For many students, starting with a research question is the biggest difference between how they did research in high school and how they carry out university research. It’s a process of working from the outside in: you start with the world of all possible topics and narrow down until you’ve focused your interest enough to be able to state what you want to find out, instead of only what you want to write about.

Process of Narrowing a Topic

All Possible Topics – You’ll need to narrow your topic in order to do research effectively. Without a specific areas of focus, it will be hard to even know where to begin. Ideas about a narrower topic can come from anywhere—from a walk in the woods, a reading from another class, a book that opened your mind, a personal experience, an event or controversy in the news. I encourage you to start with what interests you and sparks your curiosity.

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.

Background Reading

It’s wise to do some more reading about that narrower topic once you have it. For one reason, you probably don’t know much about it yet. For another, reading will help you learn the terms used by scholars who are already contributing to the conversation you want to join. These terms will be helpful when you’re looking for sources later, so you might want to jot them down.

For example, if you were going to do research about _________, this background reading would teach you that professionals and scholars usually use the term ________. If you didn’t learn that, you would miss the kinds of sources you’ll eventually need for your research paper.

Sources other than journal articles can be good sources for this initial reading, including news outlets, Wikipedia, podcasts, documentaries, interviews, blogs, and relevant websites.

This initial inquiry could cause you to narrow your topic even further, which is fine because narrower topics lead to greater specificity. After this upfront work, you’re ready to start developing the research question(s) you will try to answer.

Fuel Your Inspiration

During this initial stage, it can be useful to keep a notebook or journal specifically dedicated to your inquiry. Much like a “field notebook,” you can write down notes, ideas and questions that occur to you as you explore information sources and engage with and pay attention to the world around you.

It’s worth remembering that reading, scanning, looking at, and listening to information resources is very useful during any step of the process to develop a research question. Doing so can jog your memories, give you details that will help you focus and connect disparate information–all of which will help you come up with research questions that we find interesting.

Adaptations

Material in this section has been adapted from Narrowing a Topic in Choosing & Using Sources: A Guide to Academic Research by Teaching & Learning, Ohio State University Libraries, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.