Reading 3: Doing your research

After I found my research questions it was time to start doing the research. This is the method I used when researching.

When researching there can be a lot of results for sources that don't really relate to what you're writing about and reading through all the results when not all of them are ones you need can waste a lot of time that you need to write. So when reading through your findings it best to use the three-pass method.

The first pass should be a quick scan of the source, read the title, the abstract, the conclusion and the introduction before reading the headings and sub headings. Look through any images or figures and skim the references.

Screenshot of title from here 

Screenshot of image from here

If after the first pass you think that this source could be useful to you then you can start your second pass. Engage and carefully read through the sources text, images and record relevant references for later reading.

The third and final pass is when you identify and challenge the assumptions of the authors, consider what you would do differently as the researcher and record ideas for further work. 

While you're doing the passes of your sources you should be highlighting and making note of quotations to use.