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Michele Hayslett
Librarian for Data Svcs & Gov't Information
919-513-4433

Choosing a Research Topic

Lots of tools are available to help you choose a topic and also some for refining it.

1. Your professor - the expert in several things:

• topics that are likely to work well
• resources you should consider, and most importantly,
• what will be evaluated for your class.

2. At the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR)

• Browse the Bibliography of Data-Related Literature - http://www.icpsr.org/citations/index.html
  This lists articles which cite ICPSR data sets. See what others have written on your topic. See what others from NC State have written.
• Browse the Thesaurus - http://www.icpsr.org/thesaurus/index.html
  ICPSR uses a controlled vocabulary system to categorize their data sets. See what terms are related.
• Browse by Subject - http://www.icpsr.org/access/subject.html
  See what kinds of data sets are available related to subject areas in which you're interested
• Browse the Publications-Related Archive - http://www.icpsr.org/pra/index.html - Extend an existing study. These data sets are specifically formulated to provide researchers with the tools to replicate earlier studies but for a different geography or time period. Consider doing a local edition of a national survey or compare your state to another that's already been surveyed.