Two very useful strategies for getting started with research:
1. Brainstorm your research topic:
What is the question you are trying to answer?
Do you have to meet particular expectations for your research e.g. assignnent criteria or a work directive?
What do you know already?
What information resources do you already have, including people you know?
2. Do a preliminary search:
Dive into a rough and ready search to see what you can find on your topic. Unless you are already an expert, investing some time reading the key research articles or maybe even a textbook on your topic can definitely improve your search efficiency. In particular it will help you find appropriate keywords and subject headings. It may also inspire you to revisit or refine your research question.
Databases retrieve information for you by word-matching so invest time thinking about the most relevant words for your topic and alternative words. There are various tools available to help you with this. The most well-known is PICO which stands for:
Patient (or Problem or Population)
Intervention (or Issue)
Comparison (or Control)
Outcome (or Outcomes)
Example question: How effective are nicotine patches in helping patients who smoke to reduce or quit smoking compared to no intervention or alternative interventions such as counseling or nicotine gum?
Patient - Smokers
Intervention - Nicotine patches
Comparison - Counseling / Nicotine gum etc
Outcome - Reduced smoking / quit rates of patients
The next stage is considering whether there are alternative words you might use for any of these concepts. This can be set out in a table. You should add useful keywords you come across while you are searching.
This process also helps you consider how you might make your question more specific (e.g. are you interested in smokers from a particular demographic or situation and what terms might be appropriate to describe them) or broader (e.g. are you interested in all kinds of interventions included programs which blend multiple interventions together).
| Patient | Intervention | Comparison | Outcome |
| Smokers | Nicotine patches | Counseling | Reduced smoking |
| Cigarette smokers | Specific brands? | No intervention | Quitting smoking |
| In-patient smokers | Nicotine gum | ||
| Smoking | Hypnotism |
You don't have to use PICO - your question might not work with it or you might only want to use some of the aspects - but it can be very helpful.
It works really well for the sort of questions asked in clinical trials - does giving Patients (with a specific condition) this particular Intervention (e.g, a specific new drug) work better than a Comparison intervention (maybe the drug most used commonly used currently or a placebo) and what relative Outcome can we measure to see what is more effective (e.g. survival rates or reduction of symptoms).
Alternatives to PICO include:
PICOT (which adds the element of Time)
PICOS (which adds Study type)
SPIDER (Sample, Phenomenon, Design, Evaluation, Research type) (a tool for qualitative and mixed methods research)
The JBI Manual for Evidence Synthesis describes a variety of appropriate search mnemonics for different kinds of literature review:
PICO (Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome) for effectiveness reviews
PICo (Population, Phenomena of Interest, Context) for qualitative reviews
CoCoPop (Condition, Context, Population) for prevalence and incidence reviews
PIRD (Population, Index Test, Reference Test, Diagnosis) for diagnostic text accuracy reviews
PEO (Population, Exposure, Outcome) for etiology and risk reviews
PCC (Population, Concept, Context) for scoping reviews
You could also just write out your research question, circle the key words in it, make those words the headings of your table and look for alternatives. This is a good strategy for assignment questions.