Your choice of a Psalm is an important first step in beginning the research process.  As with any research, choosing a passage that resonates with you personally helps to drive your research.  Choose one in which the language inspires you or contains a theme or concept of interest. 

Your passage also needs to meet the parameters of the assignment.  Does your Psalm lend itself to the required analysis? Will you be able to fully analyze the Psalm in the page requirements of the paper?  As discussed further below, the time you spend carefully choosing a passage will ensure a successful research process. 

Background sources, such as a Bible dictionary, encyclopedia or study Bible, give you a broad overview of a topic. For example, a background source will give you an overview of the Psalms, as a book, not Individual Psalms. However, these sources can be helpful when choosing a Psalm to analyze.  For example, here is part of the description of the Psalms from Oxford's A Dictionary of the Bible: 

Some of the few psalms having a regular rhythm are Pss. 5, 29, 46, and 117. Ps. 29 (an early psalm, resembling literature found at Ugarit) contains parallelism in the first two verses. Other poetic devices include the use of repetitions and plays on words (e.g. Ps. 93: 4), refrains (Ps. 136), and acrostics (Ps. 111). Ps. 119 consists of 22 sections, each of eight lines, which begin with the same letter; the initial letters for each stanza are in turn the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

Psalms were composed for a variety of purposes over a long period of the nation’s history, certainly up to the Exile in Babylon (Ps. 137), and perhaps even to the Maccabean struggle (Ps. 44). But most modern scholars have been concerned less with possible historical settings than with the literary forms of psalms. Many are hymns celebrating deeds for which God is praised—the Creation (Ps. 8), the Exodus (Ps. 114), and the long course of events from Abraham to the invasion of Canaan—which presupposes a knowledge of Genesis and Exodus (Ps. 105), and so is probably a post-exilic composition. Another category is that of laments, sometimes in a personal form (Ps. 22), and sometimes in a communal cry of distress (Ps. 44). There are also personal thanksgivings, such as for recovery from illness (Ps. 30).

This description gives some insight about the literary devices and themes of specific Psalms that can help you choose one to analyze.

Several background sources are included below.  Hover over the item title for a description of the book.