After you read your assignment instructions, you should be able to determine what topic you are going to research. Sometimes your topic will be given to you, but other times you get to choose whatever topic you want. This can be tricky because you will need to take a big overarching topic (for example 'mental health') and focus it down to something you can do a deep dive into for your assignment. Most of the time at university, your instructors will want you to analyze a topic in-depth which requires you to focus your research. See below for some ways you can narrow a topic:
We encourage students to start with a topic and do some research to see what literature exists before choosing their research question and thesis. Most of us are not experts yet, so we encourage you to be flexible with the answers you are looking for. For example, if you are researching how social media influences the mental health of teenagers you want to be aware that there may be positive and negative examples. If you try to search only for the negative outcomes of using social media (anxiety, depression, etc.) then you will be missing potential areas of research. Additionally, we encourage you to wait to create a question and thesis until you have done the research and found evidence. It will be much easier than trying to do this at the start of your project.
You do not need to have a research question or thesis prepared before you start your research. This will become clear as you review the sources.
What keyword could you add to the research question below to narrow the question to be about a specific group of people?
 |
Before moving ahead with your research, take some time to think about your topic (brainstorm/create concept maps) and narrow it to a topic you can focus on for this assignment. |