By now you will have gathered enough information to identify broader and narrower concepts and issues and to understand the relationships between these concepts and issues.

Strategies for organizing your research

There are several ways of representing or visualizing your research and the relationships between its narrower and broader concepts and issues. Try one or more of these methods to help you organize this information.

• Clustering: Start with the broadest concept or issue in the center and list narrower concepts or issues around it. You may need to go through several successively narrower clusters before arriving at a particular concept or issue that will work for your research project.
• Ranking: Start with the broadest concept at the top and list successively narrower concepts or issues below.
• Venn diagrams: Demonstrates the overlap between different concepts or issues. Usually where two or more concepts or issues overlap you will have a good research project.
• Outlining: Organizes a topic in a linear fashion by grouping related concepts together. Sub-concepts are listed under main concepts.