Inquiry starts with curiosity. This big idea covers how to place an issue in context, ask a question that captures its complexity, use what you already know, find sources with good search strategies, judge their credibility, and choose the information your question actually needs.
Personal interest and curiosity drive investigation. Inquiry begins by narrowing your interest, identifying a problem and its origins, and placing it in a larger context. Effective research questions capture the issue's complexity and invite multiple, divergent or contradictory perspectives.
Understanding comes from information plus experience, external sources, cultural context and assumptions. Brainstorming, concept mapping, prewriting, exploring and drafting help organize ideas. Inquiry may confirm or challenge what you already believe.
Information comes from secondary sources (articles, studies, analyses, reports) and primary sources (original works, material culture, and your own data from experiments, surveys, interviews and observations). Databases like EBSCO, ProQuest, JSTOR and Google Scholar catalog sources. Boolean logic, keywords and advanced filters refine searches.
Credibility depends on how a source is used. Scope, purpose and source credibility affect how far conclusions generalize. Credible evidence is relevant and reliable (current, authoritative). Judge the author's and publisher's reputation and credentials, their perspective and methods, and how others respond; scholarly articles are often peer reviewed.
There are many ways to investigate a question, and methods should match the purpose. The way you pose, situate and frame a problem guides the inquiry and determines what information you need and how to gather it.