How to get started finding a topic:
A topic is a general subject area that you want to research.
Your research question is narrowing an aspect of your topic that you want to learn more about.
What do you want to know more about your topic that requires research?
To narrow your topic, think about the simple subtopics of your subject:
Who is affected by your study?
Ex: Gender, Age, Profession, Regional/Global Area, Race, Ethnicity
What components or aspects of the topic will you explore?
Ex: Problems, Trends, Causes, Effects, Diagnoses, or Treatments.
Why is this topic important? What is significant about this issue?
Below we will go through activities that could help form a research topic and question
Different Activities To Try:
- The Five Ws are questions to help grab basic information.
- A Mind Map is a more visual way to centralize your topic with your topic sitting in the center.
- Free-Form Writing is a tool that allows you to take all of the ideas in your brain (not in any structural form) and get them on paper.
Here are a few websites that give free Mind Map creators: