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Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper

Narrowing a Topic Idea
Purpose of Guide
Design Flaws to Avoid
Independent and Dependent Variables
Glossary of Research Terms
Reading Research Effectively
Broadening a Topic Idea
Extending the Timeliness of a Topic Idea
Academic Writing Style
Applying Critical Thinking
Choosing a Title
Making an Outline
Paragraph Development
Research Process Video Series
Executive Summary
The C.A.R.S. Model
Background Information
The Research Problem/Question
Theoretical Framework
Citation Tracking
Content Alert Services
Evaluating Sources
Primary Sources
Secondary Sources
Tiertiary Sources
Scholarly vs. Popular Publications
Qualitative Methods
Quantitative Methods
Insiderness
Using Non-Textual Elements
Limitations of the Study
Common Grammar Mistakes
Writing Concisely
Avoiding Plagiarism
Footnotes or Endnotes?
Further Readings
Generative AI and Writing
USC Libraries Tutorials and Other Guides
Bibliography

Importance of Narrowing the Research Topic

Whether you are assigned a general issue to investigate, must choose a problem to study from a list given to you by your professor, or you have to identify your own topic to investigate, it is important that the scope of the research problem is not too broad, otherwise, it will be difficult to adequately address the topic in the space and time allowed. You could experience a number of problems if your topic is too broad, including:

You find too many information sources and, as a consequence, it is difficult to decide what to include or exclude or what are the most relevant sources.
You find information that is too general and, as a consequence, it is difficult to develop a clear framework for examining the research problem.
A lack of sufficient parameters that clearly define the research problem makes it difficult to identify and apply the proper methods needed to analyze it.
You find information that covers a wide variety of concepts or ideas that can't be integrated into one paper and, as a consequence, you trail off into unnecessary tangents.

Lloyd-Walker, Beverly and Derek Walker. "Moving from Hunches to a Research Topic: Salient Literature and Research Methods." In Designs, Methods and Practices for Research of Project Management . Beverly Pasian, editor. ( Burlington, VT: Gower Publishing, 2015 ), pp. 119-129.

Strategies for Narrowing the Research Topic

A common challenge when beginning to write a research paper is determining how and in what ways to narrow down your topic . Even if your professor gives you a specific topic to study, it will almost never be so specific that you won’t have to narrow it down at least to some degree [besides, it is very boring to grade fifty papers that are all about the exact same thing!].

A topic is too broad to be manageable when a review of the literature reveals too many different, and oftentimes conflicting or only remotely related, ideas about how to investigate the research problem. Although you will want to start the writing process by considering a variety of different approaches to studying the research problem, you will need to narrow the focus of your investigation at some point early in the writing process. This way, you don't attempt to do too much in one paper.

Here are some strategies to help narrow the thematic focus of your paper :

Aspect -- choose one lens through which to view the research problem, or look at just one facet of it [e.g., rather than studying the role of food in South Asian religious rituals, study the role of food in Hindu marriage ceremonies, or, the role of one particular type of food among several religions].
Components -- determine if your initial variable or unit of analysis can be broken into smaller parts, which can then be analyzed more precisely [e.g., a study of tobacco use among adolescents can focus on just chewing tobacco rather than all forms of usage or, rather than adolescents in general, focus on female adolescents in a certain age range who choose to use tobacco].
Methodology -- the way in which you gather information can reduce the domain of interpretive analysis needed to address the research problem [e.g., a single case study can be designed to generate data that does not require as extensive an explanation as using multiple cases].
Place -- generally, the smaller the geographic unit of analysis, the more narrow the focus [e.g., rather than study trade relations issues in West Africa, study trade relations between Niger and Cameroon as a case study that helps to explain economic problems in the region].
Relationship -- ask yourself how do two or more different perspectives or variables relate to one another. Designing a study around the relationships between specific variables can help constrict the scope of analysis [e.g., cause/effect, compare/contrast, contemporary/historical, group/individual, child/adult, opinion/reason, problem/solution].
Time -- the shorter the time period of the study, the more narrow the focus [e.g., restricting the study of trade relations between Niger and Cameroon to only the period of 2010 - 2020].
Type -- focus your topic in terms of a specific type or class of people, places, or phenomena [e.g., a study of developing safer traffic patterns near schools can focus on SUVs, or just student drivers, or just the timing of traffic signals in the area].
Combination -- use two or more of the above strategies to focus your topic more narrowly.

NOTE : Apply one of the above strategies first in designing your study to determine if that gives you a manageable research problem to investigate. You will know if the problem is manageable by reviewing the literature on your more narrowed problem and assessing whether prior research is sufficient to move forward in your study [i.e., not too much, not too little]. Be careful, however, because combining multiple strategies risks creating the opposite problem--your problem becomes too narrowly defined and you can't locate enough research or data to support your study.

Booth, Wayne C. The Craft of Research . Fourth edition. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2016; Coming Up With Your Topic. Institute for Writing Rhetoric. Dartmouth College; Narrowing a Topic. Writing Center. University of Kansas; Narrowing Topics. Writing@CSU. Colorado State University; Strategies for Narrowing a Topic. University Libraries. Information Skills Modules. Virginia Tech University; The Process of Writing a Research Paper. Department of History. Trent University; Ways to Narrow Down a Topic. Contributing Authors. Utah State OpenCourseWare.

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Research Tips and Tricks

Getting Started
Understanding the Assignment
Topic Selection Tips

Topic Narrowing

Ways to narrow your topic, be careful, tools to help, youtube videos about narrowing a topic.

Breaking Topic Into Keywords
Developing A Search Strategy
Scholarly vs Popular Sources
What Are Primary Sources?
Finding Scholarly Articles
Finding Scholarly Books
Finding Primary Sources
Citing My Sources This link opens in a new window

Instructional Librarian

Talk to your professor

A common challenge when beginning to write a research paper is determining how to narrow down your topic.

Even if your professor gives you a topic to study, it will seldom be specific enough that you will not have to narrow it down, at least to some degree.

A topic is too broad to be manageable when you find that you have too many different, conflicting or only remotely related ideas.

Although you will want to start the writing process by considering a variety of different approaches to studying the research problem, you will need to narrow the focus of your investigation at some point early in the writing process - this way you don't attempt to do too much in one paper.

Here are some strategies to help narrow your topic :

Aspect -- choose one lens through which to view the research problem, or look at just one facet of it.

e.g., rather than studying the role of food in South Asian religious rituals, explore the role of food in Hindu ceremonies or the role of one particular type of food among several religions.

Components -- determine if your initial variable or unit of analysis can be broken into smaller parts, which can then be analyzed more precisely.

e.g., a study of tobacco use among adolescents can focus on just chewing tobacco rather than all forms of usage or, rather than adolescents in general, focus on female adolescents in a specific age range who choose to use tobacco.

Methodology -- how you gather information can reduce the domain of interpretive analysis needed to address the research problem.

e.g., a single case study can be designed to generate data that does not require as extensive an explanation as using multiple cases.

Place -- generally, the smaller the geographic unit of analysis, the more narrow the focus.

e.g., rather than study trade relations in North America, study trade relations between Mexico and the United States.

Relationship -- ask yourself how do two or more different perspectives or variables relate to one another. Designing a study around the relationships between specific variables can help constrict the scope of analysis.

e.g., cause/effect, compare/contrast, contemporary/historical, group/individual, male/female, opinion/reason, problem/solution.

Time -- the shorter the time period of the study, the more narrow the focus.

e.g., study of relations between Russia and the United States during the Vietnam War.

Type -- focus your topic in terms of a specific type or class of people, places, or phenomena.

e.g., a study of developing safer traffic patterns near schools can focus on SUVs, or just student drivers, or just the timing of traffic signals in the area.

Cause -- focus your topic to just one cause for your topic.

e.g., rather than writing about all the causes of WW1, just write about nationalism.

When narrowing your topic, make sure you don't narrow it too much. A topic is too narrow if you can state it in just a few words.

For example:

How many soldiers died during the first world war?
Who was the first President of the United States?
Why is ocean water salty?
Why are Pringles shaped the way they are?
Developing a Research Topic This exercise is designed to help you develop a thoughtful topic for your research assignment, including methods for narrowing your topic.
What Makes a Good Research Question?
Narrowing Your topic
Four Steps To Narrow Your Research Topic

<< Previous: Topic Selection Tips
Next: Breaking Topic Into Keywords >>
Last Updated: Apr 9, 2024 10:45 AM
URL: https://kingsu.libguides.com/research

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Narrowing a Topic

For many students, having to start with a research question is the biggest difference between how they did research in high school and how they are required to carry out their college research projects. It’s a process of working from the outside in: you start with the world of all possible topics (or your assigned topic) and narrow down until you’ve focused your interest enough to be able to tell precisely what you want to find out, instead of only what you want to “write about.”

Process of Narrowing a Topic

A Venn diagram of concentric circles to show narrowing from all possible topics to a specific research question.

Visualize narrowing a topic as starting with all possible topics and choosing narrower and narrower subsets until you have a specific enough topic to form a research question.

All Possible Topics – You’ll need to narrow your topic to do research effectively. Without specific areas of focus, it will be hard to even know where to begin.

Assigned Topics – Ideas about a narrower topic can come from anywhere. Often, a narrower topic boils down to deciding what’s interesting to you. One way to get ideas is to read background information in a source like Wikipedia.

Topic Narrowed by Initial Exploration – It’s wise to do some background reading about that narrower topic to a) learn more about it and b) learn specialized terms used by professionals and scholars who study it.

Topic Narrowed to Research Question(s) – A research question defines exactly what you are trying to find out. It will influence most of the steps you take to conduct the research.

Why Narrow a Topic?

Once you have a need for research—say, an assignment—you may need to prowl around a bit online to explore the topic and figure out what you actually want to find out and write about. For instance, maybe your assignment is to develop a poster about “spring” for an introductory horticulture course. The instructor expects you to narrow that topic to something you are interested in and that is related to your class.

A pie chart with one small section labeled as A narrower topic is a slice of the larger one.

Another way to view a narrowed topic is as a sliver of the whole topic.

Ideas about a narrower topic can come from anywhere. In this case, a narrower topic boils down to deciding what’s interesting to you about “spring” that is related to what you’re learning in your horticulture class and small enough to manage in the time you have. One way to get ideas would be to read about spring in Wikipedia, a reference database such as CREDO, or a subject encyclopedia. Look for things that seem interesting and relevant to your class, and then let one thing lead to another as you keep reading and thinking about likely possibilities that are more narrow than the enormous “spring” topic. Be sure to pay attention to the references at the bottom of most Wikipedia pages and pursue any that look interesting. Your instructor is not likely to let you cite Wikipedia, but those references may be scholarly sources that you could eventually decide to use and cite.

Or, instead, if it is spring at the time you could start by just looking around, admire the blooming trees on campus, and decide you’d like your poster to be about bud development on your favorites, the crabapple trees.

Jada Narrows Her Topic and Works on a Research Question

The Situation: Jada, an undergraduate, has been assigned a research paper on Antarctica. Her professor expects students to narrow the topic to something more specific about Antarctica because they won’t have time to cover that whole topic. Then they are to come up with a research question that their paper will answer.

The professor explained that the research question should be something they are interested in answering and that it must be more complicated than what they could answer with a quick Google search. She also said that research questions often start with either the word “how” or “why.”

Try it out:

Read what Jada is thinking below as she tries to do the assignment.
After the reading, answer the questions based on your own approach to research.
Check your answers with ours.
Keep this passage in mind the next time you start a research topic and mimic the process that Jada uses.

Female Student biting a pencil while looking at a laptop

Jada’s Thoughts

Okay, I have to write—a research paper—about Antarctica. I don’t know anything about that place—and I can’t think of a single thing I’d like to know about Antarctica. Calls for Wikipedia, I guess.

Guess I’ll go here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctica . Just skimming. Pretty boring stuff. Oh, look– Antarctica’s a desert! I guess “desert” doesn’t have to do with heat. That’s interesting. Why is it considered a desert, there’s lots of snow and ice there. Have to think about that—what makes a desert a desert.

It says one to five thousand people live there in research stations. Year-round. And there is no evidence that it was seen by humans until the 19th century. I never thought about whether anybody lived in Antarctica first, before explorers and scientists.

Lots of names—explorers, others. It says Amundsen reached the South pole first. Who’s Amundsen? But wait. It says, “One month later, the doomed Scott Expedition reached the pole.” Doomed? Doomed is always interesting. Where is there more information about the Scott Expedition? There is only one sentence. Why would they have just that one sentence? I’ll have to click on the Scott Expedition link.

Members of the Robert F. Scott Expedition

Terra Nova…

But it gives me a page called Terra Nova Expedition. What does that have to do with Scott? Who was he and why was his expedition doomed? There he is in a photo before going to Antarctica. Guess he was English. Other photos show him and his team in the snow. Oh, the expedition was named Terra Nova after the ship they sailed this time—in 1911. Scott was also there earlier on another ship.

Lots of info about preparing for the trip. Then stuff about expedition journeys once they were in Antarctica. Not very exciting—nothing about being doomed.

Wait. The last paragraph of the first section says “For many years after his death, Scott’s status as a tragic hero was unchallenged,” but then it says that in the 20th-century people looked closer at the expedition’s management and at whether Scott and some of his team could be personally blamed for the catastrophe. That “remains controversial,” it says. Catastrophe? Personally, blamed? Hmm.

Back to skimming. It all seems horrible to me. They actually planned to kill their ponies for meat. Everything was extremely difficult. And then when they arrived at the South Pole, they found that the explorer Amundsen had beaten them. Must have been a big disappointment.

The homeward march was even worse. The weather was bad. The dog sleds that were supposed to meet them periodically with supplies didn’t show up. Or maybe the Scott group was lost and didn’t go to the right meeting places. Maybe that’s what that earlier statement meant about whether the decisions that were made were good ones. Scott’s diary said the crystallized snow made it seem like they were pushing and pulling the sleds through dry sand .

It says that before things turned really bad, Scott allowed his men to put 30 pounds of rocks with fossils on the sleds they were pushing and dragging. Now was that sensible? But here it says that those rocks are the proof of continental drift. So how did they know those rocks were so important? Was that knowledge worth their lives? Could they have known?

Scott’s diary is quoted about their troubles on the expedition—the relentless cold, frostbite, and the deaths of their dogs. One entry tells of a guy on Scott’s team “now with hands as well as feet pretty well useless” voluntarily leaving the tent and walking to his death. The diary says that the team member’s last words were ”I am just going outside and may be some time.”

They all seem lost and desperate but still have those sleds. Why would you keep pulling and pushing those sleds containing an extra 30 pounds of rock when you are so desperate and every step is life or death?

Last page from the Robert F. Scott Diary

Then there’s Scott’s last diary entry, on March 29, 1912. “… It seems a pity but I do not think I can write more.”. The diary apparently gave lots of locations of where he thought they were but maybe they were lost. It says they ended up only 11 miles from one of their supply stations.

I’d love to see that diary. Wouldn’t that be cool? Online? I’ll Google it. Yes! it’s at the British Museum. Look at that! I can see Scott’s last entry IN HIS OWN HANDWRITING! And there’s a digital copy too.

I wonder if I should narrow my topic to just the controversy over whether the expedition was doomed because of the bad decisions made by Scott and his crew? Maybe it’s too big a topic if I consider the decisions of all team members. Maybe I should just consider Scott’s decisions. They should be noted in the diary.

So what research question could come from that? Maybe: how did Scott’s decisions contribute to his team’s deaths in Antarctica? Need to be more focused: How did Scott’s decisions after reaching the South Pole help or hurt the chances of his team getting back safely? There are several of his decisions discussed on the Wikipedia page, and I know there are sources at the bottom of that page.

Really, a desert?

Let me think—what else did I see that was interesting or puzzling about all this? I remember being surprised that Antarctica is a desert. So maybe I could make the desert of Antarctica my topic. My research question could be something like: Why is Antarctica considered a desert? But there has to be a definition of deserts somewhere online, so that doesn’t sound complicated enough. Maybe those rocks with the fossils in them. It’s just so hard to imagine desperate explorers continuing to push those sleds with an extra 30 pounds of rocks on them. Did they somehow know how important they would be? Why didn’t they ditch them? Or maybe they just didn’t realize how close to death they were. Maybe I could narrow my Antarctica topic to those rocks.

Maybe my topic could be something like The rocks that Scott and his crew found in Antarctica that prove continental drift. Maybe my research question could be: How did Scott’s explorers choose the rocks they kept? Or maybe I should stick with why Scott and his crew made bad decisions.

I should ask.

I think my professor is the only one who can tell me whether my question about the rocks has enough to do with Antarctica. Since she’s the one who will be grading my paper. But a librarian can help me figure out the other things. So Dr. Sanders and a librarian are next.

Was Jada’s choice to start with Wikipedia a good choice? Why or why not?
Have you ever skimmed resources first and then read more deeply later?
At what points does Jada think about where to look for information?
At the end of this session, Jada hasn’t yet settled on a research question. So what did she accomplish? What good was all this searching and thinking?

Our Answers

Was Jada’s choice to start with Wikipedia a good choice? Although not usually cited in research papers, Wikipedia is a good place to learn more about all kinds of topics. Information is usually general in nature and you can check out the references at the bottom of the page. Use those links to find additional resources. This may lead you to library based sources like subject dictionaries, encyclopedias, or guides.
Have you ever skimmed resources first and then read more deeply later? When first exploring your topic you may choose to skim resources. That is a very brief read looking for interesting and useful information. Later when you select a topic and look for resources that provide deeper, more focused information.
At what points does Jada think about where to look for information? After receiving the core part of the topic (Antarctica), she begins looking for general information and becomes curious about the Scott expedition. As she learns more she thinks about where she can look for additional information, such as the diary mentioned in Wikipedia..
At the end of this session, Jada hasn’t yet settled on a research question. So what did she accomplish? What good was all this searching and thinking? The background information that Jada looked at helped her to focus on the problems with the Scott Expedition. She slowly narrows down some of the issues and centers on the weight of the rocks. She considers two different questions (one more narrow than the other) and intends to seek input from the professor and librarian. Taking the time to explore her topic has given her ideas useful for a solid research question.

Exercise: Determine the Topic Order

Critical Thinking in Academic Research Copyright © 2022 by Cindy Gruwell and Robin Ewing is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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How to Narrow the Research Topic for Your Paper

Writing Research Papers
Writing Essays
English Grammar
M.Ed., Education Administration, University of Georgia
B.A., History, Armstrong State University

It is typical for students to set off on a research topic only to find out that the one they've chosen is too broad. If you are lucky, you will find out before you conduct too much research, because much of the early research you carry out might be useless once you finally narrow your topic.

It is a good idea to run your initial research idea by a teacher or librarian to get an expert opinion. He or she will save you some time and give you some tips on narrowing the scope of your topic.

What Is Too Broad?

Students get tired of hearing that their chosen topic is too broad, but it is a very common problem. How do you know if your topic is too broad?

If you find yourself in the library staring at a entire section of books that could work as references for your topic, it is too broad! A good topic addresses a specific question or problem. You should see only four or five books on the shelf that address your specific research question (maybe fewer!).
If your topic can be summed up in a word or two, like smoking, school cheating , education, overweight teens, corporal punishment , Korean War, or hip-hop, it is too broad.
If you have trouble coming up with a thesis statement, your topic is probably too broad.

A good research project must be narrowed down in order to be meaningful and manageable.

How to Narrow Your Topic

The best way to narrow your topic is to apply a few of the old familiar question words, like who, what, where, when, why, and how.

Paddling as punishment:
Where? : "Paddling in grade school"
What and where? : "Emotional effects of paddling in grade school"
What and who? : "Emotional effects of paddling on female children"
Hip-hop dancing:
What? : "Hip-hop as therapy"
What and where? : "Hip-hop as therapy in Japan"
What, where, and who? : "Hip-hop as therapy for delinquent youth in Japan"

Eventually, you will see that the process of narrowing your research topic actually makes your project more interesting. Already, you're one step closer to a better grade!

Another Tactic

Another good method for narrowing your focus involves brainstorming a list of terms and questions related to your broad topic. To demonstrate, let's start with a broad subject, like unhealthy behavior as an example.

Imagine that your instructor has given this subject as a writing prompt. You can make a list of somewhat-related, random nouns and see if you can ask questions to relate the two topics. This results in a narrow subject! Here is a demonstration:

This might look random, but your next step is to come up with a question that connects the two subjects. The answer to that question is the starting point for a thesis statement , and a brainstorming session like this can lead to great research ideas.

Art and unhealthy behavior:
Is there a specific piece of art that represents the hazards of smoking?
Is there a famous artist who died from an unhealthy habit?
Sandwiches and unhealthy behavior:
What happens if you eat sandwiches every day for dinner?
Are ice cream sandwiches really bad for us?
What Is a Research Paper?
What Is Expository Writing?
What Is a Literature Review?
How to Write a Solid Thesis Statement
Focusing in Composition
Topic In Composition and Speech
How to Get Started on a Literature Review
Common Application Essay Option 6: Losing Track of Time
How To Write an Essay
Revising a Paper
Definition and Examples of Analysis in Composition
How to Develop a Research Paper Timeline
Composition Type: Problem-Solution Essays
World War II Research Essay Topics
What Is a Senior Thesis?
Tips for Writing an Art History Paper

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Narrowing a Topic

The procedures surrounding selecting a topic will vary by instructor and by discipline. Before you narrow your topic, it is important that you understand the assignment. If you are you are unsure about the assignment, you may find yourself even more confused when trying to choose a topic.

Two key steps to help you understand your assignment:

Read the assignment sheet carefully to ascertain the teacher’s expectations. Is there an explicit list of topics, or are you expected to narrow to a topic on your own? Are you to work with a specific theory of course material as you write the paper? Are you to work with a specific theory or course material as you write the paper?
Contact your teacher if you do not understand any components of the assignment.

If your instructor hands out a topic list and expects you to operate within those boundaries, keep in mind that those lists are often broad topics, not thesis statements. Other teachers prefer to be intentionally vague in order to give you the freedom to narrow to an area of your interest. That means that you will have to search for a topic that you are willing to work with for a considerable amount of time.

Strategies for a topic search:

Work from the general to the specific.
Consider the word count or page requirements to determine how narrow your topic needs to be. The shorter the paper, the narrower the topic should be. You cannot cover all aspects of online education in a three-page essay.
Note in a research notebook provocative questions that arise in class lecture or discussion, topics in your textbook that appear ripe for further exploration, or issues that come up in your conversations with classmates.
Use prewriting strategies such as brainstorming, clustering, or free writing to generate topics. See more on these techniques in Prewriting Strategies .
Use the on-line library catalogue to narrow to a topic quickly and see what books are available on the topic. Then, look through the library databases for articles on these topics. Reviewing the resources often helps to see what subtopics you could write about. Start on the KU Libraries page.
If you do not even know where to start, perusing All Issues on the Issues and Controversies database can give you an idea of many different topics you could write about.
The Internet is also a useful resource, although you must take care to evaluate Internet sources for reliability. See Evaluating Websites for more details.
Make an appointment with the Writing Center and brainstorm ideas with a writing consultant.

Now that you have decided on a topic, narrow your focus.

Questions to ask to narrow your focus:

Is this topic consistent with the assignment?
What is interesting about the topic?
What do I know about the topic?
What do I want to know?
What do I need to know?

Skim the literature to help you narrow your topic to a manageable one which meets your instructor's assignment and your interests.

As an example, if your initial topic for a 10 to 20 page paper is " Space Exploration ", by the time you finish your topic search, you might have narrowed your topic to " Unmanned U.S. Space Exploration of Planets " or even to a specific planet and mission like " 1997s Pathfinder Mission ".

Writing Process: Topic Selection

Strategies for narrowing a topic, introduction.

Narrowing a topic can be done in various ways. Most of the time you will need to use two or more of the following strategies. However, the requirements and scope of your assignment will determine which ones you use.

To narrow a topic, ask yourself the following questions.

Can you focus your project on a specific aspect of the topic?

Most issues or concepts can be subdivided into narrower issues or concepts. If you can’t subdivide your topic, then, most of the time, your topic is as narrow as it can get. In addition, it is probably better suited to a short or small project than a long or substantial one.

In some cases, you might find you need to expand, rather than narrow, a topic selection.

Can you narrow your topic to a specific time period?

Restricting your topic to a specific time period can narrow most topics. Many activities or things exist through time. Restricting yourself to that activity or thing within a specific time period reduces the amount of material you have to cover.

For example, armies and soldiers have existed from before recorded history. Restricting yourself to “Army life during World War II” or “Army life in Ancient Egypt” reduces the scope of what you need to cover.

Can you narrow your topic to a specific geographic area?

Many topics can be limited to a specific region of the country or the world.

For example, “Wolves” can be limited to “Arctic Wolves.”

Can you narrow your topic to a specific event?

Restricting your topic to a specific event is another way to narrow a topic. However, the amount of information available on a specific event will depend upon the relative importance of that event.

For example, you will find more information on the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki than you will on the bomb used by robbers to blow up the safe of a bank.

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Strategies for narrowing a topic. Provided by : Virginia Tech University Libraries. Located at : http://info-skills.lib.vt.edu/choosing_focusing/11.html . Project : Information Skills Modules. License : CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
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Prewriting: Ground Zero

19 Selecting and Narrowing a Topic

When you need to write something longer than a text or an email, whether it’s a class assignment, a report for work, or a personal writing task, there’s work to be done before you dive in and begin writing. This phase is called prewriting (even though some types of prewriting involve actual writing).

Note that even though instructors may describe a writing process as having steps that seem to go in order, writers usually skip back and forth between those steps as they work toward a final draft. While you’re in the early stage of prewriting, you might use freewriting (a technique for generating text that you’ll learn more about in the section titled “ Gathering Ideas “) and then use that technique again after revising your first draft. When instructors describe writing as “ recursive ,” this process is what they are talking about. The techniques described for prewriting may come in handy later in your own writing process.

Narrowing/Choosing Your Topic

If you’re working on a course assignment, you may get to select your own topic or a topic may be assigned to you.

If you get to choose your topic, be sure that you understand the kind of topic that will fit the assignment. For example, if your instructor asks you to write an argument about a local problem in your community, you wouldn’t choose to write about the national debt—that’s not a local problem, but a national one. You might try some of the techniques in this resource, like freewriting , listing , or clustering , to discover topics you are interested in. You might use your library’s online databases to search for interesting topics, especially databases that give pros and cons for current issues.

But even if the instructor assigns the topic, you can find ways to make it your own.

Some More Types of Assignments from Instructors

Most of the time, instructors give specific assignments that relate to the course and perhaps to assigned readings or discussions from class. When you are given a specific topic, be sure that you understand what you have been asked to do. Look for the verbs used in the assignment. Here are some common verbs from writing assignments and what they usually mean:

Summarize : If you are asked to write a summary of something you’ve read, you will be giving the main points and the supporting points from the text. A summary usually does not include your personal opinion.
Respond : When you are asked to respond to a text, you can give your opinion in a variety of ways. You might talk about the quality of the text, connections you made with the text, or whether you agree or disagree with the author’s ideas. You may need to incorporate a little bit of summary so that the reader has enough background to understand your response. The summary might be in the form of a single paragraph after your introduction, it might be a few sentences within your introduction, or it might be incorporated in multiple paragraphs in a sentence or two.
Analyze : An analysis breaks something down into parts in order to understand the whole.
Synthesize : A synthesis combines two or more ideas into a larger whole. For more on synthesis, see “ Synthesizing ” in this text.
Compare and contrast : When you are asked to compare and contrast (or sometimes the instructor will just say compare, but mean both), you will be looking at two items and stating how they are alike and how they are different.
Reflect : A reflection asks you to deeply consider something, often on a personal basis. For example, you might be asked to write a personal reflection about your own writing or about your progress during a course. Or you might be asked to reflect on how a particular issue affects you.
Other terms : There are many possible verbs that you might find in an assignment. If you are unsure what the assignment calls for, be sure to ask your instructor.

Picking Your Own Topic When One Isn’t Assigned

For some assignments, you may be able to write about a topic that is personally significant to you. Being able to write about a topic like this can improve your motivation. Be wary, though, of just writing opinion without backing up your ideas with reasons and evidence that your readers will find convincing. If you want to write about a deeply personal topic, be sure that you are willing to share that with others and also consider whether or not your readers want to know that information about you.

One way to narrow your topic is to decide what you DON’T want to write about. What ideas or subtopics could you eliminate?

Using Preliminary Research

Another way to narrow your topic is to do some preliminary research—not the kind of research you would include in an essay, but rather quick online research to inform yourself about the topic. This is one example of when it’s okay to use a simple Google search or use Wikipedia. Once you see what other people are writing about your topic, it can help you see areas that are interesting to you, and it can also help you understand what people, in general, agree on and what is still undecided and needs to be further explored.

Using Purpose to Determine Topic

You can also use your purpose for writing to define your topic:

Informative : if your purpose in writing is to inform your readers, what are topics that you already know a lot about? What are some interesting topics that you could easily research?
Persuasive : if your purpose is to persuade readers to think a certain way or to take an action, what are some topics that you feel strongly about? What are some topics that are currently under discussion that you could explore and form an opinion on?
Reflective : if your purpose is to reflect on a personal experience or on your learning process, you can explore your knowledge and experience.
Analytical : if your purpose is to analyze something (usually a text of some kind), is there an assigned list or a specific text? If you get to choose, what books, essays, poems, films, songs, etc. have you recently been exposed to that you could analyze?

Text Attributions

This chapter was adapted from “ Selecting and Narrowing a Topic ” in The Word on College Reading and Writing by Carol Burnell, Jaime Wood, Monique Babin, Susan Pesznecker, and Nicole Rosevear, which is licensed under a CC BY-NC 4.0 Licence . Adapted by Allison Kilgannon.

Media Attributions

“Sustainability image” by Intel Free Press is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 Licence.

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1-Research Questions

2. Narrowing a Topic

Process of Narrowing a Topic

All Possible Topics -You’ll need to narrow your topic in order to do research effectively. Without specific areas of focus, it will be hard to even know where to begin.

Assigned Topics – When professors assign a topic you have to narrow, they have already started the narrowing process. Narrowing a topic means making some part of it more specific. Ideas about a narrower topic can come from anywhere. Often, a narrower topic boils down to deciding what’s interesting to you. One way to get ideas is to read background information from a source like Wikipedia.

Topic Narrowed by Initial Exploration – It’s wise to do some more reading about that narrower topic to a) learn more about it and b) learn specialized terms used by professionals and scholars who study it.

Topic Narrowed to Research Question(s) – A research question defines exactly what you are trying to find out. It will influence most of the steps you take to conduct the research.

ACTIVITY: Which Topic Is Narrower?

When we talk about narrowing a topic, we’re talking about making it more specific. You can make it more specific by singling out at least one part or aspect of the original to decrease the scope of the original. Now here’s some practice for you to test your understanding.

Why Narrow a Topic?

Once you have a need for research—say, an assignment—you may need to prowl around a bit online to explore the topic and figure out what you actually want to find out and write about.

For instance, maybe your assignment is to develop a poster about the season “spring” for an introductory horticulture course. The instructor expects you to narrow that topic to something you are interested in and that is related to your class.

One way to get ideas would be to read about spring in Wikipedia, looking for things that seem interesting and relevant to your class, and then letting one thing lead to another as you keep reading and thinking about likely possibilities that are more narrow than the enormous “spring” topic. (Be sure to pay attention to the references at the bottom of most Wikipedia pages and pursue any that look interesting. Your instructor is not likely to let you cite Wikipedia, but those references may be citable scholarly sources that you could eventually decide to use.)

What you’re actually doing to narrow your topic is making at least one aspect of your topic more specific. For instance, assume your topic is the maintenance of the 130 miles of sidewalks on OSU’s Columbus campus. If you made maintenance more specific, your narrower topic might be snow removal on Columbus OSU’s sidewalks. If instead, you made the 130 miles of sidewalks more specific, your narrower topic might be maintenance of the sidewalks on all sides of Mirror Lake.

Anna Narrows Her Topic and Works on a Research Question

The Situation: Anna, an undergraduate, has been assigned a research paper on Antarctica. Her professor expects students to (1) narrow the topic on something more specific about Antarctica because they won’t have time to cover that whole topic. Then they are to (2) come up with a research question that their paper will answer.

The professor explained that the research question should be something they are interested in answering and that it must be more complicated than what they could answer with a quick Google search. He also said that research questions often, but not always, start with either the word “how” or “why.”

What you should do:

Read what Anna is thinking below as she tries to do the assignment.
After the reading, answer the questions at the end of the monologue in your own mind.
Check your answers with ours at the end of Anna’s interior monologue.
Keep this demonstration in mind the next time you are in Anna’s spot, and you can mimic her actions and think about your own topic.

Anna’s Interior Monologue

Okay, I am going to have to write something—a research paper—about Antarctica. I don’t know anything about that place—I think it’s a continent. I can’t think of a single thing I’ve ever wanted to know about Antarctica. How will I come up with a research question about that place? Calls for Wikipedia, I guess.

Anna with thought bubble showing a desert

At https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctica . Just skimming. Pretty boring stuff. Oh, look– Antarctica’s a desert! I guess “desert” doesn’t have to do with heat. That’s interesting. What else could it have to do with? Maybe lack of precipitation? But there’s lots of snow and ice there. Have to think about that—what makes a desert a desert?

It says one to five thousand people live there in research stations. Year-round. Definitely, the last thing I’d ever do. “…there is no evidence that it was seen by humans until the 19th century.” I never thought about whether anybody lived in Antarctica first, before the scientists and stuff.

Lots of names—explorer, explorer… boring. It says Amundson reached the South Pole first. Who’s Amundson? But wait. It says, “One month later, the doomed Scott Expedition reached the pole.” Doomed? Doomed is always interesting. Where’s more about the Scott Expedition? I’m going to use that Control-F technique and type in Scott to see if I can find more about him on this page. Nothing beyond that one sentence shows up. Why would they have just that one sentence? I’ll have to click on the Scott Expedition link.

Anna with thought bubble showing Terra Nova Expedition

But it gives me a page called Terra Nova Expedition. What does that have to do with Scott? And just who was Scott? And why was his expedition doomed? There he is in a photo before going to Antarctica. Guess he was English. Other photos show him and his team in the snow. Oh, the expedition was named Terra Nova after the ship they sailed this time—in 1911. Scott had been there earlier on another ship.

Lots of stuff about preparing for the trip. Then stuff about expedition journeys once they were in Antarctica. Not very exciting—nothing about being doomed. I don’t want to write about this stuff.

Back to skimming. It all seems horrible to me. They actually planned to kill their ponies for meat, so when they actually did it, it was no surprise. Everything was extremely difficult. And then when they arrived at the South Pole, they found that the explorer Amundsen had beaten them. Must have been a big disappointment.

The homeward march was even worse. The weather got worse. The dog sleds that were supposed to meet them periodically with supplies didn’t show up. Or maybe the Scott group was lost and didn’t go to the right meeting places. Maybe that’s what that earlier statement meant about whether the decisions that were made were good ones. Scott’s diary said the crystallized snow made it seem like they were pushing and pulling the sledges through dry sand .

It says that before things turned really bad ( really bad? You’ve already had to eat your horses !), Scott allowed his men to put 30 pounds of rocks with fossils on the sledges they were pushing and dragging. Now was that sensible? The men had to push or pull those sledges themselves. What if it was those rocks that actually doomed those men?

But here it says that those rocks are the proof of continental drift. So how did they know those rocks were so important? Was that knowledge worth their lives? Could they have known?

Wow–there is drama on this page! Scott’s diary is quoted about their troubles on the expedition—the relentless cold, frostbite, and the deaths of their dogs. One entry tells of a guy on Scott’s team “now with hands as well as feet pretty well useless” voluntarily leaving the tent and walking to his death. The diary says that the team member’s last words were ”I am just going outside and may be some time.” Ha!

They all seem lost and desperate but still have those sledges. Why would you keep pulling and pushing those sledges containing an extra 30 pounds of rock when you are so desperate and every step is life or death?

Anna with thought bubble showing a diary

Then there’s Scott’s last diary entry, on March 29, 1912. “… It seems a pity but I do not think I can write more.” Well.

That diary apparently gave lots of locations of where he thought they were but maybe they were lost. It says they ended up only 11 miles from one of their supply stations. I wonder if anybody knows how close they were to where Scott thought they were.

I’d love to see that diary. Wouldn’t that be cool? Online? I’ll Google it.

Yes! At the British museum. Look at that! I can see Scott’s last entry IN HIS OWN HANDWRITING!

Anna with thought bubble showing a web page

Actually, if I decide to write about something that requires reading the diary, it would be easier to not have to decipher his handwriting. Wonder whether there is a typed version of it online somewhere?

Maybe I should pay attention to the early paragraph on the Terra Nova Expedition page in Wikipedia—about it being controversial whether Scott and his team made bad decisions so that they brought most of their troubles on themselves. Can I narrow my topic to just the controversy over whether bad decisions of Scott and his crew doomed them? Maybe it’s too big a topic if I consider the decisions of all team members. Maybe I should just consider Scott’s decisions.

So what research question could come from that? Maybe: how did Scott’s decisions contribute to his team’s deaths in Antarctica? But am I talking about his decisions before or after they left for Antarctica? Or the whole time they were a team? Probably too many decisions involved. More focused: How did Scott’s decisions after reaching the South Pole help or hurt the chances of his team getting back safely? That’s not bad—maybe. If people have written about that. There are several of his decisions discussed on the Wikipedia page, and I know there are sources at the bottom of that page.

Anna with thought bubble showing a dessert

Let me think—what else did I see that was interesting or puzzling about all this? I remember being surprised that Antarctica is a desert. So maybe I could make Antarctica as a desert my topic. My research question could be something like: Why is Antarctica considered a desert? But there has to be a definition of deserts somewhere online, so that doesn’t sound complicated enough. Once you know the definition of desert, you’d know the answer to the question. Professor Sanders says research questions are more complicated than regular questions.

What’s a topic I could care about? A question I really wonder about? Maybe those rocks with the fossils in them. It’s just so hard to imagine desperate explorers continuing to push those sledges with an extra 30 pounds of rocks on them. Did they somehow know how important they would be? Or were they just curious about them? Why didn’t they ditch them? Or maybe they just didn’t realize how close to death they were. Maybe I could narrow my Antarctica topic to those rocks.

Maybe my narrowed topic could be something like: The rocks that Scott and his crew found in Antarctica that prove continental drift. Maybe my research question could be: How did Scott’s explorers choose the rocks they kept?

Well, now all I have is questions about my questions. Like, is my professor going to think the question about the rocks is still about Antarctica? Or is it all about continental drift or geology or even the psychology of desperate people? And what has been written about the finding of those rocks? Will I be able to find enough sources? I’m also wondering whether my question about Scott’s decisions is too big—do I have enough time for it?

Anna with thought bubble showing people talking

I think my professor is the only one who can tell me whether my question about the rocks has enough to do with Antarctica. Since he’s the one who will be grading my paper. But a librarian can help me figure out the other things.

So Dr. Sanders and a librarian are next.

Reflection Questions

Was Anna’s choice to start with Wikipedia a good choice? Why or why not?
Have you ever used that Control-F technique?
At what points does Anna think about where to look for information?
At the end of this session, Anna hasn’t yet settled on a research question. So what did she accomplish? What good was all this searching and thinking?

Our Answers:

Was Anna’s choice to start with Wikipedia a good choice? Why or why not? Wikipedia is a great place to start a research project. Just make sure you move on from there, because it’s a not a good place to end up with your project. One place to move on to is the sources at the bottom of most Wikipedia pages.
Have you ever used that Control-F technique? If you haven’t used the Control-F technique, we hope you will. It can save you a lot of time and effort reading online material.
At what points does Anna think about where to look for information ? When she began; when she wanted to know more about the Scott expedition; when she wonders whether she could read Scott’s diary online; when she thinks about what people could answer her questions.
At the end of this session, Anna hasn’t yet settled on a research question. So what did she accomplish? What good was all this reading and thinking? There are probably many answers to this question. Ours includes that Anna learned more about Antarctica, the subject of her research project. She focused her thinking (even if she doesn’t end up using the possible research questions she’s considering) and practiced critical thinking skills, such as when she thought about what she could be interested in, when she worked to make her potential research questions more specific, and when she figured out what questions still needed answering at the end. She also practiced her skills at making meaning from what she read, investigating a story that she didn’t expect to be there and didn’t know had the potential of being one that she is interested in. She also now knows what questions she needs answered and whom to ask. These thinking skills are what college is all about. Anna is way beyond where she was when she started.

Choosing & Using Sources: A Guide to Academic Research Copyright © 2015 by Teaching & Learning, Ohio State University Libraries is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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1 Narrowing a Topic

Defining your research question is a process of working from the outside in: you start with the world of all possible topics (or your assigned topic) and narrow down until you have focused your interest enough to be able to state precisely what you want to find out, instead of only what you want to “write about.”

Going through this process can be the hardest part of doing research, but once you have a question that is realistically scoped (not too broad, not too narrow) it will guide the rest of your work.

The Process of Narrowing a Topic

Concentric circles from broad topic to narrow question

ACTIVITY: Which Topic is Narrower?

Now it’s your turn. Practice thinking about narrower topics with these 3 examples. Click the arrow to show the next question.

TIP: Use Some of the 5 W’s to Help Narrow Your Topic to a Searchable Question

Your assignment is to write on the topic of higher education. You decide you want to write about the high cost of tuition, but that is still too broad.

Start by asking some or all of the following questions.

From asking these questions, you might come up with a research question like this:

“How does the high cost of tuition impact the degree completion of mature college students?”

Image: “ Rq-narrow ” by Teaching and Learning, University Libraries is licensed under CC BY-4.0 .

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60 Essay Topics to Narrow Down Your Topic Search

April 24, 2019
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Essay writing itself is a rough ride for most students and choosing the right topic often becomes harder for them. A perfect essay topic, which can easily pour excitement in your readers’ minds, is like a treasure for some. However, there is nothing much to worry about as Management Writing Solutions is here to draw an end to your search. We introduce you to the open book enclosing numerous essay topics for far cry categories of essays. So go ahead and craft a quality write-up ready at the soonest.

A Strong Agenda for Picking an Essay Topic

Before you shortlist a suitable topic for your custom essay , there are certain tasks you have to perform successfully. So take a look at the checklist to narrow down your options and pick a highlighting essay topic.

Here it goes…

Brainstorm and collect your own ideas.
Discuss with other students and jot down multiple ideas together.
Research on each topic you’ve shortlisted, and encounter the topic that carries the most information with some exciting facts.
Put a tick beside each topic you find potential from the checklist and narrow down your search to write your college homework .
Is the topic exciting enough to motivate your readers?
Will it serve any purpose to the field of your education?
Can you finish writing the entire paper before the deadline?
Does the topic enable you to demonstrate your expertise in writing?
Are there sufficient resources available to discuss your topic minutely?
Can you establish a better understanding of the subject matter properly?

Essay Topics of Different Categories

There are numerous forms of essay writing and the features of the topic rely upon the specifications of the paper. For example, argumentative and persuasive essay topics are mostly identical. However, reflective or narrative essay topics are entire of different forms. So take a look at the buy essay online topics by categories and choose the right one for yourself.

Argumentative Essay Topics

Should there be more rights to the immigrants?
Impact of a ‘Fake news’ in social and political life.
Was Depp the best choice for Burton’s “Ed Wood”?
Why is not logical to judge a single genre of music?
Why should artists never be judged as unemployed?
How effective it is to have a LinkedIn profile for finding a good job?
How do children change in a positive manner when involved in sports?
Why do think that the lefty guitar players get more blessings from the public?
Is it possible for corporations to build a chip for controlling employees’ minds?
Students should stay away from competitions for their own development of minds.

Persuasive Essay Topics

Happiness comes from within. Don’t seek it elsewhere.
Why is identity theft being a big issue for elderly people?
Carrying electroshock weapons should be legal for adults.
Being a pro in video gaming can get you a high-salaried job.
Animals should not go through the commercial testing process.
We should influence selfishness to adopt it as an innate human nature.
How is the grading system being too heavy on the students’ shoulders?
In the advance classrooms, exams aren’t justifying the students’ abilities.
All the fast food restaurants should clearly showcase the number of calories
Cyber-attacking should be the strongest tool for most countries to save their homes.

Reflective Essay Topics

A memorable family reunion.
The day when everything made me laugh the hardest.
A visit to the mountains with friends for the first time.
The day when you chose someone else’s wish over yours.
An unforgettable day with my parents in an amusement park.
When was the last time your parents felt proud because of you?
The pre-planned house party where everything went unplanned.
What was the worst public speaking day you had in your college?
The moment I confronted my boss regarding my job-unsatisfaction.
The best vacation of your life when you didn’t feel like checking your phone.

Descriptive Essay Topics

The scariest moment of your life.
The best moment you spent with your pet.
The house where you grew up since childhood.
Describe the person who inspires you the most.
The live performance of your favorite musician.
Your favorite dream that never came into reality.
Introduce yourself to someone who never met you.
An object that witnessed every story of your family.
A peaceful place where you like visiting when upset.
The oldest memory with your parents that you’ll cherish forever.

Narrative Essay Topics

Who you wanted to be when you were a kid?
The situation that embarrassed you the most.
The biggest lie you ever said to your parents.
The first MBA event you attended in your college.
The most difficult decision you ever took in your life.
An event that changed your views towards life forever.
An unavoidable moment that you never wanted to confront.
How did your teachers contribute to the life that you live today?
Why is your best friend during your primary classes still your best friend?
What was your favorite childhood game that you would still like to play?

Scholarship Essay Topics

Your perception of being a successful person.
The right measures for gun control in this country.
What educational goals have you set for your career?
How would you develop a short video to stop smoking?
What is your best teammate spirit that you feel proud of?
What could you do to bring a positive change in our world?
What could be the best way to control texting while driving?
What can be the most innovative solution to cut down waste?
How is technology degrading the standard of students’ learning?
What would be your first step towards being a genuine social worker?

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Once you shortlist a suitable essay topic for yourself, get set go for crafting the perfect paper. However, some of you may not get ample time to write the essay following the correct format and tone. In that case, I would suggest you get in touch with our professional writers and get efficient essay writing help. Our best custom essay writing service is constantly available from their end to help students with their academic essay writing. So feel free to connect with us and leave your paper writing worries forever.

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5.5: Text- Ways to Narrow Down a Topic

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When to Narrow a Topic

Most students will have to narrow down their topic at least a little. The first clue is that your paper needs to be narrowed is simply the length your professor wants it to be. You can’t properly discuss “war” in 1,000 words, nor talk about orange rinds for 12 pages.

Steps to Narrowing a Topic

Who? (American Space Exploration)
What? (Manned Space Missions)
Where? (Moon Exploration)
When? (Space exploration in the 1960’s)
Why? (Quest to leave Earth)
How? (Rocket to the Moon: Space Exploration)
Problems faced? (Sustaining Life in Space: Problems with space exploration)
Problems overcome? (Effects of zero gravity on astronauts)
Motives? (Beating the Russians: Planning a moon mission)
Effects on a group? (Renewing faith in science: aftershock of the Moon mission)
Member group? (Designing a moon lander: NASA engineers behind Apollo 11)
Group affected? (From Test Pilots to Astronauts: the new heroes of the Air force)
Group benefited? (Corporations that made money from the American Space Program)
Group responsible for/paid for _____ (The billion dollar bill: taxpayer reaction to the cost of sending men to the moon)
S = Similarities (Similar issues to overcome between the 1969 moon mission and the planned 2009 Mars Mission)
O = Opposites (American pro and con opinions about the first mission to the moon)
C = Contrasts (Protest or patriotism: different opinions about cost vs. benefit of the moon mission)
R = Relationships (the NASA family: from the scientists on earth to the astronauts in the sky)
A = Anthropomorphisms [interpreting reality in terms of human values] (Space: the final frontier)
P = Personifications [giving objects or descriptions human qualities] (the eagle has landed: animal symbols and metaphors in the space program)
R = Repetition (More missions to the moon: Pro and Con American attitudes to landing more astronauts on the moon)
Revision and Adaptation. Provided by : Lumen Learning. License : CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
Ways to Narrow Down a Topic. Provided by : Utah State University. Located at : http://ocw.usu.edu/English/intermediate-writing/english-2010/-2010/narrowing-topics.html . License : CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

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SCC Research Guides

IDS 101 - Argumentative Essay (Haller)

3. Narrow Your Topic

Ask yourself:

What aspect of the topic do I want to focus on?

What interests me about the topic?

What do I want to write about?

Is there more than one side to this issue? What are the opposing viewpoints on it?

As you start to narrow this down into a topic/thesis, you'll want to continue to look for more sources. As you research, you might tweak or adjust your topic/thesis. In order to help you find more related sources about your topic, you'll want to identify keywords to help you search.

As you think about what concepts you want to research, think about what particular words might be found in a good article about that topic. For instance, if you are writing about the paying college athletes , think of related keywords:

You can also combine your keywords to find articles connecting the two ideas. Unlike Google, our library databases work best using connector terms, such as AND or OR .

Keywords work best by trial-and-error. Never do only one search. Some keywords will work better than others, and some keywords may lead you to different articles than you found in your first search. Search the databases with the keywords you selected to find relevant articles. And remember to ask a librarian if you need assistance coming up with keywords or looking for sources.

<< Previous: 2. Explore Your Topic
Next: 4. Find Sources >>
1. Getting Started
2. Explore Your Topic
4. Find Sources
5. Cite Your Sources
6. Evaluate Your Sources
7. Write Your Paper

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Narrowing Down Research Topic: Ultimate Guide With Examples

For most students, narrowing down a research topic makes a huge difference between how they carried out the research while in high school and how they should conduct their research projects in college.

Choosing a suitable research topic requires that you work from outside in. Often, you’ll start with a broader topic and narrow it down to a level where you can establish what you’d like to find out rather than only what you’d like to “write about.”

Whether you’ve been given a general topic to investigate, given several problems to study, or you need to come up with your own topic to study, you should ensure that the research problem’s scope underpinning the study isn’t too broad.

A Step-by-Step Example on Narrowing a Research Topic

To narrow down a specific topic, follow these steps:

1. Choose a general topic area.

An example could be employee turnover.

2. Give specific description of the topic area.

Example: turnover in the nursing industry

3. Mention an aspect of the specific topic:

Example: factors that affect turnover among registered nurses

To narrow down a topic’s focus, follow these steps:

4. Note down extra specifics about the topic.

Example: Workplace stress and turnover among registered nurses.

5. Turn the topic into a sentence or statement.

Example: Workplace stress has a significant impact on turnover among registered nurses.

6. Fine-tune your topic’s focus using elements such as time, place, and relationship.

Example: Workplace stress causes increased turnover among registered nurses in Brooklyn.

What’s Too Broad?

College students get tired when an instructor tells them that the topic they chose is too broad. This problem is very common. How do you tell if your topic is too broad?

If you’ve summed up the topic in one or two words, such as education, school cheating, corporal punishment, smoking, or overweight teens, it’s obviously too broad.

If you visit the library and realize you are staring at a whole section of books that you can use as sources for your study topic, then the topic is too broad. A good topic should address a specific problem or question. You should spot four to five books (or even fewer) on a shelf that can effectively address a specific research problem.

If you can’t easily come up with a thesis statement for your research paper, then chances are your topic is too broad.

The Dangers Of Not Narrowing Down

If you don’t do that, you’ll find it challenging to handle the study problem on the time and space provided. You might face a couple of issues if you choose to write on a very broad PhD research topic. The issues include:

Finding tons of sources of information, which makes it difficult to choose what to omit or include, or what’s the most essential.

Finding generic information that makes it tricky to come up with a clear framework for addressing the research problem

Lack of adequate parameters to effectively define the research problem makes it challenging to identify and use correct methods required for its analysis.

You come across information that addresses a wide array of concepts that can’t be included in a single paper. Consequently, you easily get into unnecessary details.

When starting to write a research paper, there’s a common challenge – determining how to narrow down a research topic.

Even if the professor assigns you a specific topic of study, you’ll still be required to narrow it down to some degree. Besides, the professor will find it boring to mark fifty papers talking about the same thing.

That’s why you should narrow your study’s focus early in the writing process. That way, you won’t try to do too much in one research paper.

Tips For Narrowing A Research Topic

Select one lens and use it for viewing a research problem. The other alternative is to focus on just one angle. For example, instead of studying the different factors that cause cancer, study how smoking can cause lung cancer.

Figure out if the initial unit or variable of analysis can be partitioned into smaller components, so you analyze them with more precision. For example, a study on the use of tobacco among teenagers can be narrowed down to chewing tobacco instead of all forms of tobacco use or teenagers in general. A better approach would be to focus on male teenagers in a specific age range and region who chew tobacco.

Methodology

The methods used to gather data can reduce the scope of interpretive analysis required to address your research problem. For example, you can design a single case study to generate data that won’t require an extensive explanation as that of using multiple cases.

In general, analyzing a smaller geographical unit means a narrow topical focus. For example, instead of studying trade relations in Asia, focus on trade relations between China and Singapore as a case study to guide you in explaining problems in that region.

Relationship

Find out how two or more variables or perspectives relate to each other. When you design a study around the correlation of different variables, it helps you to reduce the scope of your analysis. Examples of variables to look out for are:

Cause and effect

Group and individual

Compare and contrast

Contemporary and historical

Problem and solution

Male and female

Opinion and reason

Study periods can be assigned timeframes. Generally, the shorter a study’s time period, the more narrow its focus becomes. For example, instead of studying trade relations between China and Singapore, focus on the trade relations between China and Singapore between 2010 and 2018.

Focus the study topic with regard to a particular class of people, phenomena, or places. For instance, a study of developing better housing near schools may focus on condominiums, universities, or building materials only.

Combination

You can choose at least two of the above tips to narrow down to a specific topic.

Narrowing Down A Research Topic Is Vital – Use Our Advice!

In sum, you can use the broad topic given by your instructor to narrow down, or you can come up with your own topic first and narrow it down (some teachers give this freedom). Either way, you should ensure your narrowed topic is specific and more of a sentence than just a couple of words.

Remember, you want to be able to write a good thesis statement from the topic and proceed to write a paper on it. You can ask for feedback from your friends or instructor to confirm the topic is good and worth writing about. As you can see, it’s easier to write on a specific topic than one that’s too broad.

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Steps for Choosing a Writing Topic

Within the discipline you need to write the paper on, choose something interesting to you. If you cannot find anything that interests you, try searching for a topic that looks more interesting than others.
Analyze the chosen topic. You need to figure out whether the topic is broad or narrow. A broad topic is one that does not provide you with specific information about what you need to write about. For example, the topic “Minerals on Mars” is an extremely broad topic, because it is unclear whether you need to write about all mineral deposits across the entire planet of Mars, or if you should focus only on crystalline minerals, or whether you should prove something true or wrong, and so on. A narrow topic provides you with a clue of what and how to write. For example, “Methane deposits on Mars as a source of fuel for Earth industries” is easier to write a paper about than a general topic.
Make sure there are sources from which you can retrieve information on the topic of your choice. Even when your topic is narrow, if there are no materials on it, it will be impossible to write about.

Key Points to Consider

Besides a topic being interesting personally to you, it should also match another important requirement, which is, “How much do you know about this topic?” An interesting topic can be so difficult that you may not write a single word, even if you are craving to do so. Therefore, choose carefully and make sure you know something about the topic of your choice.
It is alright to reuse a topic you have already written a paper on. Just try approaching it from a different angle; for instance, if you wrote a persuasive essay against abortions, try writing a persuasive pro-abortion paper.
Asking your teacher for a hint or a piece of advice on what topic is better to write about is a prudent idea.
Choosing offbeat topics for the thrill of it is not good, because the more uncommon the topic is, the more difficult it will be for you to find sources.

Do and Don’t

Common mistakes.

– Choosing a boring topic because it is easy to write about. Being bored with the topic means writing a boring essay. – Not narrowing a topic down and trying to write a paper about a “minerals-on-Mars” kind of topic. – Reusing an old topic, but writing a paper from exactly the same perspective as the previous time.

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The Extended Essay Step-by-Step Guide 2: Your Topic

There is a secret that could help all you first year IB students out there. It is the key to making next year a whole lot easier. It will reduce stress, make the workload easier to handle, and give you time. What is the secret? It’s that you’re better off starting the Extended Essay as soon as possible.

I know, it’s not what you wanted to hear. But I promise you that putting time and effort into your Extended Essay now will save you about five times that effort later. Because balancing the Extended Essay alongside Internal Assessments, Theory of Knowledge and IB revision is not fun.

In this blog series we’re going to take you step-by-step through the Extended Essay process. We started with the first step, what is it? Now it’s time to find a topic. If you are sitting there thinking you have no idea how you will ever find something to write about, you aren’t alone. That’s why we’ve chosen our four favourite tricks to help you identify what it is you will spend those 40 hours working on. Yes, 40 hours. That’s how long the IB recommends you spend. So you see why it’s better to start now?

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1. Plan Your ‘Topic Choosing Time’

Your perfect topic is not going to arrive knocking at your bedroom door one day delivered by the inspiration bunny*. With all that other homework, CAS and whatever else you have going on, you are not going to find your topic until you commit quality time to thinking about it. And that means scheduling sessions for yourself which are exclusively devoted to this.

Three hour-long sessions over the course of three weeks might not sound like a lot, but might be all you need to identify what you want to write about. And it may well be three hours more than you would have spent if you hadn’t planned them ahead of time. Note that you should give yourself time between the sessions, because this gives your subconscious the chance to work on it on the side (time and sleep are both great for this sort of problem solving!).

During these sessions, do expect some amount of banging your head against the wall (not physically) before you find the right topic. If you sit there feeling like it’s impossible, keep going. It’s part of the process. However, if you’re at a loss for what exactly to do, we have some exercises you can try that just might do the trick.

Exercise 1 : Brainstorm your interests. If you know what subject you want to write about then take a piece of paper and give yourself 5 minutes to write down all the things, topics and lessons you enjoyed in the past year. Then take another 5 minutes to write down all the things you haven’t covered but which you wish you had. This might mean writing down books you wish you could study in English, or parts of History you are interested in but haven’t learned about.

Tip: If you’re not sure what subject to write your essay in, start with your interests outside the classroom instead. Still write these down, but don’t worry too much about what subject they fit into. Afterwards, see if any of them could fit. Baking is related to Chemistry, for example, while time travel (hello sci fi) has been explored in Philosophy. It’s okay to think outside the box!

*Not that we don’t love the inspiration bunny

2. Work out what you’re interested in writing about

Once you’ve started to work out what kinds of things you like more than others, it’s time to narrow them down to discover what you really love. As a general rule, if you get bored thinking about it, other people will get bored reading it. For your Extended Essay you should find something you can’t stop thinking about.

If you have your piece of paper with all the things you’re interested in written down, start sifting through them. Cross off the things you don’t actually want to write about, and circle the things that could have potential. Feel free to go outside the things you would typically learn about in class.

Tip: A great way to do this is to combine two things you like but which don’t seem like they’d go together. Interested in theatre but want to write a History essay? What about looking into the numerous theatre companies that entertained troops during World War II?

The astute among you might notice I just linked to a Wikipedia article. Not a good source, I know! But actually it’s not a bad place to start if all you’re looking for is an idea of what’s out there. The real in-depth research comes later.

Exercise 2: Do a freestyle research binge on Google. Set a timer for an hour. Start reading about whatever catches your interest, and when something within it catches your attention, follow the link or Google it to take you wherever you want to go. There is no agenda and no rules, except to stay in your Extended Essay zone (i.e. the link can’t be to Buzzfeed or about where celebrity x went with celebrity y!). Make rough notes of the things that really hold your attention as you go along. Then, wait a week and don’t think about it. When the week is up, take a piece of paper and write down what you remember from that earlier research. Whatever stuck in your head is probably what you found interesting. Use that as a starting point.

Some tools, apps and websites that might be useful for your research:

TedTalks – plenty of great insights on all sorts of topics you might not have thought about.

Diigo – let’s you highlight, annotate and bookmark webpages.

Pocket – let’s you save articles and webpages to read or go back to later (very phone-friendly).

3. Have something original to say

If you already know exactly what you are going to say about the topic you’ve chosen, something isn’t right. There needs to be room to explore your topic and discover things you haven’t thought about. Otherwise the essay is going to be too obvious and predictable. Ultimately, you need to show that you are having your own thoughts and ideas about the topic. This means questioning your topic as much as possible, and working out the unknown elements that you will need to discover during your research.

Tip: This does not mean you should feel pressure to think of something no one has thought of before. The Extended Essay is not a groundbreaking piece of research that will alter the path of the human race. It is a way for you to explore something you are passionate about, and to express that passion in writing. The key is to feel confident that you will be able to offer your own perspective. In other words, have faith in your brain.

Exercise 3: Write down at least three questions that dig deeper into your chosen topic. These might question the effect of a variable in an experiment, or highlight a biographical detail of an author that could have affected their novel. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know the answers yet. The important thing at this point is to be asking the questions.

4. Can you picture it as an Extended Essay?

This seems like common sense, but it’s actually important to remember before you get too carried away. As you go long along keep referring back to the Extended Essay Guide to make sure your topic will fit into the guidelines. Unless it is a World Studies essay, make sure it still fits within a recognised IB subject. Check that you know the requirements for each subject, whether that is what language you need to write the essay in, or whether you need to undertake independent research.

Finally, make sure it is realistic. Some of you might want to alter the path of the human race, but the Extended Essay has to be done using the resources available to you and alongside the rest of your IB (remember my original point?). Hopefully you now know that this is perfectly doable, but there is no need to make it harder than it needs to be!

Exercise 4: Read the IBO’s Extended Essay Guide! Your school will have it to hand, so ask your IB coordinator or librarian. You don’t need to read all of it (it is loooong!), but do skim the general guidelines and read through the information for your chosen subject.

And there you have it!

If you want Lanterna’s own in-depth guide to the whole process of the Extended Essay, take a look at our Extended Essay Guide, available from our free resources page .

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IB Extended Essay

The Extended Essay Step-by-Step Guide

From setting the research question to submitting the Extended Essay, here is an easy-to-follow guide for IB EE students to follow, along with personal anecdotes with tips to apply critical thinking techniques and find success. Before I started the IB, the thing I was most worried about was the extended essay. I’m pretty sure the […]

25 Unique EE Ideas

The extended essay is possibly the most exciting part of the IB. You get to fully nerd out on a subject that fascinates you. The endless possibilities could leave you in a state of choice paralysis! Because of that, we have thrown out a list of 25 unique EE ideas as a lifeline, so you do […]

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EE Research Question: 5 Tips to get an A

Do you struggle with figuring out your EE research question? It is the backbone of your essay, after all. This one question will dictate everything else you will write. So, there is a lot of pressure to get it right! Like most other IB students, I struggled to articulate my research question. Finding the right […]

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PDF Choosing and Narrowing an Essay Topic
Narrowing the topic . When narrowing a topic, you are actually making it more specific and easier to manage. To narrow the topic, look for a specific aspect of (or perspective on ) the topic. To test your topic, you should be able to move from the original broad topic to the narrowed topic to the specific issue to your primary research question ...
Narrowing a Topic Idea
Here are some strategies to help narrow the thematic focus of your paper: Aspect -- choose one lens through which to view the research problem, or look at just one facet of it [e.g., rather than studying the role of food in South Asian religious rituals, study the role of food in Hindu marriage ceremonies, or, the role of one particular type of ...
How to Narrow a Topic and Write a Focused Paper
Strategy #1: Be more specific. To narrow your topic, think of ways to make your topic more specific by focusing on a smaller aspect of the topic, one key component of the topic, a specific time period, or perhaps a specific location. Here's what I mean.
Narrowing a Topic and Developing a Research Question
Begin the research and writing process using the following tips: Research your question: Now that you have a research question, you can begin exploring possible answers to it. Your research question allows you to begin researching in a clear direction. Create a thesis statement: Once you have a clear understanding of your research question and ...
Guides: Research Tips and Tricks: Narrowing Your Topic Tips
Ways To Narrow Your Topic. Here are some strategies to help narrow your topic: Aspect -- choose one lens through which to view the research problem, or look at just one facet of it. e.g., rather than studying the role of food in South Asian religious rituals, explore the role of food in Hindu ceremonies or the role of one particular type of ...
Narrowing a Topic
Process of Narrowing a Topic. Visualize narrowing a topic as starting with all possible topics and choosing narrower and narrower subsets until you have a specific enough topic to form a research question. All Possible Topics - You'll need to narrow your topic to do research effectively. Without specific areas of focus, it will be hard to ...
How to Narrow the Research Topic for Your Paper
Another good method for narrowing your focus involves brainstorming a list of terms and questions related to your broad topic. To demonstrate, let's start with a broad subject, like unhealthy behavior as an example. Imagine that your instructor has given this subject as a writing prompt. You can make a list of somewhat-related, random nouns and ...
Narrowing a Topic
Strategies for a topic search: Work from the general to the specific. Consider the word count or page requirements to determine how narrow your topic needs to be. The shorter the paper, the narrower the topic should be. You cannot cover all aspects of online education in a three-page essay. Note in a research notebook provocative questions that ...
Narrowing a Topic
If you have chosen a very large topic for a research paper assignment, you need to create a feasible focus that's researchable. For example, you might write about something like the Vietnam War, specifically the economic impact of the war on the U.S. economy. If you have chosen a topic for a non-research assignment, you still need to narrow ...
Strategies for Narrowing a Topic
Restricting your topic to a specific time period can narrow most topics. Many activities or things exist through time. Restricting yourself to that activity or thing within a specific time period reduces the amount of material you have to cover. For example, armies and soldiers have existed from before recorded history.
Selecting and Narrowing a Topic
19. Selecting and Narrowing a Topic. When you need to write something longer than a text or an email, whether it's a class assignment, a report for work, or a personal writing task, there's work to be done before you dive in and begin writing. This phase is called prewriting (even though some types of prewriting involve actual writing).
2. Narrowing a Topic
Narrowing a Topic - Choosing & Using Sources: A Guide to Academic Research. 1-Research Questions. 2. Narrowing a Topic. For many students, having to start with a research question is the biggest difference between how they did research in high school and how they are required to carry out their college research projects.
Narrowing a Topic
1. Narrowing a Topic. Defining your research question is a process of working from the outside in: you start with the world of all possible topics (or your assigned topic) and narrow down until you have focused your interest enough to be able to state precisely what you want to find out, instead of only what you want to "write about.".
Generate Topic Ideas For an Essay or Paper
Find a topic before you find an argument. You'll need to think about your topic in broad, general terms before you can narrow it down and make it more precise. Maintain momentum. Don't be critical of your ideas at this stage - it can hinder your creativity. If you think too much about the flaws in your ideas, you will lose momentum.
Brainstorming Strategy: Narrowing a Topic
Brainstorming is the process by which ideas are produced using techniques like concept mapping, free-writing, etc. Choosing a topic can be a difficult process when starting an assignment or writing a paper, and brainstorming can be used to choose a topic or narrow down a broad topic.Narrowing your topic is an important step in the research process. A broad, general topic makes it difficult to ...
Basic Reading and Writing: Cerritos College
When to Narrow a Topic. Most students will have to narrow down their topic at least a little. The first clue is that your paper needs to be narrowed is simply the length your professor wants it to be. You can't properly discuss "war" in 1,000 words, nor talk about orange rinds for 12 pages.
60 Essay Topics to Narrow Down Your Topic Search
Descriptive Essay Topics. The scariest moment of your life. The best moment you spent with your pet. The house where you grew up since childhood. Describe the person who inspires you the most. The live performance of your favorite musician. Your favorite dream that never came into reality.
5.5: Text- Ways to Narrow Down a Topic
When to Narrow a Topic. Most students will have to narrow down their topic at least a little. The first clue is that your paper needs to be narrowed is simply the length your professor wants it to be. You can't properly discuss "war" in 1,000 words, nor talk about orange rinds for 12 pages.
3. Narrow Your Topic
IDS 101 - Argumentative Essay (Haller) 3. Narrow Your Topic. ... As you start to narrow this down into a topic/thesis, you'll want to continue to look for more sources. As you research, you might tweak or adjust your topic/thesis. In order to help you find more related sources about your topic, you'll want to identify keywords to help you search.
How To Narrow Down A Research Topic
2. Give specific description of the topic area. Example: turnover in the nursing industry. 3. Mention an aspect of the specific topic: Example: factors that affect turnover among registered nurses. To narrow down a topic's focus, follow these steps: 4. Note down extra specifics about the topic.
How to Choose an Essay Topic
- Choosing a boring topic because it is easy to write about. Being bored with the topic means writing a boring essay. - Not narrowing a topic down and trying to write a paper about a "minerals-on-Mars" kind of topic. - Reusing an old topic, but writing a paper from exactly the same perspective as the previous time.
The Extended Essay Step-by-Step Guide 2: Your Topic
It is a way for you to explore something you are passionate about, and to express that passion in writing. The key is to feel confident that you will be able to offer your own perspective. In other words, have faith in your brain. Exercise 3: Write down at least three questions that dig deeper into your chosen topic.

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Two key steps to help you understand your assignment:

Strategies for a topic search:

Questions to ask to narrow your focus:

Writing Process: Topic Selection

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Can you narrow your topic to a specific time period?

Can you narrow your topic to a specific geographic area?

Can you narrow your topic to a specific event?

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