Research process
Gettin started
1. Identify the scope of your topic
- Sample public health problem: HIV/AIDS impact on people who take drugs intravenously
- Tip: Your topic will likely evolve as you search, and you will need to adjust the scope based on the number of results you find
- Tip: It is helpful to look for background information on your topic from resources like Medine Plus or the World Health Organization's fact sheets to help you identify specific aspects or areas of research you'd like to pursue
2. Develop a list of Keywords:
- Keywords are the important nouns from your topic
- Tip: You will find more (and sometimes better) keywords as you search by scanning titles and abstracts of the articles you find. Adjust your search accordingly!
- Tip: Add in keywords like "epidemiology", "risk factors", or "morbidity" to find information about these aspects of your public health problem
| Main keyword | Other keywords (synonyms) |
| AIDS | "acquired immunodeficiency syndrome" |
| drugs | substances |
| intravenous | injecting |
3. Combine your keywords in a meaningful way
- Use the word "OR" to combine all synonyms and use the word "AND" to narrow your search. After combining all of your keywords, your search strategy will look something like this:
drug* AND (inject* OR intravenous) AND (AIDS OR "acquired immunodeficiency syndrome") - Tip: Put quotation marks around phrases
- Tip: Use an asterisk at the end of a word to capture all alternate endings (for example, use inject* to find inject, injection, injecting, etc.)
Citing Sources
Below are a few examples of citation styles used in STEM. For more information about citation, please see the Tisch Library citation guide!
Finding your audience
Having qualitative or quantative data about your anticipated listeners or target demographics can help make sure you are creating a podcast that resonates with specific communities, rather than a generalized "public" or false assumptions. Below are two ways you can learn more about your audience and what they are listening to in order to shape your podcast.
User or listener persona's
A user or listener persona is used to help you shape your research so that it resonantes with your audience's interests and challenges. It should clarify who your audience is so you can avoid generalizations and effectively communicate with them.
In Action:
Create a fictional character who would love your podcast so much they might listen to it twice and share it with a friend. By considering their demographics, motivations, frustrations, goals and interests you can more easily start to answer questions like:
- What value are they gaining from your podcast?
- Why do they tune in?
- How does your podcast motivate or address their frustrations?
- User or listener persona templateUse this template to help get specific about who your target audience is and why they will listen to your podcast.
- Edison Research - Podcast ResearchLinks to various reports that look at demographic information of podcast networks and shows.
- StatistaStatista provides access to statistics and studies gathered by market researchers, trade organizations, scientific publications, and government sources on over 600 industries.
Know your neighborhood
What other podcasts have been made on this topic and how does your differ? Understanding the landscape of what is already available and what your podcast brings that is unique can also help you identify gaps where you can reach your audience.
- Podcast Audience Graph"Rephonic collects millions of connections between podcasts from the “Listeners Also Subscribed To” data displayed in Apple Podcasts. This tells you, for most shows, which other podcasts share a similar audience." - text from rephonic website