What is keyword mapping in researching?

Question

Hello,
Today, I was taught about keyword mapping in school to help us research better. I didn't understand the whole purpose and the exact way of doing it, and I looked it up online. However, everything that popped up was about website creators using it to make their website more findable to more people.

What exactly is keyword mapping for researching? How do I do it? How does it help?

Answer 1

Keyword mapping in research is used to find relevant research articles pertaining to the topic that you are researching. It enables you to get a historical perspective on your topic of research informing you what other people had tried and what they had found and published. By studying their approaches and results, you may be able to formulate an educated guess to propose a research hypothesis. Your teacher and peers may evaluate that  hypothesis and provide you feedback or constructive critique. With your research, you might defend your point or consider modulating the hypothesis using a different perspective that would require literature search with different set of keywords. 

 

Hope this is helpful, please let me know if you have additional questions about my answer. 

 

Best,