Sources for Your Topic

After selecting your topic it is important to understand the relationship between

1) the research you need to do and
2) the sources available to answer your research question.

Researching a very recent event may require newspapers, but those are not scholarly, and would not be appropriate for a Comprehensive Exam question. On the other hand, scholarly journal articles are not the right source for finding current financial information for a company. Before you begin searching, look at your assignment and ask yourself:

• How many sources do I need?
• Do I need research articles from scholarly (peer-reviewed) journals?
• Do I need articles from the professional literature?
• Does the information need to be current? How current?
• Do I need statistics or other data? Who produces that data?