Respond to at least two of your peers by commenting on similarities and differences between your research experiences or by offering an answer to their questions or concerns.
ASHANTI
Research Topic
The topic I am choosing to research is homelessness. However, I have not yet narrowed down what the focus area will be when researching. As of now, I have been currently focusing on homelessness and mental health. I am leaning towards mental health the most as a focus, however upon doing research on this population, I am learning mental health issues are just one of this population’s concerns and that there are many more issues that they are facing. Yet as of now, I am researching homelessness and mental health.
What Went Well
My library search went well. The population of those struggling with homelessness has increased over the last few years so there is more and more research available. However, the difficult part is the fact there is so much more research so it makes it difficult to pick a specific area to focus on. For example, there is so much research on homelessness and the impacts of covid. Though my main focus has been homelessness and mental health, the mental health piece has a lot of research collaborating with covid and how it affected this particular population. Overall, when it came to finding information from the library search, I was able to find a plethora of research, the challenging part was narrowing down all the research that was provided to be able to have a clear direction for my own research.
Research Strategy
The research strategy I used was learned from my last quarter’s classes. Using Walden’s Library was strongly emphasized when doing research, and if it was not used as a main tool it should definitely be where we start. So since learning that, I have always started at the Walden Library to do research. Learning to use this tool has truly been a go-to for me, it helps me formulate an idea of what I want to focus on. One of my favorite aspects of this tool is having the ability to use more than one keyword during a search. Now one may say, that is your favorite part?, but let me explain. When beginning research it can be difficult to figure out what I need to look up, but if I know what my topic is, homelessness, then coming up with one keyword to get my library search started can make all the difference. For example, when I do not have the words to formulate “The impacts on homelessness from Covid-19”, I can type homelessness in one search box and type covid in the next box, or mental health or any word that I feel can help start my research with this specific population. This may be something so minuscule to someone else, but it is the simple things that can take us a long way.
