Research is an iterative process. Instead of straightforward and linear, it is repetitive and cyclical. As you move through the steps to learn, you should modify and revise your strategies. Don't be afraid to return to an earlier step to reset your process!
Long description of "Research is a Process" for web accessibility
Narrow Your Topic
It's very common to select a topic that's too 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, affirmative action is a huge topic, but looking at the relationship between affirmative action and self esteem might be a more manageable topic.
There are many ways to narrow a topic that is too broad. Let's use affirmative action as an example:
Use these concepts develop a research question on the topic of affirmative action:
Broaden Your Topic
It is possible to generate a topic that's too narrow. When the scope of your topic is too small, there may not be enough information available for your paper or presentation. For example, this affirmative action-related topic is probably too narrow:
Did affirmative action policies benefit medical education opportunities for women from Atwater, California in the 1970's.
To find enough information, you might need to broaden the who (change women to minorities) and the where (change Atwater to California) concepts in this question. You might also need to omit the limited time frame.
Here are a few more examples of narrowing a broad topic down to a manageable topic one step at a time.
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