Depending on your assignment, you may be given a research topic or you may get to choose your own. If you're choosing your own and need an idea, here are some places to look for topic inspiration:
Once you've selected an idea for your research topic, now you need to Clarify some information. This is the brainstorming step of the research cycle. Think about the following questions:
Once you have decided on your topic idea and clarified what you know, you most likely need to narrow your topic. If you try to write a paper about one broad topic, it's going to be hard to find exactly what you need. One way to narrow down a broad topic is to add a limiter. Can you limit your topic to a specific:
After you've clarified what you're searching for and made a list of search terms, it's time to start background research! At this point you aren't trying to do in-depth research, but instead find general information and find additional key words or fill any gaps in your knowledge. You may still have questions about your topic or haven't refined your thesis yet, but that's okay! As you search you may find more information and edit your topic or focus.
Wikipedia is a great place to start reading up on your topic, however you NEVER want to use information directly from Wikipedia! Instead, look at the bottom of a Wikipedia article and look at the sources referenced. There may be a reliable source that you can read for yourself!