Narrow Your Topic or Research Question
It's very common to select a topic or formulate a question that starts out too broad.
Question 1: How does college benefit students? (broad)
When the scope of your topic is too big, it's hard to dig through the huge volume of information available to find something relevant. It's also hard to write a paper or give a presentation of with any depth.
Most scholarly research examines fairly narrow topics and looks at relationships between concepts. For example, college is a pretty broad topic, but looking at the relationship between college and student participation in clubs and extracurriculars might be a more manageable topic.
There are many ways to narrow a topic that is too broad by asking one or more W questions. Let's use college as an example:
- college and privacy (what)
- college and violence (what)
- college and non-traditional students (who)
- college and the United States (where)
Use how, what, or where (two or three) to develop a research question on the topic of college:
Question 2: Does participation in clubs and extracurricular activities while in college lead to greater life satisfaction for graduates? (narrowed)
