Scholarly Communication Guide: Planning your research

Defining a Topic

A literature search can vary from a quick search for a few resources to use in an essay to a comprehensive search for all the resources relevant to a PhD dissertation. It involves finding out what other work has already been done in your field.

For a dissertation or project it will help to shape your research by:

• outlining the intellectual progress of research in your field to date
• establishing whether your research is original
• suggesting a narrow and defined scope for your study
• putting your work into a wider context
• suggesting possible methodological approaches

The CRAAP test provides simple criteria for judging the academic quality of information. By asking some questions of the sources you encounter, you can successfully boost the quality of information you use in your work.

The five main CRAAP test criteria are:

• Currency
• Relevancy
• Accuracy
• Authority
• Purpose

UNIZULU MOU

UNIZULU Research Proposal Guide

 Preliminary Literature Review

Recommended Literature for proposal writing

UNIZULU Research workshops

UNIZULU Research Ethics Committee