Mind mapping is a method of writing down ideas and information that encourages you to group related ideas together around your research topic. It is very useful for organizing ideas and ensuring. Mind maps help you capture the main ideas and then visualize how they relate to each other.

Mind Mapping Videos and Information About Free Software

An example of a mind map relating to society, social problems & social justice

1. Write down your topic or research question in the center of a piece of paper. Draw a circle around it.

2. Draw branches off your central topic to represent major aspects of the topic, such as issues, ideas, or facts.

3. Label each branch with a single word or short phrase.

4. Add smaller branches to show additional issues, ideas, facts, or examples that relate to the larger branches. You are looking for relationships between ideas.

5.  Do you need more evidence or research to support each branch drawn?  Put tally marks next to each Issue, idea, or fact to make sure everything is supported

What aspect of the topic needs to be developed more?

Does every branch represent an aspect of your topic?

Adapted from Learningfundamentals.com.au/blog/how-to-mind-map/

 1a.     Write down as much information about your topic as possible. 

               What is your topic? 

               What questions do you have?

               What do you know?  What don’t you know?

1b.     SUMMARIZE your topic in one sentence.  Make sure your topic can answer three of the following questions: who, what, where, when, why, how?

2.       Using the information in #1, list the main concepts of your paper.

3.       Using concepts from #2 as headings, think of as many synonyms for those words as you can- both broad and narrow!

Searching Tips!

1.  Break your topic up into ‘concepts,’ i.e. if we were searching on

“welfare programs for poor urban populations,” you may separate your search into three concepts: welfare AND poor AND urban .

2.  Create lists of words- to broaden your search strategy.

i.e. For welfare, in this case, you may also search social services, food stamps, WIC, AFDC, needy families, etc.        

3.  Start general- and then get more focused once you learn more about your topic.

4.  Combine your terms wisely- using AND . . . OR

“AND”- your concepts (welfare AND reform* AND legislat*)

“OR”- your synonyms  homeless*   AND   policy OR policies        

5.  Use TRUNCATION.  This is when you search on the root of a word, to broaden your search.  For disability, search with disab*- which would retrieve disability, disabilities, disabled . . . etc.

6.  Once you start getting results, take clues from the records.  Look at the article’s title, abstract, “keywords,” “subjects” or “subject headings” - sometimes called “Descriptors”.  If you find good words, write them down to keep track of the words that work. You can use these in subsequent searches.  Searching will be easier, as well as more powerful.