View a Youtube video on the process of concept mapping to develop your research paper topic.
Search Statement:
Is there a connection between exposure to cosmetics and cancer rates in women?
1. Break your search statement into key concepts and list synonyms and word variants. For the example in the previous step, the key concepts are
a. cosmetics and
b. cancer [and possibly]
c. women
2. Figure out the relationship between your key terms: do you want articles that talk about BOTH ideas? Or only one of those terms at a time? If you want BOTH terms, you would need to choose the AND operator within your database search box. The OR operator is used to group together your synonyms or variants of a search term, e.g. cancer OR disease.
Click on the Worksheet Tab on this guide for more help on this part of your preparation.
