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IDS 103 - College Orientation and Research Skills: Finding & Narrowing Your Topic

Choose a Topic

Read the assignment instructions carefully. 

How many sources are required? Do they have to come from a specific place like a textbook or a library database? What citation style is required? How long assignment? Are there any parameters to the choice of topic? Any doubts or questions should be addressed as soon as possible with your instructor. 

Brainstorm

Ask yourself what you are interested in. That is often enough to form the basis of a research question. If you need help finding a topic, try browsing a database. Some library databases offer browsing by subject. 

Try looking up topics that interest you in Credo Reference. Credo Reference is a database of reference sources. It has two features which can help with topic exploration. The first is Browse by Subject feature. This feature is available on the search page under the search box. Topics are sorted by subject and then alphabetically. This allows you to browse topics based on your interests.

Screenshot of the Credo Reference search page showing the location of Browse by Subject.

The Mind Map feature in Credo Reference allows you to explore topics visually. Mind Map is available from the landing page to the right of Browse by Subject. Look up your topic in Mind Map and see how it is connected to related topics. You may find new facets of an idea you hadn't considered.  

NewsBank has Suggested Topics on the search page. In addition, NewsBank offers Hot Topics, a curated page of trending topics intended to inspire research questions. 

SIRS Issues Researcher offers a list of over 300 "Leading Issues". Leading Issue pages break topics down with a brief summary, opposing viewpoints and critical questions, which could be used to develop a robust research question. 

Identify the Issues

Now that you have a topic, the next step is to identify one or two issues related to the topic that could be used to form a research question. Ask yourself:

  • Is there a major problem or controversy within your topic?

  • Is there a specific and notable community, demographic, or time-period?

  • Was there a major event that led to a specific outcome?

  • Who is your audience or what is the purpose of this essay?

For example, let's say you are interested in police training. By itself, the topic of police training might be too big to cover in a two-page essay. However, if you add in the controversy of police brutality, you might ask "does increasing police education lower incidents of police brutality?" or the opposite, "defunding the police lowers incidents of police brutality." 

Finding & Narrowing Your Topic

In the following PowerPoint module, you will learn helpful hints on how to select a research topic, how to form an issue question, what databases to use for finding a topic, what keywords are and ways to find them, how to focus your topic, and how to organize your research question into search statements. The module concludes with a short video on brainstorming.

This module is also available in Canvas, where it is followed by a self-assessment survey that also covers the Introduction to Research and Background Research modules.

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