1. Information Search Process for Research

2. Topic Selection
• personal interests
• assignment requirements
• instructors recommendations
• topics on course's textbooks
• topics on encyclopedias or the news

3. Strategies for Topic Selection
• look for questions rather than just information
• Google search: general exploration (not academic content)
• explore newspaper articles: Canadian Newsstand, CBCA
Reference

4. Prefocus Exploration
• collect ideas: contradictions, controversies
• explore the terminology: new terms, synonyms
• take notes of facts, dates, authors, and potential
sources

5. Focus Formulation
Topic of Interest
Attitude/Angle/Argument
Thesis or Research Question

6. Lance Armstrong
Doping
Doping and Ethical aspects about
Doping prevention
health risks doping
Research question: Should the use of performance enhancing drugs (doping) be
allowed in elite sports?

7. Research question: Should the use of performance enhancing drugs be
allowed in elite sports?
Statement 1: Performance enhancing drugs that do not expose athletes to
excessive risk should be allowed because this would make the sport fair to
all competitors and anti-doping organizations could concentrate more efficiently
on drugs that are in fact dangerous.
Statement 2: Performance enhancing drugs should not be allowed in any situation
because they increase the risks to athletes’ health and doping use is against
the spirit of sport.

8. Boolean Search
elite Performance
doping doping enhancing
athletes drugs
AND OR
Search exact phrases:
cycling baseball “elite athletes”
NOT

9. Keywords
Doping Performance enhancing drugs, PED
Elite sports Athletes, elite athletes
Ethics ethical aspects, moral aspects
(doping OR performance enhancing drugs) AND athletes AND (moral OR
ethics)

10. Information Collection & Search Closure
http://library.yukoncollege.yk.ca/