Research Guides: How to Research a Topic: 1. Choose & Develop a Topic

Choose a Topic

Tutorial: Developing a Research Focus Instruct: Information Literacy activity
Tutorial: Choosing a Topic Instruct: Information Literacy activity

Library Databases
These databases can help you choose a topic:

Opposing Viewpoints (Gale In Context)
Explore issues from all perspectives. Includes pro/con viewpoint essays, topic overviews, primary source documents, court-case overviews, periodical articles, statistical tables, and more.
Provided by TEL.

Topic Finder from Academic Onefile (Gale)
This tool takes the titles, subjects, and approximately the first 100 words from a subset of your top results and feeds them into an algorithm. Keywords shown in the graphics are those found most often in the text with your search term.

Websites

These websites can help you brainstorm some topics:

Idea Generator (from Old Dominion University)
Browse through a variety of paper topics.
ProCon.org
This free educational resource from Britannica provides sourced, non-biased information on controversial issues to promote critical thinking and civic engagement.
RAND Research Topics
Policy-oriented research summaries from RAND, a nonprofit, nonpartisan corporation.

Focus Your Topic

Video: How to Narrow Your Topic Instruct: Information Literacy activity

NARROW your topic if it's too general. Limit your topic by focusing on a particular aspect:

timeframe (the first year of the war)
category of people (plantation owners, slaves, factory workers, etc.)
specific event (Battles at Appomatox, Antietam, etc.)
place (Memphis, the South, Appalachia, etc.)

Another solution: add another topic to your original topic. For instance: "music and the Civil War" or "religion and the Civil War"

B R O A D E N your topic if it's too specific. For instance, you might have trouble finding information about hazing in Southern fraternities.

Expand your topic:

look for parallels and wider categories (peer pressure among college students)
choose an alternate focus (drug and alcohol use instead of hazing)
choose an alternate place (the entire United States instead of the South)
choose an alternate person or group (fraternities and sororities, young adults, etc.)

Develop Keywords

Tutorial: Choosing & Using Keywords Instruct: Information Literacy activity

Step 1: List the key concepts that describe your topic (look at words in your essay question or research topic).

Example:

If this is your question: Describe the different variations of the Cinderella story that exist across cultures.
Then these are your keywords: cinderella, variations, cultures

Step 2: List synonyms or related terms (check an encyclopedia to find related terms, and a thesaurus to find synonyms).

*KEYWORD*
Cinderella	→	RELATED TERMS	→	fairy tales, folk tales
variations	→	SYNONYM	→	versions
cultures	→	RELATED TERM	→	multicultural

TIP: While doing your research, keep a list of keywords and related terms handy. Try different combinations of words in your searches, and you'll get better results.

How to Research a Topic

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Choose a Topic

Focus Your Topic

Develop Keywords