Research Skills Guide

Research Skills: Find, Evaluate, Organize, and Use Information

This guide is the skills and reference companion for research at Vector Technology Institute. Use it when you need to search more effectively, choose the right kind of source, judge evidence, organise notes, manage citations, or use information responsibly.

Role of this guide: Research Skills explains the techniques behind good research. For the overall map, use Research Process. For beginner-friendly instructions, use How to Conduct Research.

How to Use This Guide

• Use the skill that matches the problem you are facing: searching, source selection, evaluation, note-taking, or citation.
• Keep a short research log so you can repeat successful searches and explain how you found evidence.
• Move to the dedicated VTI guides when you need a full research workflow, literature review, research-paper, or APA instructions.

Search Strategy

Strong searching begins with the language of the topic, not with a single question typed into a search box.

1. Break the topic into concepts. Identify the main issue, population, place, time period, technology, or outcome.
2. Build keyword groups. Add synonyms, related terms, alternative spellings, acronyms, and subject terms used by the discipline.
3. Combine terms deliberately. Use AND to narrow, OR for synonyms, quotation marks for exact phrases, and a minus sign only when a common meaning is creating noise.
4. Use filters. Try date, subject, document type, peer-reviewed, full text, or open-access filters when they are available.
5. Search in stages. Start with an overview, follow useful references, search the authors or key titles, and use citation chaining to find related work.

Useful discovery tools: Google Scholar, BASE, CORE, DOAJ, DOAB, and OpenAlex.

Match the Source to the Task

• Scholarly journal articles: Best for current research findings, methods, and debates. Use the Peer-Reviewed Scholarly Articles Library Guide for identification and searching.
• Books and ebooks: Useful for background, theory, history, and sustained treatment of a topic. Check the edition and publication date.
• Reports, statistics, and standards: Useful for policy, programmes, industry practice, official data, and technical guidance. Identify the organisation responsible and the date.
• Theses and dissertations: Useful for detailed examples of research questions, methods, literature reviews, and reference lists. Try OATD or NDLTD.
• Popular, professional, and general web sources: Useful for current context, definitions, examples, and public communication, but do not treat visibility or professional appearance as proof of scholarly quality.

How to Recognise a Peer-Reviewed Source

Check the journal or publication record, author affiliations, references, method or evidence, and whether the item is identified as a research article. A result appearing in Google Scholar is not automatically peer reviewed. When in doubt, verify the journal and use the VTI peer-reviewed guide.

Evaluate Evidence

Evaluation is a judgement about whether a source is appropriate for a particular claim. Use CRAAP for a quick academic-source check: currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, and purpose. For news, websites, and social media, use SIFT: stop, investigate the source, find better coverage, and trace the claim to its original evidence.

• Check the claim: What exactly does the source support, and what does it not support?
• Check the evidence: Are the method, data, references, and limitations visible?
• Check the context: Does the date, place, population, or discipline match your assignment?
• Cross-check important claims: Compare independent sources and locate the original report, dataset, or study where possible.

Take Notes and Organize Sources

• Record author, title, date, publisher or journal, DOI or URL, page numbers, and the date you accessed a web source.
• Keep direct quotations, paraphrases, summaries, and your own comments visibly separate.
• Organise sources by claim, theme, or research question rather than only by the order in which you found them.
• Save the citation record when you save the file or link. A reference manager such as Zotero can help, but always review imported details.
• Keep a search log with the database, date, search terms, filters, and useful results.

Use Sources Responsibly

Academic integrity means making clear which ideas, words, data, images, and conclusions come from other people. Cite a source when you quote, paraphrase, summarise, use data, or rely on a distinctive idea. Paraphrasing changes the wording and structure while preserving the meaning; changing a few words is not enough. Use quotation marks for exact wording and keep the original page number.

Use the APA Formatting & Citation (7th Edition) guide for citation details. Do not rely on automatically generated citations without checking the original source.

Recommended Skill-Building Resources

• Open Access Theses and Dissertations for detailed research examples.
• OpenDOAR for open repositories.
• OpenLearn for additional learning materials.
• Find Resources and the A–Z Library Resources directory for VTI resource pathways.

Which Guide Should I Use?

• Need the big picture? Use Research Process.
• Need step-by-step help with an assignment? Use How to Conduct Research.
• Need to synthesise sources? Use How to Conduct and Write an Effective Literature Review.
• Need applied project planning? Use the Capstone Project guide.