wording that states exactly what you want to find out. Any topic can be turned into a good or bad question, depending on how it's phrased. Here are some examples of a good question and some bad versions of the same topic and question. Comparing them might help you get the hang of how to phrase your topic into a question that will really describe what you want to know.

Your Plan: Module 2 Assignment will ask you to write your paper topic as a research question. You will want your question to have all the required pieces of a good research question and to not fall into any of the bad question traps seen in the table above.

• << Previous: Topics and Background Research
• Next: Source Types >>
• Last Updated: May 3, 2024 2:15 PM
• URL: https://library.suu.edu/LibraryResearch

Contact the Sherratt Library

351 W. University Boulevard Cedar City, UT 84720 (435) 586-7933 [email protected]

Connect with us

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

16 Information Literacy

Importance of information literacy.

Learning Objectives

Upon completing this chapter, you should be able to

• apply information literacy skills to search for and gather information to complete a given research-based task;
• apply information literacy strategies to determine if a source is valid, reliable, and/or credible;
• write a short report adhering to the norms required for the document type, and the principles of effective workplace writing in response to a given research-based scenario.

Introduction

In this chapter you will learn how to conduct research for use in your professional life. When you are writing more complex pieces of communication, such as the reports you learned about in a previous chapter, you’ll need to draw upon research to make your points clear and persuasive. Here you’ll find out how to identify what information you need, where to find it, how to cite it, and how to pull together your research into a finished piece of professional work.

Identifying Your Information Needs

Not every piece of business writing requires research or investigation. When you are undertaking more formal documents, particularly reports, you’ll need to do your research, but this does not necessarily mean long hours at a library. Start by consulting with colleagues who have written similar documents and ask what worked, what didn’t work, and what was well received by management and the target audience. Your efforts will need to meet similar needs.

Before you go to the library, look over the information sources you already have in hand. Do you regularly read a magazine that relates to the topic? Was there an article in the newspaper you read that might work? Is there a book, website, or podcast that has information you can use? You might even know someone who has experience in the area you want to research, someone who has been involved with the topic for his or her whole life. We do a lot of our reading and research online today, so getting information firsthand is probably not the first method that comes to mind—but talking to an expert directly will give you insight into a topic that no website can compete with.

When you sit down to write a message that incorporates research, you’ll need to consider the purpose and audience just as you would with any other professional communication. Your general purpose will, most often, be to inform, but it may also be to persuade. For example, if you are writing a recommendation report, you’ll draw upon your research to persuade the reader to take the action you suggest. You will also have a specific purpose in mind, in terms of the results you want to achieve. For example, if you work for a magazine and are researching content for a marketing campaign, your specific purpose might be to increase subscriber numbers by 20 percent in the next quarter.

You’ll also consider what your audience’s needs and expectations are. For example, if your boss has asked you to draft a report on social media marketing so that he can present an action plan to the management team, your approach will be more formal than if you are simply surfing the web to find and price out a location for the next team-building day. Once you know your audience and purpose, it’s time to start gathering information.

Narrowing Your Topic

You’ll start with developing ideas around your topic, but even with a purpose in mind, you may still have too broad of a subject to cover within the time frame you have. You might want to revisit your purpose and ask yourself, how specific is my topic?

Imagine that you work for a local skydiving training facility. Your boss has assembled a list of people who might be candidates for skydiving and asks you to write a letter to them. Your general purpose is to persuade, and your specific purpose is to increase the number of students enrolled in classes. Your approach might be to tell your audience how exhilarating the experience of skydiving is, discuss the history and basic equipment, cover the basic requirements necessary to go on a first jump, and provide reference information on where your audience could go to learn more (videos and websites, for example).

But, at this point you’ll probably realize that a one-page letter simply is not enough space for the content you are planning to share. Rather than expand the letter to two pages and risk losing the reader, consider your audience and what they might want to learn. How can you narrow your topic to better consider their needs? As you edit your topic, considering what the essential information is and what can be cut, you’ll come to focus on the key points naturally and reduce the pressure on yourself to cover too much information in a limited space.

Perhaps starting with a testimony about a client’s first jump, followed by basic equipment and training needed, and finally a reference to your organization, may help you to more clearly define your document. Skydiving history may be fascinating, but including it in the letter would result in too much information. Your specific purpose may be to increase enrolment, but, in order to persuade your audience to consider skydiving for themselves, your general goal will need to be to communicate goodwill and establish communication with this target audience.

Focus on Key Points

Let’s imagine that you are the office manager for a pet boarding facility that cares for dogs and cats while their owners are away. The general manager has asked you to draft a memo to remind employees about safety practices. Your general purpose is twofold: to inform employees about safety concerns and to motivate them to engage in safe work practices. Your specific purpose is also twofold: to prevent employees from being injured or infected with diseases on the job, and to reduce the risk of the animal patients being injured or becoming sick while in your care.

You are an office manager, not a veterinary or medical professional, and there are volumes written about animal injuries and illnesses, along with entire schools devoted to teaching medicine to doctors who care for human patients. In a short memo, you cannot cover all possible examples of injury or illness. Instead, focus on the behaviours and situations you observe around the office. For example:

• Do employees wash their hands thoroughly before and after contact with each animal?
• Are hand-washing facilities kept clean and supplied with soap and paper towels?
• When cleaning the animals’ cages, do employees wear appropriate protection such as gloves?
• What is the procedure for disposing of animal waste, and do all employees know and follow the procedure?
• When an animal is being transferred from one cage to another, are there enough staff members present to assist when needed?
• What should an employee do if he or she is bitten or scratched?
• What if an animal exhibits signs of being ill?
• Have there been any recent incidents that raised concerns about safety?

Once you have posed and answered questions like these, it should be easier to narrow down the information so that the result is a reasonably brief, easy-to-read memo that will get employees’ attention and persuade them to adopt safe work practices.

Check Your Understanding

Complete the module below on developing a research topic:

Planning  Your Investigation

Now let’s imagine that you work for a small accounting firm whose president would like to start sending a monthly newsletter to clients and prospective clients. He is aware of newsletter production service vendors that provide newsletters to represent a particular accounting firm. He has asked you to compile a list of such services, their prices and practices, so that the firm can choose one to employ.

You will begin your planning immediately while your conversation with the president is still going on, as you will need more information before you can gauge the scope of the assignment. Approximately how many newsletter vendors does your president want to know about—are three or four enough? Would 20 be too many? Is there a set budget figure that the newsletter cost must not exceed? How soon does your report need to be done?

Once you have these details, you will be able to plan when and where to gather the needed information. If the president has any examples of newsletters he has seen from other businesses, you can examine them and note the contact information of the companies that produced them.

Assuming that your president wants to consider more than just a couple of vendors, you will need to expand your search. The next logical place to look is the Internet. As anyone who has spent an entire evening aimlessly web surfing can attest, the Internet is a great place to find loads and loads of interesting but irrelevant information. Knowing what questions you are seeking to answer will help you stay focused on your report’s topic, and knowing the scope of the report will help you to decide how much research time to plan in your schedule.

Staying Organized

Once you open up a web browser such as Google and type in a search parameter like “newsletter production,” you will have a wealth of information to look at. Much of it may be irrelevant, but even the information that fits with your project will be so much that you will be challenged to keep track of it.

Perhaps the most vital strategy for staying organized while doing online research is to open a blank page in your word processor and title it “Sources.” Each time you find a webpage that contains useful and relevant information, copy the URL and paste it on this Sources page. Under the URL, you might also make a few notes about what you found there. If in doubt about a source, list it for the time being—you can always discard it later. Having these source URLs and snippets of information all in one place will save you a great deal of time later on.

As you explore various websites of companies that provide newsletter production services, you will, no doubt, encounter new questions that your president did not answer in the original conversation:

• Does the newsletter need to be printed on paper and mailed? Or would an email newsletter be acceptable, or even preferable?
• Does your firm want the newsletter vendor to write all of the content customized to your firm, provide a menu of pre-existing articles for your firm to choose from, or let your firm provide some—or even all—of the content?
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of these various options?

You also realize that in order to get any cost estimates, even when the above questions are settled, you will need to know the desired length of the newsletter (in pages or in word count), and how many recipients are on your firm’s mailing list. At this point in your investigation, it may make sense to give your president an informal interim report summarizing what you have found out and what additional questions need to be answered.

Having a well-organized list of the information you have assembled, the new questions that have arisen, and the sources where you found your information will allow you to continue researching effectively as soon as you have the answers you need.

Internet Search Strategies

Whether you are searching research databases or conducting general online searches , the search terms and phrases you use will determine what information you find. Following some basic search term guidelines can make the process go smoothly.

Start by using keywords that relate to your topic.

Example : alternative energy

To expand your search, use synonyms or components of the initial search terms.

Synonym Example: renewable energy

Components Example : algae energy, wind energy, biofuel

Another technique you can use is to refine the presentation of your search terms using boolean operators . These are words like AND, NOT, and OR. The asterisk and parentheses can also be used. These can be used to filter your search in the following ways.

When you find a helpful article or website, look for additional search terms and sources that you can follow up on.

 Filtering Your Results

When using a search engine like Google, you will get a millions of search results on just about any topic you are looking for. Given the volume of possibilities, it is helpful if you can filter these results in some way.

You may be looking for a specific type of search result, for example, an image, map location, news article, or video. For this, a bar across the top of Google’s search results allows you to filter results to these specific types.

This bar also has a “Search Tools” button that can help you further. When you click on this button, you’ll get a second search bar containing options specific to your search type. For example, if you use it in the basic “Web” search, you’ll be able to filter your results by country, language, location, and time.  If you use it in “Image” search, you can filter your image results by size, colour, kind, date, and usage rights. These search tools can help you drill down to the information you need more quickly.

Google Scholar

If your research is more academic in nature, you may need to find scholarly articles and journals to support your assertions. Academic journal search engines like Google Scholar search these specifically.

You can filter your search by recency (since 2015, for example); set up alerts for specific keywords; and view the author(s), year of publication, number of citations, source, and other details before you click on the article link.

Most scholarly journals require payment for viewing and downloading articles, but in many cases you can read the article’s abstract before you decide to buy. Alternatively, your school library may have purchased access to various scholarly journals for student use, so it is worth inquiring if you can access these using your college or university login. Some workplaces (particularly those in the fields of education and research) will have similar access agreements.

The Filter Bubble

Search engines like Google, and websites that use complex programming to decide what to show you, like Facebook, have a habit of delivering what they think you want to see. To do this, these websites use information they know about you in order to feed you results that will likely appeal to you. This is done by aggregating data on your previous searches, gender, location, language, other websites you visit, products you’ve looked at in online shops, activity of your friends, political leanings, and many other details. This effect, coined “the Filter Bubble” by Eli Pariser (2011), causes you to receive search results that are not as objective as you think. In other words, It is difficult to get information about viewpoints that oppose your own, for instance.

So when you are using the Internet for research, make a point to seek out viewpoints that oppose your own. Sign out of your online accounts or turn on incognito browsing to see if your results are different. Instead of your own laptop, use computers at school that do not have the same online “picture” of you. Use scholarly search engines to read expert opinions, but, most of all, be aware of the filter bubble, and seek out ways to get around it. It takes a little bit of effort, but by circumventing it, you may find that your research is more well-rounded and objective as a result.

Complete the module below on internet searching tips:

Evaluating Sources of Information for Validity, Reliability, and Credibilit y

One aspect of Internet research that cannot be emphasized enough is the abundance of online information that is incomplete, outdated, misleading, or downright false. Anyone can put up a website; once it is up, the owner may or may not enter updates or corrections on a regular basis. Anyone can write a blog on any subject, whether or not that person actually has any expertise in the area. Therefore, it is always important to look beyond the surface of a site to assess who sponsors it, where the information came from, and whether the site owner has a certain agenda. When you write for business and industry you will want to draw on reputable, reliable sources—printed as well as electronic ones—because they reflect on the credibility of the message and the messenger.

Analyzing and assessing information is an important skill in the preparation of writing. Here are six main points to consider when evaluating a document, presentation, or similar source of information.

In general, documents that represent quality reasoning have the following six traits:

• A clearly articulated purpose and goal
• A question, problem, or issue to address
• Information, data, and evidence that is clearly relevant to the stated purpose and goals
• Inferences or interpretations that lead to conclusions based on the presented information, data, and evidence
• A frame of reference or point of view that is clearly articulated
• Assumptions, concepts, and ideas that are clearly articulated

An additional question that is central to your assessment of your sources is how credible the source is. This question is difficult to address even with years of training and expertise. Academics have long cultivated an understood acceptance of the role of objective, impartial use of the scientific method to determine validity and reliability. But as research is increasingly dependent on funding, and funding often brings specific points of view and agendas with it, pure research can be—and has been—compromised. You can no longer simply assume that “studies show” something without awareness of who conducted the study, how it was conducted, and who funded the effort.

It may seem like hard work to assess your sources, to make sure your information is accurate and truthful, but the effort is worth it. Business and industry rely on reputation and trust in order to maintain healthy relationships. Your document, regardless of how small it may appear in the larger picture, is an important part of that reputation and interaction.

Credibility Checklist

When you are looking at a web source, here are some things you should keep in mind when trying to identify the source’s credibility:

• Who wrote the material? Look for an author’s name or company logo. Look up the person/company elsewhere to see what you can find out about them. Also look for any contact information on the website, such as an address or phone number. If the organization is of suspect origins, they are less likely to provide direct contact details.
• Who owns the website? You can use web domain lookup tools (like Who.is , for example) to find out who the owner of the web domain is and how long they have owned the domain for. This may help you to decipher who is behind the message.
• Is the material recent? You might notice a “last updated” date across the bottom of the website or a date attached to the article. If the information is timely or focuses on a highly changeable topic (technology or medical research, for example), you’ll want the most recent information you can find.
• How is the material laid out? While not a definitive clue to authenticity, a poorly designed website full of flashing banners and clip art might quickly tell you that you’re not looking at the most reputable source!
• What is the website doing with your information? Any websites that process payments or collect any user data are required to tell you what they collect and what they are doing with this information, though a cookie alert and perhaps also through a Terms and Conditions page or Privacy Policy. Look for these on any website before you give out personal details of any kind.
• How is the website viewed by the wider community on the web? Search for the website’s name and any company names or author names you find on the site, using search engines and social media. Can you find any reviews? Has the website been pointed to as a credible resource via social media sharing?

The above list isn’t exhaustive, of course, but it will help you in your search. Sometimes your first reaction is the best one: What is your tummy test telling you?

Complete the module below on evaluating internet sources:

Citing Your Sources

In your academic and professional career, you’ll hear about a few different ways to cite your sources—for example, Harvard Style, MLA, and APA. In this course, we’ll focus on APA formatting, developed by the American Psychological Association.

Citing your sources will be easier if you plan for this at the start of the process. You should

• begin noting down your sources at the beginning of your research,
• apply APA guidelines as you write so that you have less cleanup to do later, and
• use online tools like CiteThisForMe to get correct formatting.

APA Formatting

These are the major components of an APA-style report or paper:

• Headings and, if necessary, subheadings to organize the content
• In-text citations of research sources
• References page

All these components must be saved in one document, not as separate documents.

The title page of your paper includes the following information:

• Title of the paper
• Author’s name
• Name of the institution with which the author is affiliated
• Header at the top of the page with the paper title (in capital letters) and the page number (If the title is lengthy, you may use a shortened form of it in the header.)

List the first three elements in the order given in the previous list, centred about one-third of the way down from the top of the page. Use the headers and footers tool of your word-processing program to add the header, with the title text at the left and the page number in the upper-right corner.

The next page of your paper provides an abstract, or brief summary of your findings. You may not need to be provide an abstract in every paper, but you should use one in papers that include a hypothesis. A good abstract is concise—about one hundred to one hundred fifty words—and is written in an objective, impersonal style. Your writing voice will not be as apparent here as in the body of your paper. When writing the abstract, take a just-the-facts approach and summarize your research question and your findings in a few sentences.

Margins, Pagination, and Headings

APA style requirements also address specific formatting concerns, such as margins, pagination, and heading styles within the body of the paper. Review the following APA guidelines:

• Set the top, bottom, and side margins of your paper at 1 inch.
• Use double-spaced text throughout your paper.
• Use a standard font, such as Times New Roman or Arial, in a legible size (10- to 12-point).
• Use continuous pagination throughout the paper, including the title page and the references section. Page numbers appear flush right within your header.
• Section headings and subsection headings within the body of your paper use different types of formatting depending on the level of information you are presenting.

APA style uses section headings to organize information, making it easy for the reader to follow the writer’s train of thought and to know immediately what major topics are covered. Depending on the length and complexity of the paper, its major sections may also be divided into subsections, sub-subsections, and so on. These smaller sections, in turn, use different heading styles to indicate different levels of information. In essence, you are using headings to create a hierarchy of information.

The following heading styles used in APA formatting are listed in order of most important to least important:

• Section headings use centred, boldface type. Headings use title case, with important words in the heading capitalized.
• Subsection headings use left-aligned, boldface type. Headings use title case.
• The third level uses left-aligned, indented, boldface type. Headings use a capital letter only for the first word, and they end in a period.
• The fourth level follows the same style used for the previous level, but the headings are boldfaced and italicized.
• The fifth level follows the same style used for the previous level, but the headings are italicized and not boldfaced.

In-Text Citations

Throughout the body of your paper, include a citation whenever you quote or paraphrase material from your research sources. The purpose of citations is twofold: to give credit to others for their ideas and to allow your reader to follow up and learn more about the topic, if desired. Your in-text citations provide basic information about your source; each source you cite will have a longer entry in the references section that provides more detailed information.

In-text citations must provide the name of the author or authors and the year the source was published. (When a given source does not list an individual author, you may provide the source title or the name of the organization that published the material instead.) When directly quoting a source, you are also required to include the page number where the quote appears in your citation.

This information may be included within the sentence or in a parenthetical reference at the end of the sentence, as in these examples.

Epstein (2010) points out that “junk food cannot be considered addictive in the same way that we think of psychoactive drugs as addictive” (p. 137).

Here, the writer names the source author when introducing the quote and provides the publication date in parentheses after the author’s name. The page number appears in parentheses after the closing quotation marks and before the period that ends the sentence.

Addiction researchers caution that “junk food cannot be considered addictive in the same way that we think of psychoactive drugs as addictive” (Epstein, 2010, p. 137).

Here, the writer provides a parenthetical citation at the end of the sentence that includes the author’s name, the year of publication, and the page number separated by commas. Again, the parenthetical citation is placed after the closing quotation marks and before the period at the end of the sentence.

As noted in the book Junk Food, Junk Science (Epstein, 2010, p. 137), “junk food cannot be considered addictive in the same way that we think of psychoactive drugs as addictive.”

Here, the writer chose to mention the source title in the sentence (an optional piece of information to include) and followed the title with a parenthetical citation. Note that the parenthetical citation is placed before the comma that signals the end of the introductory phrase.

David Epstein’s book Junk Food, Junk Science (2010) pointed out that “junk food cannot be considered addictive in the same way that we think of psychoactive drugs as addictive” (p. 137).

Another variation is to introduce the author and the source title in your sentence and include the publication date and page number in parentheses within the sentence or at the end of the sentence. As long as you have included the essential information, you can choose the option that works best for that particular sentence and source.

Citing a book with a single author is usually a straightforward task. Of course, your research may require that you cite many other types of sources, such as books or articles with more than one author or sources with no individual author listed. You may also need to cite sources available in both print and online and nonprint sources, such as websites and personal interviews.

References List

The brief citations included in the body of your paper correspond to the more detailed citations provided at the end of the paper in the references section. In-text citations provide basic information (the author’s name, the publication date, and the page number if necessary), while the references section provides more extensive bibliographical information. Again, this information allows your reader to follow up on the sources you cited and do additional reading about the topic if they so desire.

The specific format of entries in the list of references varies slightly for different source types, but the entries generally include the following information:

• The name(s) of the author(s) or institution that wrote the source
• The year of publication and, where applicable, the exact date of publication
• The full title of the source
• For books, the city of publication
• For articles or essays, the name of the periodical or book in which the article or essay appears
• For magazine and journal articles, the volume number, issue number, and pages where the article appears
• For sources on the web, the URL where the source is located

The references page is double spaced and lists entries in alphabetical order by the author’s last name. If an entry continues for more than one line, the second line and each subsequent line are indented five spaces.

APA Reference Element Worksheet

APA has put together a worksheet to help you create your Reference entry.  Once your reference entry is done, creating the matching in-text citation is much easier.

https://apastyle.apa.org/instructional-aids/scaffolded-reference-elements-worksheet.pdf

Complete the module below on APA citation style:

Presenting Your Findings

Organizing your document.

The purpose of business writing is to communicate facts and ideas. In order to accomplish that purpose, each document has key components that need to be present in order for your reading audience to understand the message. These elements may seem simple to the point that you may question how any writer could neglect them. But if you take note of how often miscommunication and misunderstanding happen, particularly in written communications, you will realize that it happens all the time. Omission or neglect may be intentional, but it is often unintentional; the writer assumes (wrongly) that the reader will easily understand a concept, idea, or the meaning of the message. From background to language, from culture to education, many variables can come into play and hinder effective communication. The degree to which you address these basic elements will increase the effectiveness of your documents. Each document must address the following:

• (and sometimes) Why

If you have these elements in mind as you prepare your document, it will be easier to decide what to write and in what order. They will also be useful when you are reviewing your document before delivering it. If your draft omits any one of these elements or addresses it in an unclear fashion, you will know what you need to do to fix it.

Chances are you have learned the basic principles of outlining in English writing courses: an outline is a framework that organizes main ideas and subordinate ideas in a hierarchical series of Roman numerals and alphabetical letters. The right column of the following table presents a generic outline in a classical style. In the left column, the three main structural elements of an informative document are tied to the outline. You will need to fill in an outline using the structure on the right with the actual ideas and points you are making in your writing project. Feel free to adapt and tailor it to your needs, depending on the specifics of your report, letter, or other document.

The following table presents an alternate outline form that may be more suitable for brief documents like letters and emails. You can use this format as a model or modify it as needed.

Using Rhetorical Proofs

Another way to approach organizing your document is with the classical proofs known as ethos, logos, and pathos. Ethos , or your credibility, will come through with your choice of sources and authority on the subject(s). Your logos , or the logic of your thoughts represented across the document, will allow the reader to come to understand the relationships among who, what, where, when, and so forth. If your readers cannot follow your logic, they will lose interest, fail to understand your message, and possibly not even read it at all. Finally, your pathos , or passion and enthusiasm, will be reflected in your design and word choices. If your document fails to convey enthusiasm for the subject, how can you expect the reader to be interested? Every document, indeed every communication, represents aspects of these classical elements.

General Purpose and Thesis Statements

No matter what your business writing project involves, it needs to convey some central idea. To clarify the idea in your mind and make sure it comes through to your audience, write a thesis statement. A thesis statement, or central idea, should be short, specific, and to the point.

This statement is key to the success of your document. If your audience has to work to find out what exactly you are talking about, or what your stated purpose or goal is, they will be less likely to read, be influenced, or recall what you have written. By stating your point clearly in your introduction, and then referring back to it in the body of the document and at the end, you will help your readers to understand and remember your message.

Organizing Principles

Once you know the basic elements of your message, you need to decide in what order to present them to your audience. A central organizing principle will help you determine a logical order for your information. One common organizing principle is chronology, or time: The writer tells what happened first, then what happened next, then what is happening now, and, finally, what is expected to happen in the future. Another common organizing principle is comparison: The writer describes one product, an argument on one side of an issue, or one possible course of action; and then compares it with another product, argument, or course of action.

As an example, let’s imagine that you are a business writer within the transportation industry and you have been assigned to write a series of informative pieces about an international initiative called the “TransAmerican Transportation System Study.” Just as the Canadian Pacific Railway once unified Canada from east to west, which was further reinforced by the TransCanada Highway System, the proposed TransAmerican Transportation System will facilitate integrating the markets of Mexico, the United States, and Canada from north to south. Rail transportation has long been an integral part of the transportation and distribution system for goods across the Americas, and its role will be important in this new system.

In deciding how to organize your report, you have several challenges and many possibilities of different organizing principles to use. Part of your introduction will involve an historical perspective, and a discussion of the events that led from the Canadian Pacific Railway to the TransAmerican Transportation System proposal. Other aspects will include comparing the old railroad and highway systems to the new ones, and the transformative effect this will have on business and industry. You will need to acknowledge the complex relationships and challenges that collaboration has overcome, and highlight the common benefits. You will be called on to write informative documents as part of a public relations initiative, persuasive essays to underscore the benefits for those who prefer the status quo, and even write speeches for celebrations and awards.

The following table lists 17 different organizing principles and how they might be applied to various pieces you would write about the TransAmerican Transportation System. The left column provides the name of the organizing principle. The centre column explains the process of organizing a document according to each principle, and the third column provides an example.

In this chapter, you read about doing research to support your workplace documents. You learned some new ways to find information that supports your assertions, from speaking to experts, to collaborating with colleagues, reading books, and, of course, searching on the Internet. You considered that not all of the information on the Internet is credible, learned some ways to distinguish between true and false on the Internet, and found ways to target and filter your online research. Then you found out about APA formatting and how to use it to cite your sources. You went on to find out about how to structure your information in a document, such as outlining your work, using rhetorical proofs, and choosing among organizing principles. From here you should be able to successfully develop more complex workplace documents, such as reports. Good luck!

Key Takeaways

• Clarify your general and specific purpose before you begin your research.
• Identify the resources that you have available, narrow your topic, focus on key points, and plan your investigation.
• Use boolean operators to narrow your search.
• Use search engine filters to find information quickly.
• Source academic journal articles using Google Scholar.
• “The filter bubble” can have a significant impact on the types of search results you receive online.
• Evaluate your sources for credibility. Consider the creator, language, recency, activity, and reputation of the website sources you use.
• Use APA style to place inline (in-text) citations and to create your reference list.
• Outline your work first to make the writing process easier.
• Use rhetorical proofs and/or organizational principles to order your document.

Further Reading and Links

If you would like to read more about finding, using, and attributing Creative Commons–licensed materials, see the following sites:

• Formal Reports and Proposals http://www.pearsoned.ca/highered/divisions/virtual_tours/northey/sample_chapter_9.pdf
• “SEEK! The search skills game” available from the OER Commons https://www.oercommons.org/courses/seek-the-search-skills-game under a CC BY-NC 3.0 Unported license.
• A Guide to Crap Detection Resources
• Written Document Examples from the Ontario College Writing Exemplars

Ayres, J., & Miller, J. (1994). Effective public speaking (4th ed., p. 274). Madison, WI: Brown & Benchmark.

Fulkerson, R. (1996). The Toulmin model of argument and the teaching of composition. In E. Barbara, P. Resch, & D. Tenney (Eds.), Argument revisited: argument redefined: negotiating meaning the composition classroom (pp. 45–72). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Johannesen, R. (1996). Ethics in human communication (4th ed.). Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.

Pariser, E. (2011). The filter bubble. New York: Penguin Press.

Toulmin, S. (1958). The uses of argument. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Attribution Statement (Information Literacy)

This chapter is a remix containing content from a variety of sources published under a variety of open licenses, including the following:

Chapter Content

• Original content contributed by the Olds College OER Development Team, of Olds College to Professional Communications Open Curriculum under a CC-BY 4.0 license .
• Content created by Anonymous for Research and Investigation: Getting Started; in Communication for Business Success, published at   http://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/communication-for-business-success-canadian-edition/s09-03-research-and-investigation-get.html under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license .
• Content created by Anonymous for Choosing Search Terms; in Writers’ Handbook, published at http://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/writers-handbook/s11-03-choosing-search-terms.html under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license .
• Content created by Anonymous for Ethics, Plagiarism, and Reliable Sources; in Communication for Business Success, published at http://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/communication-for-business-success/s09-04-ethics-plagiarism-and-reliable.html under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license .
• Content created by Anonymous for Formatting a Research Paper; in Successful Writing, published at http://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/successful-writing/s17-01-formatting-a-research-paper.html under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license .
• Content created by Anonymous for Organization; in Communication for Business Success, published at http://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/communication-for-business-success/s10-01-organization.html under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license .
• Figure 2.5.1 – A screenshot of search tools from Google.ca . Google and the Google logo are registered trademarks of Google Inc., used with permission.

Professional Communications Copyright © by Olds College is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book