Choosing a Research Topic
One of the most difficult things about doing research is finding a good topic. Finding an area of interest is usually no problem, but discovering a specific topic within that area can be challenging or even frustrating. The following discussion should help you to select an appropriate research topic.
| If your professor allows you the option, begin with a subject that is of interest to you. For example, if you are a business major, choose an area of business about which you would like to learn more. If you are restricted to a specific area, say for example "Mental Health," you might want to do some background reading on the subject in order to have more ideas for identifying an appropriate topic. |
| Once you have selected (or are given ) a subject for your project, look for ways to sufficiently narrow the subject to a manageable topic. If, for example, you are limiting yourself to a couple of months for researching and writing the paper and you also need to restrict the length of the paper to a fixed number of pages, you will want a topic that can be covered in depth within those constraints. The above example, "Mental Health," is much too broad to cover in anything shorter than a book. Your task, then, will be to discover some narrower aspect of this subject that you can develop effectively and completely in a project of limited scope. |
One excellent way to quickly find good topics within a subject is to scan a periodical index to find out what other writers are currently concerned with. A good general printed index to periodicals that will cover almost any subject is the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, an index common to almost every library. In addition to covering popular general interest periodicals such as Time and Newsweek, the Reader's Guide also covers some specialized publications such as Current Health 2 and Health. A quick scan of the February 2006 Reader's Guide under the topic mental health reveals two articles, one dealing with managing mental health care, the other dealing with the business aspects of mental health. In addition, the entry provides a number of cross references to related and more specific topics, such as maturity, mental illness, and relaxation. Following these references will likely lead you to other possibilities for further research. If you happened to be interested in managing mental health care in a community, for example, then a follow up on that topic in additional indexes will likely lead you to a specific angle to follow. Should the Reader's Guide not give you enough specific ideas, then you might try a specialized subject index to periodicals, such as the Applied Science and Technology Index or the MLA International Bibliography. You can also scan periodicals through a number of online databases. Through the Library's database system, you might begin using a general purpose database like Academic Index or ProQuest Research Library, perform a keyword search on your subject and then browse through the most recent articles that are listed. If you have a specific subject that you are limited to, you can use one of the specialized periodicals indexes like Medline, or ABI/Inform, or ERIC. |
| If scanning indexes doesn't help, you might need to clarify your understanding of the subject first and acquire a working vocabulary to use in your search. A good way to do this is to search the library's Reference Collection for a specialized handbook, dictionary, or encyclopedia for the subject. For example, a basic reference for mental health housed in the UNF Library's Reference Collection is The Family Mental Health Encyclopedia. Arranged alphabetically by topic and personal name, this reference work provides working definitions of mental health concepts and important people in the history of the field. Scanning the content of this book might lead you to any number of interesting topics that you can then further investigate. Once armed with terminology relevant to the field, you can return to periodical indexes to find which of these topics are currently being researched and written about. |
| Another good way to discover good research topics is to identify a couple of periodicals that publish information on your field of interest and scan current issues to get a feel for what people are writing about. If you don't know which periodicals to look in, check a guide to periodicals such as Magazines for Libraries (housed in most Reference Collections) for names of relevant publications or scan the coverage list in the front of the Reader's Guide or another periodical subject index for names of publications. Then check to see if the library actually has the periodical in its collections. If so, grab a recent issue and browse for ideas. |
| If none of these approaches leads you to a research topic, you might want to ask your professor for suggestions or ask a Reference Librarian for other suggestions for where to look. |
Generally speaking, the best choices for research topics
have one or more of the following characteristics:
- Currency (the topic is currently being discussed widely by professionals in the field)
- Controversy or dispute (the topic lends itself easily to debate or can be argued from a pro and con perspective)
- Verifiability (the topic doesn't fall into the realm of the supernatural or involve unverifiable reports of difficult to document occurrences)
- Focus (the topic is neither too broad to be manageable nor too narrow to be successful)
It should become apparent early in your efforts to locate materials if you have chosen your topic well. If you are finding just enough material to make your points, you have probably chosen well. If you are finding too much material or not enough material, you probably need to focus more.
Once you have identified a topic, examine it closely and ask yourself the following questions:
- Does this topic have explorable issues? What are they?
- What questions still need to be answered about this topic?
- Is there sufficient literary warrant to justify
further researching this topic?
If you find it easy to answer these questions, most likely you have a potentially successful topic.
Page updated 09/07.
