ANTH 172: Anthropology of Aging (Grace)

1. Old age is a wonderful stage of life.

Actually, this is not a thesis statement. It gives us the writer’s point of view, but there is no specific focus here. What exactly makes old age a “wonderful stage in life?"

2. Old age is a wonderful stage of life because many elderly people finally come to terms with themselves in their last years as they evaluate their accomplishments and realize true values as human beings.

This is a thesis statement, though we must define what is meant by "come to terms." The statement explains why the writer believes old age is a wonderful stage of life, and forecasts what the writer will discuss in the body of the essay, namely, the process of coming to terms with oneself. 

1. Break the idea down into key concepts

old age (is a) wonderful stage of life (because elderly people) evaluate accomplishments (and realize their) true values (and so end up by) coming to terms (with themselves, which leads to happiness and contentment)

2. Turn key concepts into key words 

• The concept of old age may also be expressed with words such as elderly, aged, senior.
• The concept of wonderful may also be expressed with words such as happy, satisfying.
• The concept of stage of life may be expressed as simply stage or time.
• The concept of evaluate accomplishments may be expressed as simply accomplishments.
• The concept of true values may be expressed as simply values.
• The concept of coming to terms may also be expressed with words such as acceptance.

3. Turn keywords into a search statement

The above keywords could be plugged into Google, or Google Scholar or the SCU Library's OneSearch just as they are: old age wonderful stage of life accomplishments values coming to terms.

However, to use an article database effectively, it takes some additional steps to turn these keywords into a good search statement:

1. Keywords need to be separated by the operators OR, AND, NOT. For example:

old age AND wonderful AND stage of life AND accomplishments AND values AND coming to terms

2. In order to increase the number of articles found, synonyms and similar words should be included in the search statement, for example: old age OR elderly OR aged OR senior AND wonderful OR happy OR satisfying AND stage OR time AND accomplishments AND values AND coming to terms or acceptance

3. Use parentheses around OR'ed keywords, for example: (old age OR elderly OR aged OR senior) AND (wonderful OR happy OR satisfying) AND (stage OR time) AND accomplishments AND values AND (coming to terms or acceptance)

4. Use the asterisk "*" as a truncation symbol to pickup various forms of a word, for example:

• elder* (picks up elder, elders, elderly)
• accomplish* (picks up accomplish, accomplishment, accomplishments)
• value* (picks up value, values)

4. Begin the initial exploration of the topic

Now use the above search statement to search in one or more article databases. The results may lead you to modify your search statement with different keywords. Hopefully, this will give you greater insight into the topic and it is at this stage that you might begin to develop additional questions which may, in turn, cause you to narrow or broaden your topic idea.

From the initial insights you gain from this exploration, you may decide that there are factors which you wish to, or have to, take into consideration such as the cultural context, for example: are you thinking about Americans, Asians, Chinese? What about ethnic groups within a country? What about factors such as socioeconomic status, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs?  Do I need to take these into consideration while refining my topic idea.

The insights from this initial exploration should allow you to refine your topic idea, or perhaps change it altogether. This is an iterative process which you may repeat any number of times before deciding on a final thesis statement.