Student Research Help

I need to pick a topic.

I need to know if my topic is good.

I need to know if my topic is too narrow or broad.

Picking a topic can sometimes be the hardest part of a research project, so if you're struggling, don't feel bad. Below are some strategies for coming up with a topic.

• Think of an issue important to you or a community to which you belong. You can define "community" broadly (that is, not just your hometown). For example, you could think of the community of people who practice the same religion you do, or the community of people who have the same hobby you do.
• Read the news. Reading news articles can give you an idea of current popular issues
• Think about what course reading or textbook chapter interested you the most. If it's early in the semester, look ahead in your syllabus or textbook to get more ideas.

There are a few things you can do to make sure your topic is good:

• Make sure it fits any requirements in the assignment. If your assignment requires you to write about clean energy, don't write about video games.
• Make sure that there are at least two different, opposing sides to your topic, and that you can make an argument about it, if that is necessary for your assignment. Be careful not to choose something that would be informational rather than argumentative--for example, the process by which solar panels produce electricity is well known, so a paper explaining how solar panels work would simply be providing information rather than making an argument.
• Make sure your topic is not too broad or too narrow--see below for more on how to determine that.

It's important to have a topic that is the right scope for your assignment. When you start developing your topic, the two main problems you may run into are having a topic that is too narrow or too broad.

Your topic is probably too narrow when:

• you find very little--or nothing--written about it
• you realize you can fully cover your topic in much fewer than the required number of words or pages

Your topic is probably too broad when:

• you find too many sources or too much information--more than you could reasonably look through
• you realize you won't have enough space in your paper to cover everything about your topic that you want to cover
• you feel like your topic is pulling you in lots of different directions--it's hard to combine all of the information you are finding out about it

To narrow a topic that is too broad, try to pick one sub-topic of the topic to focus on. If you are having trouble thinking of a sub-topic, try asking yourself questions about your topic. The answers to those questions can reveal sub-topics that might offer a possible route to narrow your topic. Below are some examples of questions you can ask.

• Who is an important/notable person related to this topic?
• What is a specific type of this topic?
• When did this topic happen? When was a notable time related to this topic?
• Where did/does this topic happen? Where was/is a notable place related to this topic?
• Why does this topic happen? Why is this topic important?
• How does this topic happen? How do people work towards/against this topic?

To broaden a topic is too narrow, use this strategy in the reverse. Try to come up with broader categories into which your topic fits, and then choose one of those categories as your topic.

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