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So What Should I Write On? Researching and Developing a Topic You Like

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So What Should I Write On? Researching and Developing a Topic

Terms and concepts to know for this lesson:

Topic Development - the process of creating a topic that is interesting, feasible, and appropriate for an assignment. One of the most challenging aspects of research. 

Preliminary Research - the process of familiarizing oneself with background information on a topic. Figuring out the who, what, where, when, and why of a topic; helps you create keywords for searching.

In the previous lesson Who Decides What Is Valid? The Peer Review Process, you learned how the peer review process works, and why peer reviewed sources can be strong evidence to use in a research assignment. But how do you decide what you want to research? In this lesson, you'll learn strategies on how to develop a research topic that is interesting, feasible, and that fits within the parameters of your assignment.

Choosing a Topic

At some point in your academic career, you've probably faced this situation: your instructor asks you to write a research paper, and says you can research a topic of your choosing. This seems great at first - you've got the freedom to work on anything that you choose! But this freedom can be intimidating - out of all the possible topics, how can you narrow your choice down to one? And how can you be sure if your topic is a good one? And of more immediate concern, how can you make sure it's something you can complete, with all the other stuff you have going on? This process is called topic development. 

An example assignment might be: "Write a ten page essay on a public health topic related to college campuses." When you're given a prompt like this, ask yourself these types of questions:

  • What public health issues impact college students?
    • Substance abuse (alcohol, prescription drugs, illegal drugs etc.)
    • Infectious diseases (influenza, meningitis, tuberculosis, STIs, etc.)
    • Mental health (depression, anxiety, mental illness, etc.)
    • Nutrition and fitness (healthy eating, vegetarianism, regular exercise, etc.)
  • What is something I am interested in that I can relate to a public health issue?

Try to identify areas of overlap between these two questions. These areas of overlap will be great topics for your assignment.

For example, if you like sports, you might be interested in investigating the impact of traumatic brain injuries on college athletes.

 

Or maybe you got sick last year while living in a dorm, and want to investigate the impact of vaccinations on preventing the spread of disease on a college campus.

All of these would be great research topics to choose. When you take a few moments at the beginning of the semester to brainstorm ideas by yourself, with a friend, or with an instructor, you'll be surprised by how many great ideas you can generate. Don't feel so rushed to get started that you just pick the first topic that comes to you - if you don't like your topic at the beginning of the semester, you'll hate it by the end. A research assignment is an opportunity to learn more about a topic that you're interested in - take advantage of that!

Developing a Topic through Preliminary Research

Preliminary research helps us develop a topic that is well suited for our assignment.This is a critical stage of conducting research, as it can help identify keywords that can be used when conducting further research. Two extremely valuable resources to use at this stage of research are Google and Wikipedia, as they can provide you with a nice introduction to your topic, as well as background knowledge of the key issues, terms, and ideas surrounding the topic. You aren't going to do all of your research on Google and Wikipedia, of course, but they can be a good way to pick up enough of the basics about a topic to give your research a jumpstart, especially if the topic is new to you.
 
There are two questions that you should ask yourself during this stage of research:
    1. Am I interested in this topic?
    2. Can I find more information on this topic?

If during this stage the answer to either of the above questions is NO, consider revisiting your topic choice. The topic you come up with at the beginning of your research does not have to be what you ultimately use for your project. Even for scholars, picking a research topic is rarely a linear process - you can expect to go back and change your topic after conducting some preliminary research.topic development.png

Want to learn more about developing your topic? Consult this video from NCSU Libraries. Links to an external site.

Conclusion 

Don't settle for a research topic that is just OK - find something you're authentically interested in and find a way to relate it to your assignment.