EDUC 500 - Research Methodology in Education

Step 7. Keeping Track

Documenting your research from beginning to end is an important part of the process. The steps you took to conduct your research need to be able to be replicated. 

For example, you may be asked to present the keywords or search strategies you used to find your resources to a professor, as part of the journal publication process, or even to a grant funding agency. Other times, you may be looking for a specific way of organizing your citations in one place when you are doing research in many databases. 

Regardless of the reason, keeping track of your research and the steps you took to complete it is always important. 

When keeping track of your searches, you want to ensure you are writing down the following pieces of information:

1. Database Searched
2. Search term(s) used (if applicable - how they were combined - AND/OR/NOT)
3. Limiters used - i.e. dates, language, peer-reviewed
4. Number of results found
5. Date of your search
6. Comments on the results (if applicable)

An example search history may look like the following:

Often, databases will now have options for printing and/or saving search histories when you make an account. Take advantage of these to avoid a lot of manual tracking.

Don't reinvent the wheel!

Other institutions offer templates you can use when tracking your research manually.

For example: University of Vermont

To track the resources you are finding in your searches and are relevant to your research, consider using a citation management tool. A citation management tool will help:

• organize your research all in one place
• avoid plagiarism by tracking your research path
• create in-text citations with the click of a button(s)
• easily format or re-format bibliographies

Tools include: EndNote, Zotero, and Mendeley. 

For more in depth help please contact your subject librarian.