You located websites and scholarly articles on your topic. Then you evaluated them for credibility. And now you will put it all together by making sense of your findings in a meaningful way. We call this Information Synthesis. Read below to get the details on how to best synthesize your research topic sources. For the assignment you will complete a table that organizes your main findings and original ideas on what your research shows.
Synthesis is a useful tool when conducting research because it brings together comprehension, analysis, evaluation and creation of information. In short, it is a way to gather different concepts on a research topic and achieve a better understanding of the state of knowledge on your research findings. Each article or resource found is put together in order to reveal the bigger picture of knowledge on the topic.
Remember, synthesis it is not just reporting back what you found. Synthesis requires you to make sense of all the relevant ideas found and blend them together to form your own thoughts and ideas. Use your own voice to write about your interpretation of the findings. So all those sources you found will be taken into consideration and made into unique, new information on your research topic. Also be sure to take all the differing opinions in the research into consideration to make your own analysis.
Identify key ideas
Synthesize key ideas
Outline or chart your findings
Keeping track of ideas gets complex as you increase the number of sources you are using. The process can be made easier by keeping your thoughts and ideas organized on a table. It is a table where the first column collects the ideas, and all the other columns are taken up by your sources, one source per column. Each row represents a unique idea. You can leave a box blank if that idea does not appear in a source.
Download a Synthesis Table template as a Word document or fillable PDF below. You can also download a Sample Synthesis Table.
Steps
1. Write your topic or research question at the top of the table.
2. Write your main ideas/concepts for your research on the left side of the table. Be sure to pick your concept after reading the sources. Pick your most relevant top 5 sources (can be a mixture of websites and articles).
3. Write the 5 titles or first authors last name at the top of the table.
4. Fill in the boxes with a paraphrase or direct quote that represents how the source discussed that main idea and add in your own thoughts or opinions as you see fit.