In your coursework, you have done research for a variety of assignments from discussion questions to literature reviews for large research projects. That research was often bound by the assignment's focus. Now you need to take all of the skills you learned while completing those assignments and focus them on your new goals: successfully completing your comprehensive examination and your dissertation. In addition to the skills you have, you must take your knowledge of the research, journals, seminal authors and theories in your discipline and use these as a foundation for further research. You'll also be refining your approach as you strategically conduct searches within a variety of sources and then evaluate your findings. Finally, organization and efficiency will be increasingly important because the scope of your comprehensive exams and dissertation will be different than your coursework.