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Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper

• Narrowing a Topic Idea
• Purpose of Guide
• Design Flaws to Avoid
• Independent and Dependent Variables
• Glossary of Research Terms
• Reading Research Effectively
• Broadening a Topic Idea
• Extending the Timeliness of a Topic Idea
• Academic Writing Style
• Applying Critical Thinking
• Choosing a Title
• Making an Outline
• Paragraph Development
• Research Process Video Series
• Executive Summary
• The C.A.R.S. Model
• Background Information
• The Research Problem/Question
• Theoretical Framework
• Citation Tracking
• Content Alert Services
• Evaluating Sources
• Primary Sources
• Secondary Sources
• Tiertiary Sources
• Scholarly vs. Popular Publications
• Qualitative Methods
• Quantitative Methods
• Insiderness
• Using Non-Textual Elements
• Limitations of the Study
• Common Grammar Mistakes
• Writing Concisely
• Avoiding Plagiarism
• Footnotes or Endnotes?
• Further Readings
• Generative AI and Writing
• USC Libraries Tutorials and Other Guides
• Bibliography

Importance of Narrowing the Research Topic

Whether you are assigned a general issue to investigate, must choose a problem to study from a list given to you by your professor, or you have to identify your own topic to investigate framed only by the class you are taking, it is important that the scope of the research problem is not too broad, otherwise, it will be difficult to adequately address the topic in the space and time allowed. You could experience a number of problems if your topic is too broad, including:

• You find too many information sources and, as a consequence, it is difficult to decide what to include or exclude or what are the most relevant sources.
• You find information that is too general and, as a consequence, it is difficult to develop a clear framework for examining the research problem.
• A lack of sufficient parameters that clearly define the research problem makes it difficult to identify and apply the proper methods needed to analyze the topic.
• You find information that covers a wide variety of concepts or ideas that can't be integrated into one paper and, as a consequence, you trail off into unnecessary tangents.

Lloyd-Walker, Beverly and Derek Walker. "Moving from Hunches to a Research Topic: Salient Literature and Research Methods." In Designs, Methods and Practices for Research of Project Management . Beverly Pasian, editor. ( Burlington, VT: Gower Publishing, 2015 ), pp. 119-129.

Strategies for Narrowing the Research Topic

A common challenge when beginning to write a research paper is determining how and in what ways to narrow down your topic . Even if your professor gives you a specific topic to study, it will almost never be so specific that you won’t have to narrow it down at least to some degree [besides, it is very boring to grade fifty papers that are all about the exact same thing!].

A topic is too broad to be manageable when a review of the literature reveals too many different, and oftentimes conflicting or only remotely related, ideas about how to investigate the research problem. Although you will want to start the writing process by considering a variety of different approaches to studying the research problem, you will need to narrow the focus of your investigation at some point early in the writing process. This way, you don't attempt to do too much in one paper.

Here are some strategies to help narrow the thematic focus of your paper :

• Aspect -- choose one lens through which to view the research problem, or look at just one facet of it [e.g., rather than studying the role of food in South Asian religious rituals, study the role of food in Hindu marriage ceremonies, or, the role of one particular type of food among several religions].
• Components -- determine if your initial variable or unit of analysis can be broken into smaller parts, which can then be analyzed more precisely [e.g., a study of tobacco use among adolescents can focus on just chewing tobacco rather than all forms of usage or, rather than adolescents in general, focus on female adolescents in a certain age range who choose to use tobacco].
• Methodology -- the way in which you gather information can reduce the domain of interpretive analysis needed to address the research problem [e.g., a single case study can be designed to generate data that does not require as extensive an explanation as using multiple cases].
• Place -- generally, the smaller the geographic unit of analysis, the more narrow the focus [e.g., rather than study trade relations issues in West Africa, study trade relations between Niger and Cameroon as a case study that helps to explain economic problems in the region].
• Relationship -- ask yourself how do two or more different perspectives or variables relate to one another. Designing a study around the relationships between specific variables can help constrict the scope of analysis [e.g., cause/effect, compare/contrast, contemporary/historical, group/individual, child/adult, opinion/reason, problem/solution].
• Time -- the shorter the time period of the study, the more narrow the focus [e.g., restricting the study of trade relations between Niger and Cameroon to only the period of 2010 - 2020].
• Type -- focus your topic in terms of a specific type or class of people, places, or phenomena [e.g., a study of developing safer traffic patterns near schools can focus on SUVs, or just student drivers, or just the timing of traffic signals in the area].
• Combination -- use two or more of the above strategies to focus your topic more narrowly.

NOTE: Apply one of the above strategies first in designing your study to determine if that gives you a manageable research problem to investigate. You will know if the problem is manageable by reviewing the literature on your more narrowed problem and assessing whether prior research is sufficient to move forward in your study [i.e., not too much, not too little]. Be careful, however, because combining multiple strategies risks creating the opposite problem--your problem becomes too narrowly defined and you can't locate enough research or data to support your study.

Booth, Wayne C. The Craft of Research . Fourth edition. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2016; Coming Up With Your Topic. Institute for Writing Rhetoric. Dartmouth College; Narrowing a Topic. Writing Center. University of Kansas; Narrowing Topics. Writing@CSU. Colorado State University; Strategies for Narrowing a Topic. University Libraries. Information Skills Modules. Virginia Tech University; The Process of Writing a Research Paper. Department of History. Trent University; Ways to Narrow Down a Topic. Contributing Authors. Utah State OpenCourseWare.

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• Last Updated: Aug 13, 2024 12:57 PM
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Research Tips and Tricks

• Getting Started
• Understanding the Assignment
• Topic Selection Tips

Topic Narrowing

Ways to narrow your topic, be careful, tools to help, youtube videos about narrowing a topic.

• Breaking Topic Into Keywords
• Developing A Search Strategy
• Scholarly vs Popular Sources
• What Are Primary Sources?
• Finding Scholarly Articles
• Finding Scholarly Books
• Finding Primary Sources
• Citing My Sources This link opens in a new window

Instructional Librarian

Talk to your professor

A common challenge when beginning to write a research paper is determining how to narrow down your topic. 

Even if your professor gives you a topic to study, it will likely be so broad that you will have to narrow it down, at least to some degree.

A topic is too broad to be manageable when you find that you have too many different, conflicting or only remotely related ideas. 

Although you will want to start the writing process by considering a variety of different approaches to studying the research problem, you will need to narrow the focus of your investigation at some point early in the writing process - this way you don't attempt to do too much in one paper.

Here are some strategies to help narrow your topic :

Aspect  -- choose one lens through which to view the research problem, or look at just one facet of it.

• e.g., rather than studying the role of food in South Asian religious rituals, explore the role of food in Hindu ceremonies or the role of one particular type of food among several religions.

Components  -- determine if your initial variable or unit of analysis can be broken into smaller parts, which can then be analyzed more precisely. 

• e.g., a study of tobacco use among adolescents can focus on just chewing tobacco rather than all forms of usage or, rather than adolescents in general, focus on female adolescents in a specific age range who choose to use tobacco.

Methodology  -- how you gather information can reduce the domain of interpretive analysis needed to address the research problem.

• e.g., a single case study can be designed to generate data that does not require as extensive an explanation as using multiple cases.

Place  -- generally, the smaller the geographic unit of analysis, the more narrow the focus.

• e.g., rather than study trade relations in North America, study trade relations between Mexico and the United States. 

Relationship  -- ask yourself how do two or more different perspectives or variables relate to one another. Designing a study around the relationships between specific variables can help constrict the scope of analysis. 

• e.g., cause/effect, compare/contrast, contemporary/historical, group/individual, male/female, opinion/reason, problem/solution.

Time  -- the shorter the time period of the study, the more narrow the focus.

• e.g., study of relations between Russia and the United States during the Vietnam War.

Type  -- focus your topic in terms of a specific type or class of people, places, or phenomena. 

• e.g., a study of developing safer traffic patterns near schools can focus on SUVs, or just student drivers, or just the timing of traffic signals in the area.

Cause  -- focus your topic to just one cause for your topic.

• e.g., rather than writing about all the causes of WW1, just write about nationalism.

When narrowing your topic, make sure you don't narrow it too much. A topic is too narrow if you can state it in just a few words.

For example:

• How many soldiers died during the first world war?
• Who was the first President of the United States?
• Why is ocean water salty?
• Why are Pringles shaped the way they are?
• Developing a Research Topic This exercise is designed to help you develop a thoughtful topic for your research assignment, including methods for narrowing your topic.
• What Makes a Good Research Question?
• Narrowing Your topic
• Four Steps To Narrow Your Research Topic

• << Previous: Topic Selection Tips
• Next: Breaking Topic Into Keywords >>
• Last Updated: Jul 18, 2024 9:17 AM
• URL: https://kingsu.libguides.com/research

How to Narrow the Research Topic for Your Paper

• Writing Research Papers
• Writing Essays
• English Grammar
• M.Ed., Education Administration, University of Georgia
• B.A., History, Armstrong State University

It is typical for students to set off on a research topic only to find out that the one they've chosen is too broad. If you are lucky, you will find out before you conduct too much research, because much of the early research you carry out might be useless once you finally narrow your topic.

It is a good idea to run your initial research idea by a teacher or librarian to get an expert opinion. He or she will save you some time and give you some tips on narrowing the scope of your topic.

What Is Too Broad?

Students get tired of hearing that their chosen topic is too broad, but it is a very common problem. How do you know if your topic is too broad?

• If you find yourself in the library staring at a entire section of books that could work as references for your topic, it is too broad! A good topic addresses a specific question or problem. You should see only four or five books on the shelf that address your specific research question (maybe fewer!).
• If your topic can be summed up in a word or two, like smoking, school cheating , education, overweight teens, corporal punishment , Korean War, or hip-hop, it is too broad.
• If you have trouble coming up with a thesis statement, your topic is probably too broad.​

A good research project must be narrowed down in order to be meaningful and manageable.

How to Narrow Your Topic

The best way to narrow your topic is to apply a few of the old familiar question words, like who, what, where, when, why, and how.

• Paddling as punishment:
• Where? : "Paddling in grade school"
• What and where? : "Emotional effects of paddling in grade school"
• What and who? : "Emotional effects of paddling on female children"
• Hip-hop dancing:
• What? : "Hip-hop as therapy"
• What and where? : "Hip-hop as therapy in Japan"
• What, where, and who? : "Hip-hop as therapy for delinquent youth in Japan"

Eventually, you will see that the process of narrowing your research topic actually makes your project more interesting. Already, you're one step closer to a better grade!

Another Tactic

Another good method for narrowing your focus involves brainstorming a list of terms and questions related to your broad topic. To demonstrate, let's start with a broad subject, like unhealthy behavior as an example.

Imagine that your instructor has given this subject as a writing prompt. You can make a list of somewhat-related, random nouns and see if you can ask questions to relate the two topics. This results in a narrow subject! Here is a demonstration:

This might look random, but your next step is to come up with a question that connects the two subjects. The answer to that question is the starting point for a thesis statement , and a brainstorming session like this can lead to great research ideas.

• Art and unhealthy behavior:
• Is there a specific piece of art that represents the hazards of smoking?
• Is there a famous artist who died from an unhealthy habit?
• Sandwiches and unhealthy behavior:
• What happens if you eat sandwiches every day for dinner?
• Are ice cream sandwiches really bad for us?
• Revising a Paper
• What Is a Senior Thesis?
• Research Note Cards
• How to Write a Solid Thesis Statement
• Research Paper Writing Checklist
• How to Use Verbs Effectively in Your Research Paper
• World War II Research Essay Topics
• How to Write a Paper at the Last Minute
• How to Write a 10-Page Research Paper
• Writing an Annotated Bibliography for a Paper
• How to Develop a Research Paper Timeline
• 5 Steps to Writing a Position Paper
• Finding Trustworthy Sources
• What Is a Bibliography?
• Tips for Typing an Academic Paper on a Computer
• The Introductory Paragraph: Start Your Paper Off Right

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1-Research Questions

2. Narrowing a Topic

For many students, having to start with a research question is the biggest difference between how they did research in high school and how they are required to carry out their college research projects. It’s a process of working from the outside in: you start with the world of all possible topics (or your assigned topic) and narrow down until you’ve focused your interest enough to be able to tell precisely 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 specific areas of focus, it will be hard to even know where to begin.

Assigned Topics – When professors assign a topic you have to narrow, they have already started the narrowing process. Narrowing a topic means making some part of it more specific. Ideas about a narrower topic can come from anywhere. Often, a narrower topic boils down to deciding what’s interesting to you. One way to get ideas is to read background information from a source like Wikipedia.

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.

ACTIVITY: Which Topic Is Narrower?

When we talk about narrowing a topic, we’re talking about making it more specific. You can make it more specific by singling out at least one part or aspect of the original to decrease the scope of the original. Now here’s some practice for you to test your understanding.

Why Narrow a Topic?

Once you have a need for research—say, an assignment—you may need to prowl around a bit online to explore the topic and figure out what you actually want to find out and write about.

For instance, maybe your assignment is to develop a poster about the season “spring” for an introductory horticulture course. The instructor expects you to narrow that topic to something you are interested in and that is related to your class.

Ideas about a narrower topic can come from anywhere. In this case, a narrower topic boils down to deciding what’s interesting to you about “spring” that is related to what you’re learning in your horticulture class and small enough to manage in the time you have.

One way to get ideas would be to read about spring in Wikipedia, looking for things that seem interesting and relevant to your class, and then letting one thing lead to another as you keep reading and thinking about likely possibilities that are more narrow than the enormous “spring” topic. (Be sure to pay attention to the references at the bottom of most Wikipedia pages and pursue any that look interesting. Your instructor is not likely to let you cite Wikipedia, but those references may be citable scholarly sources that you could eventually decide to use.)

Or, instead, if it is spring at the time you could start by just looking around, admire the blooming trees on campus, and decide you’d like your poster to be about bud development on your favorites, the crabapple trees.

What you’re actually doing to narrow your topic is making at least one aspect of your topic more specific. For instance, assume your topic is the maintenance of the 130 miles of sidewalks on OSU’s Columbus campus. If you made maintenance more specific, your narrower topic might be snow removal on Columbus OSU’s sidewalks. If instead, you made the 130 miles of sidewalks more specific, your narrower topic might be maintenance of the sidewalks on all sides of Mirror Lake.

Anna Narrows Her Topic and Works on a Research Question

The Situation: Anna, an undergraduate, has been assigned a research paper on Antarctica. Her professor expects students to (1) narrow the topic on something more specific about Antarctica because they won’t have time to cover that whole topic. Then they are to (2) come up with a research question that their paper will answer.

The professor explained that the research question should be something they are interested in answering and that it must be more complicated than what they could answer with a quick Google search. He also said that research questions often, but not always, start with either the word “how” or “why.”

What you should do:

• Read what Anna is thinking below as she tries to do the assignment.
• After the reading, answer the questions at the end of the monologue in your own mind.
• Check your answers with ours at the end of Anna’s interior monologue.
• Keep this demonstration in mind the next time you are in Anna’s spot, and you can mimic her actions and think about your own topic.

Anna’s Interior Monologue

Okay, I am going to have to write something—a research paper—about Antarctica. I don’t know anything about that place—I think it’s a continent. I can’t think of a single thing I’ve ever wanted to know about Antarctica. How will I come up with a research question about that place? Calls for Wikipedia, I guess.

At https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctica . Just skimming. Pretty boring stuff. Oh, look– Antarctica’s a desert! I guess “desert” doesn’t have to do with heat. That’s interesting. What else could it have to do with? Maybe lack of precipitation? But there’s lots of snow and ice there. Have to think about that—what makes a desert a desert?

It says one to five thousand people live there in research stations. Year-round. Definitely, the last thing I’d ever do. “…there is no evidence that it was seen by humans until the 19th century.” I never thought about whether anybody lived in Antarctica first, before the scientists and stuff.

Lots of names—explorer, explorer… boring. It says Amundson reached the South Pole first. Who’s Amundson? But wait. It says, “One month later, the doomed Scott Expedition reached the pole.” Doomed? Doomed is always interesting. Where’s more about the Scott Expedition? I’m going to use that Control-F technique and type in Scott to see if I can find more about him on this page. Nothing beyond that one sentence shows up. Why would they have just that one sentence? I’ll have to click on the Scott Expedition link.

But it gives me a page called Terra Nova Expedition. What does that have to do with Scott? And just who was Scott? And why was his expedition doomed? There he is in a photo before going to Antarctica. Guess he was English. Other photos show him and his team in the snow. Oh, the expedition was named Terra Nova after the ship they sailed this time—in 1911. Scott had been there earlier on another ship.

Lots of stuff about preparing for the trip. Then stuff about expedition journeys once they were in Antarctica. Not very exciting—nothing about being doomed. I don’t want to write about this stuff.

Wait. The last paragraph of the first section says “For many years after his death, Scott’s status as a tragic hero was unchallenged,” but then it says that in the 20th-century people looked closer at the expedition’s management and at whether Scott and some of his team could be personally blamed for the catastrophe. That “remains controversial,” it says. Catastrophe? Personally blamed? Hmm.

Back to skimming. It all seems horrible to me. They actually planned to kill their ponies for meat, so when they actually did it, it was no surprise. Everything was extremely difficult. And then when they arrived at the South Pole, they found that the explorer Amundsen had beaten them. Must have been a big disappointment.

The homeward march was even worse. The weather got worse. The dog sleds that were supposed to meet them periodically with supplies didn’t show up. Or maybe the Scott group was lost and didn’t go to the right meeting places. Maybe that’s what that earlier statement meant about whether the decisions that were made were good ones. Scott’s diary said the crystallized snow made it seem like they were pushing and pulling the sledges through dry sand .

It says that before things turned really bad ( really bad? You’ve already had to eat your horses !), Scott allowed his men to put 30 pounds of rocks with fossils on the sledges they were pushing and dragging. Now was that sensible? The men had to push or pull those sledges themselves. What if it was those rocks that actually doomed those men?

But here it says that those rocks are the proof of continental drift. So how did they know those rocks were so important? Was that knowledge worth their lives? Could they have known?

Wow–there is drama on this page! Scott’s diary is quoted about their troubles on the expedition—the relentless cold, frostbite, and the deaths of their dogs. One entry tells of a guy on Scott’s team “now with hands as well as feet pretty well useless” voluntarily leaving the tent and walking to his death. The diary says that the team member’s last words were ”I am just going outside and may be some time.” Ha!

They all seem lost and desperate but still have those sledges. Why would you keep pulling and pushing those sledges containing an extra 30 pounds of rock when you are so desperate and every step is life or death?

Then there’s Scott’s last diary entry, on March 29, 1912. “… It seems a pity but I do not think I can write more.” Well.

That diary apparently gave lots of locations of where he thought they were but maybe they were lost. It says they ended up only 11 miles from one of their supply stations. I wonder if anybody knows how close they were to where Scott thought they were.

I’d love to see that diary. Wouldn’t that be cool? Online? I’ll Google it.

Yes! At the British museum. Look at that! I can see Scott’s last entry IN HIS OWN HANDWRITING!

Actually, if I decide to write about something that requires reading the diary, it would be easier to not have to decipher his handwriting. Wonder whether there is a typed version of it online somewhere?

Maybe I should pay attention to the early paragraph on the Terra Nova Expedition page in Wikipedia—about it being controversial whether Scott and his team made bad decisions so that they brought most of their troubles on themselves. Can I narrow my topic to just the controversy over whether bad decisions of Scott and his crew doomed them? Maybe it’s too big a topic if I consider the decisions of all team members. Maybe I should just consider Scott’s decisions.

So what research question could come from that? Maybe: how did Scott’s decisions contribute to his team’s deaths in Antarctica? But am I talking about his decisions before or after they left for Antarctica? Or the whole time they were a team? Probably too many decisions involved. More focused: How did Scott’s decisions after reaching the South Pole help or hurt the chances of his team getting back safely? That’s not bad—maybe. If people have written about that. There are several of his decisions discussed on the Wikipedia page, and I know there are sources at the bottom of that page.

Let me think—what else did I see that was interesting or puzzling about all this? I remember being surprised that Antarctica is a desert. So maybe I could make Antarctica as a desert my topic. My research question could be something like: Why is Antarctica considered a desert? But there has to be a definition of deserts somewhere online, so that doesn’t sound complicated enough. Once you know the definition of desert, you’d know the answer to the question. Professor Sanders says research questions are more complicated than regular questions.

What’s a topic I could care about? A question I really wonder about? Maybe those rocks with the fossils in them. It’s just so hard to imagine desperate explorers continuing to push those sledges with an extra 30 pounds of rocks on them. Did they somehow know how important they would be? Or were they just curious about them? Why didn’t they ditch them? Or maybe they just didn’t realize how close to death they were. Maybe I could narrow my Antarctica topic to those rocks.

Maybe my narrowed topic could be something like: The rocks that Scott and his crew found in Antarctica that prove continental drift. Maybe my research question could be: How did Scott’s explorers choose the rocks they kept?

Well, now all I have is questions about my questions. Like, is my professor going to think the question about the rocks is still about Antarctica? Or is it all about continental drift or geology or even the psychology of desperate people? And what has been written about the finding of those rocks? Will I be able to find enough sources? I’m also wondering whether my question about Scott’s decisions is too big—do I have enough time for it?

I think my professor is the only one who can tell me whether my question about the rocks has enough to do with Antarctica. Since he’s the one who will be grading my paper. But a librarian can help me figure out the other things.

So Dr. Sanders and a librarian are next.

Reflection Questions

• Was Anna’s choice to start with Wikipedia a good choice? Why or why not?
• Have you ever used that Control-F technique?
• At what points does Anna think about where to look for information?
• At the end of this session, Anna hasn’t yet settled on a research question. So what did she accomplish? What good was all this searching and thinking?

Our Answers:

• Was Anna’s choice to start with Wikipedia a good choice? Why or why not? Wikipedia is a great place to start a research project. Just make sure you move on from there, because it’s a not a good place to end up with your project. One place to move on to is the sources at the bottom of most Wikipedia pages.
• Have you ever used that Control-F technique? If you haven’t used the Control-F technique, we hope you will. It can save you a lot of time and effort reading online material.
• At what points does Anna think about where to look for information ? When she began; when she wanted to know more about the Scott expedition; when she wonders whether she could read Scott’s diary online; when she thinks about what people could answer her questions.
• At the end of this session, Anna hasn’t yet settled on a research question. So what did she accomplish? What good was all this reading and thinking? There are probably many answers to this question. Ours includes that Anna learned more about Antarctica, the subject of her research project. She focused her thinking (even if she doesn’t end up using the possible research questions she’s considering) and practiced critical thinking skills, such as when she thought about what she could be interested in, when she worked to make her potential research questions more specific, and when she figured out what questions still needed answering at the end. She also practiced her skills at making meaning from what she read, investigating a story that she didn’t expect to be there and didn’t know had the potential of being one that she is interested in. She also now knows what questions she needs answered and whom to ask. These thinking skills are what college is all about. Anna is way beyond where she was when she started.

Choosing & Using Sources: A Guide to Academic Research Copyright © 2015 by Teaching & Learning, Ohio State University Libraries is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Selecting a Research Topic

Why should i narrow my research topic, considerations, topic selection process.

• Topic Selection Strategies
• EBSCO's Research Starters
• Defining Scope

If you have a need to conduct research for a course at any level, you should understand the significance of narrowing down your research topic.  Reasons for narrowing down a research topic are:

• The field you are studying is much too broad, so you cannot formulate a research question or hypothesis from it.
• You are not quite sure what you want to cover in your research project/paper.
• You feel overwhelmed by the research topic you have already selected.
• Your assignment requires you to research a topic that has not yet been covered (research gap).

Before you begin your search for a research topic, there are some things to consider that could impact the topic you choose:

• In what field of study is your assignment?  In what course is your project?
• Does your assignment require you to research a specific topic within a particular discipline?
• How narrow or broad does your topic need to be?
• Who will be reading your paper?
• Will you be presenting your project to an audience?
• What type of paper are you writing?  This may determine the scope of your topic.

The process of narrowing down a research topic can be illustrated by the image below ("Choosing & Using Sources," 2016).  It illustrates the process of thinking about all potential research topics, then narrowing it down to a specific research question.  This diagram can assist you in determining your topic because it illustrates how all possible topics and subjects transform into your final research topic.  It is also recommended that you refer to your assignment instructions for guidance on topic selection.

All possible topics:  Represents all potential topics in your field of discipline.  This is often overwhelming, so it is typical to rule out irrelevant topics to create a "smaller" pool of topics.

Assigned topic:  This is a combination of determining topics that are interesting to you and that fulfill your assignment requirements.  You might have more than one topic, so you may need to narrow them down further.

Topic narrowed by initial exploration:  This results from conducting preliminary research on your assigned topic(s).  During this process, you will learn more about the topics you are considering.  From there, you can determine if the topic is still of interest.

Topic narrowed to research question(s):  From the information you have learned in your preliminary research, you formulate a research question that identifies what your paper/project will attempt to discover.

The video below from Wilsey Library demonstrates how to narrow down a general research topic.

• << Previous: Welcome
• Next: Topic Selection Strategies >>
• Last Updated: Jul 10, 2024 9:56 AM
• URL: https://library.tiffin.edu/selectingaresearchtopic

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1 Narrowing a Topic

Defining your research question is a process of working from the outside in: you start with the world of all possible topics (or your assigned topic) and narrow down until you have focused your interest enough to be able to state precisely what you want to find out, instead of only what you want to “write about.”

Going through this process can be the hardest part of doing research, but once you have a question that is realistically scoped (not too broad, not too narrow) it will guide the rest of your work.

 The Process of Narrowing a Topic

ACTIVITY: Which Topic is Narrower? 

Now it’s your turn. Practice thinking about narrower topics with these 3 examples. Click the arrow to show the next question.

TIP: Use Some of the 5 W’s to Help Narrow Your Topic to a Searchable Question

Your assignment is to write on the topic of higher education. You decide you want to write about the high cost of tuition, but that is still too broad.

Start by asking some or all of the following questions.

From asking these questions, you might come up with a research question like this:

“How does the high cost of tuition impact the degree completion of mature college students?”

Image: “ Rq-narrow ” by Teaching and Learning, University Libraries is licensed under CC BY-4.0 .

Doing Research Copyright © 2020 by Celia Brinkerhoff is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

Narrowing a Topic

For many students, having to start with a research question is the biggest difference between how they did research in high school and how they are required to carry out their college research projects. It’s a process of working from the outside in: you start with the world of all possible topics (or your assigned topic) and narrow down until you’ve focused your interest enough to be able to tell precisely what you want to find out, instead of only what you want to “write about.”

Process of Narrowing a Topic

Visualize narrowing a topic as starting with all possible topics and choosing narrower and narrower subsets until you have a specific enough topic to form a research question.

All Possible Topics – You’ll need to narrow your topic to do research effectively. Without specific areas of focus, it will be hard to even know where to begin.

Assigned Topics –  Ideas about a narrower topic can come from anywhere. Often, a narrower topic boils down to deciding what’s interesting to you. One way to get ideas is to read background information in a source like Wikipedia.

Topic Narrowed by Initial Exploration –  It’s wise to do some background 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.

Why Narrow a Topic?

Once you have a need for research—say, an assignment—you may need to prowl around a bit online to explore the topic and figure out what you actually want to find out and write about. For instance, maybe your assignment is to develop a poster about “spring” for an introductory horticulture course. The instructor expects you to narrow that topic to something you are interested in and that is related to your class.

Another way to view a narrowed topic is as a sliver of the whole topic.

Ideas about a narrower topic can come from anywhere. In this case, a narrower topic boils down to deciding what’s interesting to you about “spring” that is related to what you’re learning in your horticulture class and small enough to manage in the time you have. One way to get ideas would be to read about spring in Wikipedia, a reference database such as CREDO, or a subject encyclopedia. Look for things that seem interesting and relevant to your class, and then let one thing lead to another as you keep reading and thinking about likely possibilities that are more narrow than the enormous “spring” topic. Be sure to pay attention to the references at the bottom of most Wikipedia pages and pursue any that look interesting. Your instructor is not likely to let you cite Wikipedia, but those references may be scholarly sources that you could eventually decide to use and cite.

Or, instead, if it is spring at the time you could start by just looking around, admire the blooming trees on campus, and decide you’d like your poster to be about bud development on your favorites, the crabapple trees.

Jada Narrows Her Topic and Works on a Research Question

The Situation: Jada, an undergraduate, has been assigned a research paper on Antarctica. Her professor expects students to narrow the topic to something more specific about Antarctica because they won’t have time to cover that whole topic. Then they are to come up with a research question that their paper will answer.

The professor explained that the research question should be something they are interested in answering and that it must be more complicated than what they could answer with a quick Google search. She also said that research questions often start with either the word “how” or “why.”

Try it out:

• Read what Jada is thinking below as she tries to do the assignment.
• After the reading, answer the questions based on your own approach to research.
• Check your answers with ours.
• Keep this passage in mind the next time you start a research topic and mimic the process that Jada uses.

Jada’s Thoughts

Okay, I have to write—a research paper—about Antarctica. I don’t know anything about that place—and I can’t think of a single thing I’d like to know about Antarctica. Calls for Wikipedia, I guess.

Guess I’ll go here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctica . Just skimming. Pretty boring stuff. Oh, look– Antarctica’s a desert! I guess “desert” doesn’t have to do with heat. That’s interesting. Why is it considered a desert, there’s lots of snow and ice there. Have to think about that—what makes a desert a desert.

It says one to five thousand people live there in research stations. Year-round. And there is no evidence that it was seen by humans until the 19th century. I never thought about whether anybody lived in Antarctica first, before explorers and scientists.

Lots of names—explorers, others. It says Amundsen reached the South pole first. Who’s Amundsen? But wait. It says, “One month later, the doomed Scott Expedition reached the pole.” Doomed? Doomed is always interesting. Where is there more information about the Scott Expedition? There is only one sentence. Why would they have just that one sentence? I’ll have to click on the Scott Expedition link.

Terra Nova…

But it gives me a page called Terra Nova Expedition. What does that have to do with Scott? Who was he and why was his expedition doomed? There he is in a photo before going to Antarctica. Guess he was English. Other photos show him and his team in the snow. Oh, the expedition was named Terra Nova after the ship they sailed this time—in 1911. Scott was also there earlier on another ship.

Lots of info about preparing for the trip. Then stuff about expedition journeys once they were in Antarctica. Not very exciting—nothing about being doomed.

Wait. The last paragraph of the first section says “For many years after his death, Scott’s status as a tragic hero was unchallenged,” but then it says that in the 20th-century people looked closer at the expedition’s management and at whether Scott and some of his team could be personally blamed for the catastrophe. That “remains controversial,” it says. Catastrophe? Personally, blamed? Hmm.

Back to skimming. It all seems horrible to me. They actually planned to kill their ponies for meat. Everything was extremely difficult. And then when they arrived at the South Pole, they found that the explorer Amundsen had beaten them. Must have been a big disappointment.

The homeward march was even worse. The weather was bad. The dog sleds that were supposed to meet them periodically with supplies didn’t show up. Or maybe the Scott group was lost and didn’t go to the right meeting places. Maybe that’s what that earlier statement meant about whether the decisions that were made were good ones. Scott’s diary said the crystallized snow made it seem like they were pushing and pulling the sleds through dry sand .

It says that before things turned really bad, Scott allowed his men to put 30 pounds of rocks with fossils on the sleds they were pushing and dragging. Now was that sensible? But here it says that those rocks are the proof of continental drift. So how did they know those rocks were so important? Was that knowledge worth their lives? Could they have known?

Scott’s diary is quoted about their troubles on the expedition—the relentless cold, frostbite, and the deaths of their dogs. One entry tells of a guy on Scott’s team “now with hands as well as feet pretty well useless” voluntarily leaving the tent and walking to his death. The diary says that the team member’s last words were ”I am just going outside and may be some time.”

They all seem lost and desperate but still have those sleds. Why would you keep pulling and pushing those sleds containing an extra 30 pounds of rock when you are so desperate and every step is life or death?

Then there’s Scott’s last diary entry, on March 29, 1912. “… It seems a pity but I do not think I can write more.”. The diary apparently gave lots of locations of where he thought they were but maybe they were lost. It says they ended up only 11 miles from one of their supply stations.

I’d love to see that diary. Wouldn’t that be cool? Online? I’ll Google it. Yes! it’s at the British Museum. Look at that! I can see Scott’s last entry IN HIS OWN HANDWRITING! And there’s a digital copy too.

I wonder if I should narrow my topic to just the controversy over whether the expedition was doomed because of the bad decisions made by Scott and his crew?  Maybe it’s too big a topic if I consider the decisions of all team members. Maybe I should just consider Scott’s decisions. They should be noted in the diary.

So what research question could come from that? Maybe: how did Scott’s decisions contribute to his team’s deaths in Antarctica? Need to be more focused: How did Scott’s decisions after reaching the South Pole help or hurt the chances of his team getting back safely? There are several of his decisions discussed on the Wikipedia page, and I know there are sources at the bottom of that page.

Really, a desert?

Let me think—what else did I see that was interesting or puzzling about all this? I remember being surprised that Antarctica is a desert. So maybe I could make the desert of Antarctica my topic. My research question could be something like: Why is Antarctica considered a desert? But there has to be a definition of deserts somewhere online, so that doesn’t sound complicated enough. Maybe those rocks with the fossils in them. It’s just so hard to imagine desperate explorers continuing to push those sleds with an extra 30 pounds of rocks on them. Did they somehow know how important they would be? Why didn’t they ditch them? Or maybe they just didn’t realize how close to death they were. Maybe I could narrow my Antarctica topic to those rocks.

Maybe my topic could be something like The rocks that Scott and his crew found in Antarctica that prove continental drift. Maybe my research question could be: How did Scott’s explorers choose the rocks they kept? Or maybe I should stick with why Scott and his crew made bad decisions.

I should ask.

I think my professor is the only one who can tell me whether my question about the rocks has enough to do with Antarctica. Since she’s the one who will be grading my paper. But a librarian can help me figure out the other things. So Dr. Sanders and a librarian are next.

• Was Jada’s choice to start with Wikipedia a good choice? Why or why not?
• Have you ever skimmed resources first and then read more deeply later?
• At what points does Jada think about where to look for information?
• At the end of this session, Jada hasn’t yet settled on a research question. So what did she accomplish? What good was all this searching and thinking?

Our Answers

• Was Jada’s choice to start with Wikipedia a good choice? Although not usually cited in research papers, Wikipedia is a good place to learn more about all kinds of topics.  Information is usually general in nature and you can check out the references at the bottom of the page. Use those links to find additional resources. This may lead you to library based sources like subject dictionaries, encyclopedias, or guides.
• Have you ever skimmed resources first and then read more deeply later? When first exploring your topic you may choose to skim resources. That is a very brief read looking for interesting and useful information. Later when you select a topic and look for resources that provide deeper, more focused information.
• At what points does Jada think about where to look for information? After receiving the core part of the topic (Antarctica), she begins looking for general information and becomes curious about the Scott expedition. As she learns more she thinks about where she can look for additional information, such as the diary mentioned in Wikipedia..
• At the end of this session, Jada hasn’t yet settled on a research question. So what did she accomplish? What good was all this searching and thinking? The background information that Jada looked at helped her to focus on the problems with the Scott Expedition. She slowly narrows down some of the issues and centers on the weight of the rocks.  She considers two different questions (one more narrow than the other) and intends to seek input from the professor and librarian.  Taking the time to explore her topic has given her ideas useful for a solid research question.

Exercise: Determine the Topic Order

Critical Thinking in Academic Research Copyright © 2022 by Cindy Gruwell and Robin Ewing is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Choosing and narrowing a topic to write about (for research papers), introduction to choosing a research topic.

Introduction: Research is Never a Waste of Time, But Always Make Good Use of Your Time.

It is natural to stand at the beginning of a research project and feel overwhelmed by the amount of published research that exists in databases, literature reviews, and reference pages. At the same time, each new research project brings the hope of discovering something new. Overwhelming though a project may be, starting at the foothills of a new thread of research is a great privilege, and is best approached as an opportunity to learn rather than a drudgery. As a researcher/writer, you have the chance to dive more deeply into less frequently encountered pools of knowledge.

Depending on the topic or scope of your research, it is also natural to spend many days and weeks - and in some cases months and years - searching. No matter how great or small the scope of research is, the serious researcher needs to reserve adequate time to perform a thorough survey of published articles. For an undergraduate course project, finding five or six sources might seem like plenty of material to review, but graduate-level writing projects typically involve up to 20 sources minimum.

Please note that the main point here is not to say that it is only the number of research articles matters most, but rather that having a broad spectrum of papers to choose from helps you choose your topic for at least the following two reasons: 1) a larger pool of sources provides you with a broader perspective of the topics within your scope of research and 2) along the way you will find many topics within your field that you DO NOT want to write about! So, one particularly effective way of viewing research is not finding the absolute minimum sources to "get by", but rather to find a variety of sources that you can use...like an artist uses negative space to "carve" shapes out of a dark background...to guide you toward topics that are more directly relevant to your topic.

The good news is that as you research you may find that some of your sources that were published in the same decade or so will cite and reference each other.

One of the joys and privileges of research is being able to follow your curiosity; if you are truly curious about your topic, and authentically driven to find out as much as you can, then even the articles you don't find interesting will be useful for a future project, and no energy will be wasted.

Source: Neil Cunningham

Steps 1, 2, and 3: Choosing a Topic

Well, you've been researching for a while now, and you are now ready to settle down on a specific topic. You can do this easily by moving through the following steps. (For the purposes of this learning packet, let say that you are writing on the subject of decomposition .)

Choosing a Specific Topic in Three Steps

1. Choose any topic or topics in the universe. - "e.g., something about organic matter"

2. Be a little more specific about your topic . - "e.g., compost and soil"

3. Be a lot more specific about your topic - "e.g., soil nutrients released by organic matter decomposition"

4. Repeat these three steps three or more times to give yourself a few examples of topics to choose from . When you have a few examples, choose the topic that you feel meets your course requirements, the needs of your intended (or imagined) audience, and/or has the most relevant source material to support it. .

Once you feel terrifically solid about the topic you have chosen, you are ready to Narrow Down Your Topic . Always remember that you can go back to research at any time of your writing process.

Steps 3, 4, and 5: Narrowing Down Your Topic

During the first three steps, you chose a topic. For some, this topic may seem like it's ready to be written about, but the level of precision required in the context of academic writing requires writer-researcher to go through a few additional steps.

In other words, many articles have already been written that describe various aspects of organic matter decomposition, so we must narrow down our chosen topic so that we can focus our research efforts on a more precise question or thesis statement.

Narrowing a Topic in Three Steps, Starting from a Topic that Was Selected Using the Three-Step Choosing a Topic Process.

1) Make one or two more words more specific .

In this case, we replaced the words "soil nutrients" with nitrogen and replaced "organic matter" with food waste to make the topic we wish to write about as precise and as specific as possible.

• Example: " soil nutrients nitrogen released by organic matter the decomposition of food waste "

2) OK, we've added a few words to make the topic more specific. Now turn the topic into a complete sentence that actually makes a statement.

• Example: The forms of nitrogen released by the decomposition of food waste is poorly understood.

3) Make the sentence as precise and arguable as possible.

If you compare the following example with the previous step, you might notice how the context of decomposition moves from just a generalized process of decomposition to a particular process that involves household waste. In addition, this example makes a firm statement that can be argued and supported.

• Example: The amount and value of plant-available nitrogen released by decomposition of household food waste is not well understood because most home composters do not have the tools to measure soil nutrients.

In summary, the steps outlined in this learning packet encourage academic writers who want to increase the precision of the topics they write about to go through a process.

This learning packet has broken down the process of selecting a topic into two large steps - choosing a topic and narrowing it down.

To choose a general topic, follow the following steps:

     1) Choose a topic area. Example: beer

     2) Take you topic area and describe it more specifically. Example: beer and microorganisms

     3) Name a specific aspect of the specific topic. Example: the quality of beer and the quality of microorganisms needed    to brew it properly

To narrow down the focus of your topic, follow the following three steps:

     4) Write down additional specific about your topic. Example: brewing quality tasting beer and the health of the colonies of yeast used to brew small batches of beer  properly.

     5) Turn your topic into a sentence that is a statement. Example: The quality of small batches of beer is affected by the overall health of the yeast used during fermentation.

     6) Now add "fine" focus to your statement by making a statement that can (although it does not necessarily need to) refer back to your research. Example: A survey of microbrewers suggests that beer taste is equally affected by the health of yeast used during fermentation as it is by the quality of the grains used.  

Choosing and Narrowing a Topic

This audio file describes the process of choosing and narrowing a topic that is demonstrated in this learning packet. This audio file is a supplement to the text portion of this packet, and is meant to be listened to the powerpoint slide.

Choosing a Research Topic [Overview]

This narrated slide show provides a brief overview and an example of the topic-selecting process described in this learning packet.

Learning Objectives

Subject:  Pre-Writing Strategies   Topic:  Choosing a Research Topic, Narrowing a Research Topic   Objectives:   This learning packet should review:

• Selecting a topic for research
• Bridging research topics with actual research
• Generating ideas for research topics
• Overcoming writer's block

  Background Knowledge:  By this point, a student should have been exposed to basic research techniques and have a minimum of 3-5 sources to begin to write from.   New Terms:  A few terms that may be new are:

• Thesis statement
• Supportable topic
• Evidence-based writing
• Scholarly writing

  A few notes: For best results, the method described in this learning packet should be practiced several times in order to develop confidence and consistency.

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Basic Research Strategies: Narrowing and Keywords

• Research: The First Steps
• Narrowing and Keywords
• Background Info/Articles
• Find Books, Articles & Other Resources
• Literary Research
• Science Research
• Art and Music Research
• Which Website is Best?
• MLA Citations

Narrowing a Topic

Once you have selected a topic, you need to narrow it down.

This means you select a smaller part of the main topic to research.

How Can You Narrow the Topic?

Once you have selected a broad topic, such as Global Warming or Drug Abuse, you should try to narrow your focus.  Here are some ways to narrow the topic:

• Pick one aspect of the topic: Causes, Prevention,  Effects, Treatment.
• Pick a location or subgroup:  New York, College Students, Teenagers, Athletes
• Select a person closely related to the topic

Now you can put your narrower topic into a research question. Here are some examples:

What are the causes of global warming? How can we prevent child abuse? What are the effects of steroid use on athletes? Why do college students use illegal drugs?

Now you need to identify the keywords for your research.

Narrow Your Topic

Here are some examples of narrower topics in Social Justice:

1. Research Question : What is racism?

Main Subject : Racism

Narrower topic #1 : Racism in the military

Narrower topic #2 : Preventing  discrimination against ____( any religious or ethnic group.)

Narrower topic # 3 : Cyberbullying among teens

2. Research Question : How are children exploited?

Main Subject :  Child labor

Narrower topic #1 : How can we end child labor?

Narrow topic #2 : What are the effects of child labor?

Narrower topic #3: How are children used as soldiers?

3. Research Question : What is global warming?

Main Subject : Climate change

Narrower topic #1 : What are the effects of climate change?

Narrower topic #2 : How can we prevent climate change ?

Narrower topic #3 : Which species have become endangered by climate change?

Finding Keywords

What Are Your Keywords?

When you are searching for books and articles on your topic, you will need to select some keywords. Keywords help point your search in the right directio and are like the main ideas in a sentence or paragraph.

  The words in your research question are perfect starting points.

For example, What are the causes of global warming ? The keywords are causes and global warming.  But there are other words that might help you.

Terms that mean the same thing ( synonyms) are also worthwhile keywords.

  Global warming is sometimes called climate change and drug use  among athletes is sometimes called doping .  Using different terms to locate information will give you greater results.

Identify Keywords

Here are some examples of keywords for the topics on the left.

racism, discrimination, hate crimes, sexism, crimes against _____,

bullying, cyberbullying, antisemitism, workplace discrimination,

cause, effect, prevention,  issues, analysis

child labor, sweatshops, unfair labor, children, factories,

child soldiers, cause, effect, prevention, issues, analysis

climate change, global warming, weather disasters, extreme weather, floods

endangered species, polar bears, effect, cause, prevention, issues,

controversy, analysis

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Getting Started with Research at Shapiro Library

Narrowing down or broadening your topic.

When you need to broaden or narrow down your topic, ask yourself:

Who am I researching?

• Consider age, gender, profession, ethnicity, humans vs. animals vs. corporations, etc.

What am I researching?

• Consider potential causes and effects, trends, statistics, problems, etc.

When? 

What time period am I interested in? 

• Consider when the topic became significant, century vs. specific dates, historical vs. current data, etc.

Where is my research topic taking place? 

• Consider country, state, city, urban vs. rural, environments like prisons vs. college towns, etc.

Why?  

Why does my research matter?

• Consider what makes it important to you, to your colleagues and peers, to your community, to the world, etc.

• << Previous: Sources of Inspiration for Topics
• Next: What is a Research Question? >>

Research Process Guide

• Step 1 - Identifying and Developing a Topic
• Step 2 - Narrowing Your Topic
• Step 3 - Developing Research Questions
• Step 4 - Conducting a Literature Review
• Step 5 - Choosing a Conceptual or Theoretical Framework
• Step 6 - Determining Research Methodology
• Step 6a - Determining Research Methodology - Quantitative Research Methods
• Step 6b - Determining Research Methodology - Qualitative Design
• Step 7 - Considering Ethical Issues in Research with Human Subjects - Institutional Review Board (IRB)
• Step 8 - Collecting Data
• Step 9 - Analyzing Data
• Step 10 - Interpreting Results
• Step 11 - Writing Up Results

Step 2: Narrowing Your Topic

As you are working through the process of choosing a research topic, you want to make sure that you are choosing a topic that is not too broad or too narrow. It is important that you explore the scale and scope of your research before you begin. Making a plan with your mentor, advisor, or co-researchers about what you intend to explore, where you get your data and how long it will take.   There are some steps you can take to try to narrow down your research topic. Ultimately, you are looking for a clear statement of the problem to be studied. That said, you need to start ‘unpacking’ the problem by asking what issues make up the problem, as well as a thorough review of the literature. According to Bouma et al. (2012) there are some questions that you can ask yourself to help you unpack the problem:

• What are the major concepts within the problem?
• What is happening in and around the problem?
• What are the issues in and around the problem?
• Is one thing affecting or causing a change in something else? Why is this so?

You need to think about the scale and scope of your research problem, as you narrow your focus. You would narrow the scale by asking: how much data can I collect to answer my research questions? How and where will I collect my data? What is my sample size? Is this study reasonable and doable? You would narrow the scope by asking: What are the appropriate boundaries of the study? What data will I not be collecting? What data will I include? Research Gaps It is really important to consider the gaps in the research on your topic, as these gaps will define what you are contributing to the discourse in your field and on your topic. To underscore, rather than seeing your research as merely part of the criteria to earn your degree, you may want to consider the opportunity to create an entirely new knowledge base, theory or to inform practice and policy (Winterberger & Saunders, 2020).  Ultimately, your research will be published in the ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global database once you defend your dissertation. Many graduate students go on for postgraduate research positions and can use their dissertation research as a foundation of future scholarly publications. It is important to note that most scholarly journals feature research that finds new ways to investigate conceptual and theoretical topics previously researched, a method referred to widely as ‘gap spotting’ (Winterberger & Saunders, 2020).

Bouma, G. D., Ling, R., & Wilkinson, L. (2012). The research process (2nd Canadian ed.). Oxford University Press.

Wintersberger, D., & Saunders, M. (2020). Formulating and clarifying the research topic: Insights and a guide for the production management research community. Production, 30 . https://doi.org/10.1590/0103-6513.20200059

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Understanding Research

• Information Sources

Choose a Topic

• Identify Keywords
• Search the Databases
• Evaluate Sources
• Cite Sources This link opens in a new window
• Write and Review This link opens in a new window
• Test Your Knowledge

From Topic to Question

• From Topic to Question (Accessible PDF)

Choosing a Topic

There are several things to think about when selecting a topic:

• First, have you been assigned a topic or are you free to choose a topic?
• Next, how many words or pages do you need to write (or how long does a presentation have to be)?
• Do you need to include specific types of sources in your citations?
• Finally, if you can select your own topic, what are you passionate about or most interested in from the class?

If you still need help choosing your topic, the Academic Success Center can help you understand your assignment and select a topic.

Expand Your Topic

• Exploring related topics or products,
• Comparing or contrasting your topic with another topic,
• Choosing an alternative topic that isn’t as recent.

You can also:

• Consider the time period your topic is covering,
• Look at a larger sample population, or
• Expand the geographic area being discussed. 

Refine Your Topic

If you need to narrow a topic from a broad subject to a specific research question or thesis statement, one of the easiest ways is by asking yourself the 5Ws – who, what, where, when, and why . 

You don't have to answer all the questions, but should answer enough so that your topic is manageable to research and will fit within your assignment length requirement.

Want to try a different way to refine your topic? Check out the From Topic to Question infographic!

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• Starting the research process

How to Choose a Dissertation Topic | 8 Steps to Follow

Published on November 11, 2022 by Shona McCombes and Tegan George. Revised on November 20, 2023.

Choosing your dissertation topic is the first step in making sure your research goes as smoothly as possible. When choosing a topic, it’s important to consider:

• Your institution and department’s requirements
• Your areas of knowledge and interest
• The scientific, social, or practical relevance
• The availability of data and resources
• The timeframe of your dissertation
• The relevance of your topic

You can follow these steps to begin narrowing down your ideas.

Table of contents

Step 1: check the requirements, step 2: choose a broad field of research, step 3: look for books and articles, step 4: find a niche, step 5: consider the type of research, step 6: determine the relevance, step 7: make sure it’s plausible, step 8: get your topic approved, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about dissertation topics.

The very first step is to check your program’s requirements. This determines the scope of what it is possible for you to research.

• Is there a minimum and maximum word count?
• When is the deadline?
• Should the research have an academic or a professional orientation?
• Are there any methodological conditions? Do you have to conduct fieldwork, or use specific types of sources?

Some programs have stricter requirements than others. You might be given nothing more than a word count and a deadline, or you might have a restricted list of topics and approaches to choose from. If in doubt about what is expected of you, always ask your supervisor or department coordinator.

Start by thinking about your areas of interest within the subject you’re studying. Examples of broad ideas include:

• Twentieth-century literature
• Economic history
• Health policy

To get a more specific sense of the current state of research on your potential topic, skim through a few recent issues of the top journals in your field. Be sure to check out their most-cited articles in particular. For inspiration, you can also search Google Scholar , subject-specific databases , and your university library’s resources.

As you read, note down any specific ideas that interest you and make a shortlist of possible topics. If you’ve written other papers, such as a 3rd-year paper or a conference paper, consider how those topics can be broadened into a dissertation.

After doing some initial reading, it’s time to start narrowing down options for your potential topic. This can be a gradual process, and should get more and more specific as you go. For example, from the ideas above, you might narrow it down like this:

• Twentieth-century literature   Twentieth-century Irish literature   Post-war Irish poetry
• Economic history   European economic history   German labor union history
• Health policy   Reproductive health policy   Reproductive rights in South America

All of these topics are still broad enough that you’ll find a huge amount of books and articles about them. Try to find a specific niche where you can make your mark, such as: something not many people have researched yet, a question that’s still being debated, or a very current practical issue.

At this stage, make sure you have a few backup ideas — there’s still time to change your focus. If your topic doesn’t make it through the next few steps, you can try a different one. Later, you will narrow your focus down even more in your problem statement and research questions .

There are many different types of research , so at this stage, it’s a good idea to start thinking about what kind of approach you’ll take to your topic. Will you mainly focus on:

• Collecting original data (e.g., experimental or field research)?
• Analyzing existing data (e.g., national statistics, public records, or archives)?
• Interpreting cultural objects (e.g., novels, films, or paintings)?
• Comparing scholarly approaches (e.g., theories, methods, or interpretations)?

Many dissertations will combine more than one of these. Sometimes the type of research is obvious: if your topic is post-war Irish poetry, you will probably mainly be interpreting poems. But in other cases, there are several possible approaches. If your topic is reproductive rights in South America, you could analyze public policy documents and media coverage, or you could gather original data through interviews and surveys .

You don’t have to finalize your research design and methods yet, but the type of research will influence which aspects of the topic it’s possible to address, so it’s wise to consider this as you narrow down your ideas.

It’s important that your topic is interesting to you, but you’ll also have to make sure it’s academically, socially or practically relevant to your field.

• Academic relevance means that the research can fill a gap in knowledge or contribute to a scholarly debate in your field.
• Social relevance means that the research can advance our understanding of society and inform social change.
• Practical relevance means that the research can be applied to solve concrete problems or improve real-life processes.

The easiest way to make sure your research is relevant is to choose a topic that is clearly connected to current issues or debates, either in society at large or in your academic discipline. The relevance must be clearly stated when you define your research problem .

Before you make a final decision on your topic, consider again the length of your dissertation, the timeframe in which you have to complete it, and the practicalities of conducting the research.

Will you have enough time to read all the most important academic literature on this topic? If there’s too much information to tackle, consider narrowing your focus even more.

Will you be able to find enough sources or gather enough data to fulfil the requirements of the dissertation? If you think you might struggle to find information, consider broadening or shifting your focus.

Do you have to go to a specific location to gather data on the topic? Make sure that you have enough funding and practical access.

Last but not least, will the topic hold your interest for the length of the research process? To stay motivated, it’s important to choose something you’re enthusiastic about!

Most programmes will require you to submit a brief description of your topic, called a research prospectus or proposal .

Remember, if you discover that your topic is not as strong as you thought it was, it’s usually acceptable to change your mind and switch focus early in the dissertation process. Just make sure you have enough time to start on a new topic, and always check with your supervisor or department.

If you want to know more about the research process , methodology , research bias , or statistics , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

Methodology

• Sampling methods
• Simple random sampling
• Stratified sampling
• Cluster sampling
• Likert scales
• Reproducibility

 Statistics

• Null hypothesis
• Statistical power
• Probability distribution
• Effect size
• Poisson distribution

Research bias

• Optimism bias
• Cognitive bias
• Implicit bias
• Hawthorne effect
• Anchoring bias
• Explicit bias

Formulating a main research question can be a difficult task. Overall, your question should contribute to solving the problem that you have defined in your problem statement .

However, it should also fulfill criteria in three main areas:

• Researchability
• Feasibility and specificity
• Relevance and originality

All research questions should be:

• Focused on a single problem or issue
• Researchable using primary and/or secondary sources
• Feasible to answer within the timeframe and practical constraints
• Specific enough to answer thoroughly
• Complex enough to develop the answer over the space of a paper or thesis
• Relevant to your field of study and/or society more broadly

You can assess information and arguments critically by asking certain questions about the source. You can use the CRAAP test , focusing on the currency , relevance , authority , accuracy , and purpose of a source of information.

Ask questions such as:

• Who is the author? Are they an expert?
• Why did the author publish it? What is their motivation?
• How do they make their argument? Is it backed up by evidence?

A dissertation prospectus or proposal describes what or who you plan to research for your dissertation. It delves into why, when, where, and how you will do your research, as well as helps you choose a type of research to pursue. You should also determine whether you plan to pursue qualitative or quantitative methods and what your research design will look like.

It should outline all of the decisions you have taken about your project, from your dissertation topic to your hypotheses and research objectives , ready to be approved by your supervisor or committee.

Note that some departments require a defense component, where you present your prospectus to your committee orally.

The best way to remember the difference between a research plan and a research proposal is that they have fundamentally different audiences. A research plan helps you, the researcher, organize your thoughts. On the other hand, a dissertation proposal or research proposal aims to convince others (e.g., a supervisor, a funding body, or a dissertation committee) that your research topic is relevant and worthy of being conducted.

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Research: Choosing & Refining Your Topic

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• Research from Home

Choosing a Topic

Step 1: Topic Selection

Choosing your topic is one of the most important steps of your research assignment.

Explore your Research Ideas

First check the assignment requirements. Make sure you can meet those requirements with the topic you pick.

Then Ask yourself

Is my topic researchable?

What do I need to learn?

Other considerations: 

Do I know enough about my topic?

Where do I find information about my topic?

Write Down All of Your Ideas

Use one of these activities to help

Listing: List all the ideas for your research assignment. Good and Bad: write everything! Group similar words together, add ideas.

Freewriting: Write nonstop for 10 minutes. Review your writing and highlight useful information.

Clustering or Mind Map: Write a brief explanation or Ask a question. Circle main concepts. Draw three or more lines and add corresponding ideas.

Questioning: Write out: “Who? What? When? Where? Why? How?” then write your answers for each .

Topic Development

​ Step 2: Do Some Background Research

Remember this is a dynamic process so your research question and scope will adjust to the information you begin to gather.

Find & learn :

• a definition
• a statistic
• other general information on your topic

​T his is only a starting point.   You will follow-up by verifying with other credible sources and experts.

Gather information to inform your topic :

• talk to specialist, like your instructor or  TA
• explore   Subject  Guides
• do  some beginning research

  Try these databases:

North Carolina Sate University Libraries created a video to explain the importance of finding background information for your topic.

Topic Narrowing

​ Step 3: Consider the Scope of Your Topic

You want a research topic that is not too broad or too narrow, but just right. 

It may take many attempts, updates and changes. That’s part of the research process.

Finding too much information?  Your topic may be too broad and you may need to make it more specific.  Consider limiting using one or more of the following aspects:

• time period

Too Narrow?

Can't find enough information?   If you find that you can't find enough evidence for your topic, you might want to broaden it by considering:

• expanding the time period
• increasing locations
• exploring related issues
• considering historical contexts

Need clarification? Got questions? Ask Us! via chat or text.

Or make an appointment for a one-on-one research consultation .

Research Process

Get more tips about the research process in this short video created by UNLV Libraries.

Research Process Tips from UNLV Libraries on Vimeo .

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Organizing Academic Research Papers: Narrowing a Topic Idea

• Purpose of Guide
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• Multiple Book Review Essay
• Reviewing Collected Essays
• About Informed Consent
• Writing Field Notes
• Writing a Policy Memo
• Writing a Research Proposal
• Acknowledgements

Importance of...

Whether assigned a general issue to investigate, you are given a list of problems to study, or you have to make up your own research topic, it is important that the research problem that guides your study is not too broad, otherwise, it will be very difficult to adequately address the problem in the space and time allowed. You could experience a number of problems if your topic is too broad, including:

• You find too many information sources and, as a consequence, it is difficult to decide what to include or exclude or what are the most important.
• You find information that is too general and, as a consequence, it is difficult to develop a clear framework for understanding the research problem and the methods needed to analyze it.
• You find information that covers a wide variety of concepts or ideas that can't be integrated into one paper and, as a consequence, you easily trail off into unnecessary tangents.

Strategies for Narrowing the Research Topic

The most common challenge when beginning to write a research paper is narrowing down your topic . Even if your professor gives you a specific topic to study, it will almost never be so specific that you won’t have to narrow it down at least to some degree [besides, grading fifty papers that are all on exactly the same thing is very boring!].

A topic is too broad to be manageable when you find that you have too many different, and oftentimes conflicting and only remotely related, ideas about how to investigate the research problem. While you will want to start the writing process by considering a variety of different approaches to studying the problem, you will need to narrow the focus of your research at some point so don't attempt to do too much in one paper.

Here are some strategies to help focus your topic into something more manageable :

• Aspect -- choose one lens through which to view the research problem, or look at just one facet of it [e.g., rather than studying the role of food in Eastern religious rituals; study the role of food in Hindu ceremonies].
• Components -- determine if your initial variables or unit of analyses can be broken into smaller parts, which can then be analyzed more precisely [e.g., a study of tobacco use among adolescents can focus on just chewing tobacco rather than all forms of usage or, rather than adolescents in general, focus on female adolescents of a certain age who smoke].
• Place -- the smaller the area of analysis, the more narrow the focus [e.g., rather than study trade relations in West Africa, study trade relations between Niger and Cameroon].
• Relationship -- how do two or more different perspectives or variables relate to one another? [e.g., cause/effect, compare/contrast, group/individual, male/female, contemporary/historical, etc.].
• Time -- the shorter the time period, the more narrow the focus.
• Type -- focus your topic in terms of a specific type or class of people, places, or things [e.g., a study of traffic patterns near schools can focus only on SUVs, or just student drivers, or just the timing of stoplights in the area].
• Combination -- use two or more of the above strategies to focus your topic very narrowly.

NOTE : Apply one of the above first to determine if that gives you a manageable study; combining multiple strategies risks creating the opposite problem--your topic becomes too narrowly defined.

Coming Up With Your Topic . Institute for Writing Rhetoric. Dartmouth College; Narrowing a Topic. Writing Center. University of Kansas; The Process of Writing a Research Paper . Department of History. Trent University.

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Developing Research Questions & Narrowing Research Topics

Remember the story of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears”? Goldilocks searched the bears’ house looking for the chair, porridge, and bed that was “Juuust right.” Well, think of Goldilocks when you are formulating your research topic: you want to create the perfect one, the one that is “Juuust right.”

• General Subject
• Narrow Subject
• Narrow Again

1. Start with the General Topic

Let’s say that your professor has given you the general subject of food and says you need to write a paper that is 3 – 5 double-spaced pages. Well, “food” is a pretty big topic. If you were going to discuss everything about food, you would be writing a book, or nine. Think of all the history, cultures, diets, recipes, chemistry, etc. that are wrapped up in the idea of food. It is quite a lot!

2. Narrow the Subject Down

So, we need to narrow this subject down. Let’s say that your major is in history. You might be tempted to say “history of food” and consider that topic a job well done. Before you pat yourself on the back, think about it: there are many aspects of food’s history to consider.

What will you discuss about the history of food?

The different cultural beliefs about beef?

The historic importance of rice in China?

The importance of food at a certain point in history?

3. Then Narrow this Topic Down Even Further

You can narrow down your topic of the history of food even further. Let’s say that you decided to focus on the important foods at a certain point in history. This topic is certainly narrower than the giant topic of food, and narrower than history of food, but the topic is not narrow enough.

Here are some questions you could ask to help you narrow your topic down even further:

What specific point in history will you choose?

What geographic locale will the food be?

What is the food and the culture around that food?

4. Now You Have Your Topic

After asking a series of questions to help narrow down the subject and doing some initial searching in Library Quick Search, we have decided on the topic:

“How the Chili Queens Influenced San Antonio”

Just like the pyramid to the right, we started off broad and ended to a point.

Use this process to narrow your own topic!  At the final step, you can easily change your topic to a thesis, just like we successfully narrowed this topic from “Food” to “San Antonio’s Chili Queens spread the love of cowboy food and Texas hospitality to San Antonio visitors.”

 Activity

Now you know how to transform a broad idea to a specific one that can be discussed within a set page limit. Remember the pyramid: your topic should get narrower with each question that you ask. If the topic is getting bigger, there may be a problem. Use this activity to narrow the topic of “sports” to a topic that can be discussed in a 2-3 page paper to make it “juuust right.”

Think you have the hang of this? Test yourself with the following practice questions. There are five questions. You might want to complete a  Library Quick Search  if you are unsure about how broad or narrow the topic is.

The more work that you do to get to a “Goldilocks research topic,” the better equipped you will be for your research journey. Remember, it took Goldilocks a couple of tries before she found the porridge that was “Juuust right” and it might take you a couple of tries before you find which topic will be just right for you too!

Want some more help? These tutorials provide some different approaches to getting your topic juuust right.

Reynolds Community College Libraries – Refine a Topic University of Nevada, Las Vegas University Libraries – Topic Narrowing Penn State University Libraries – Choosing a Topic Virginia Tech University Libraries – Strategies for Narrowing a Topic

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Develop Research Topics

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Is your topic too big?

Oftentimes, students choose topics that are too broad because they believe they have plenty of space to cover everything in a 5-10 page paper (or however long your paper is). However, in order to make a thorough, in-depth argument, you often need to choose a topic that is narrower than you think. Here are some examples:

• Instead of  How are women represented in movies?  Try  How is female sexuality represented in horror movies?
• Instead of  Is technology negatively affecting high school students?  Try  Is the ubiquity of smartphones making it difficult for high school students to concentrate in the classroom?
• Instead of Have political campaigns become more negative?  Try  How has the 24 hour news cycle contributed to negative rhetoric in recent presidential campaigns?

The following video explains how you can narrow the focus of your topic by asking: who, what, when, where, why, which, and how?

Is your topic too small?

Sometimes when a student is very passionate about a topic, they want to research a specific aspect of that topic. But be aware: a too-narrow topic might make it difficult to find the necessary resources to fully flesh out your argument. If you feel that your topic is too specific, consider pulling back and looking at the bigger picture.

• Instead of  How does the television show  Rick and Morty  explore dysfunctional father-son relationships?  Try  How are father-son relationships represented in animated television shows from the past two decades?
• Instead of  Is Snapchat contributing to low self-esteem among 13-15 year old girls?  Try  How do visually-charged social media platforms affect the self-esteem of teenage girls?
• Instead of  Why does Skee-Ball continue to be a popular game in arcades?  Try What is the relationship between nostalgia and arcade culture? 

The following video explains how you can modify or broaden your topic by examining alternate timelines, locations, or finding related topics:

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• 3. Narrow Your Topic / Thesis Statements

Narrow Your Topic

Once you have completed your background research, you will want to start narrowing down your topic a little further. You probably learned a ton of new information about your topic when you were doing your background research, but you cannot write about everything. You need to focus your ideas into one clear, concise research question.

The good news for you is that you already started subconsciously doing this before you began your background research, when you were brainstorming ideas in your concept map. Now that you have done your background research, you're ready to narrow down your topic further and develop a research question and a thesis statement.

What is the difference between a research question and a thesis statement?

The reason that we do research in the first place is to answer a question.

Your research question is the question that you answer while you complete your assignment. Think of your research question as your topic, but in question form.

Research Topic: Cost of college tuition.

Example: How does student loan debt affect students below the poverty line?

Your thesis statement is the answer to your research question. You will spend your whole paper working to prove your thesis statement.

Example: Student loan debt affects students below the poverty line by further hindering their ability to purchase a home, have a family, and pay off their debt.

What makes a good thesis statement?

As you narrow down your topic and develop your thesis, keep in mind, a thesis statement should:

• Clearly answer your research question. Your thesis statement is the answer to that question.
• Outline the position you will take in your paper. Your reader should know exactly what point you are making in your paper.
• Show how you will support your position. Your reader should know exactly how you will support your position.
• Have multiple sides to the issue. Your thesis should not be a common fact or something that can be answered with a "yes" or "no."
• Be flexible. It is common and normal if your thesis statement ends up changing during the research process. As you learn more, your position may change. 

The below video from Scribbr gives a great overview of how to write a strong thesis statement for an argument essay.

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Formulating a Research Topic

by Evan Kramer

Motivation and scope

As master’s and PhD students, we all aspire to conduct quality research. The question many of us are faced with is: how do we formulate a research topic that is well poised for performing quality research? Research topics are meant to encompass the majority or entirety of our work during our graduate career and, when well-defined, can result in opportunities to publish several high-impact academic papers. The effort required to formulate a well-defined research topic is significant, but necessary to avoid running into unforeseen challenges during your PhD. This blog post discusses the concepts that should be considered for anyone looking to define their research topic. While students have varying degrees of autonomy in shaping their research due to funding constraints and advisor expectations, the concepts discussed in this blog post account for these facets and can serve as a framework for any situation.

Overview diagram of a framework for formulating a well-defined research topic.

What is quality research?

Quality research is independent , important , and unique .

This definition identifies a set of requirements that a research topic must meet. These requirements will be discussed in more detail to orient the research topic formulation process.

Independent – Independent research can be conducted entirely by you without assistance from outside sources. While you should actively seek collaborations with others to boost the reach of your work, will you be able to complete your research objectives without relying on resources provided by others? Framing your research topic and objectives in this manner gives you protection to flakey collaborators and will keep you on track to graduate on time. For example, something you may want to avoid is crafting a research topic around the usage of one particular data set maintained by a private company. While initial collaboration talks may go smoothly, you don’t want your ability to pursue your research project in the hands of someone else!

Important – Important research makes a contribution towards answering a specific question, or a gap in knowledge, among a research community that has been posed by several scholars. You may ask yourself: if you carry out your research to completion, will your contributions answer outstanding questions posed by multiple scholars in your research community? Note that the question your work addresses may not be explicitly posed in the literature, but identifying common limitations can help formulate a gap in knowledge that you can work towards filling. Aligning your research objectives with specific and commonly posed questions can increase the chance of your work being cited by other scholars and integrated into practices in industry. 

Unique – Unique research makes a first-of-its-kind contribution. There are several ways in which your research can be unique. For example, uniqueness may be assumed if you contribute the first work to a completely unanswered question in your field. Alternatively, you may make a unique contribution to a question that has already been addressed by approaching it in a new way. Knowledge of your chosen field’s state of the art and previous foundations is useful when checking the uniqueness of your work, which can only be verified by thorough literature review. Regardless of the way your research is unique, it is important to identify the uniqueness of your work within the context of existing work in related areas.

With these three research topic characteristics in mind, the following presents a high level path to formulating your well-defined research topic.

A framework for formulating a well-defined research topic

1. look inwards.

Based on previous experiences in coursework, internships, and extracurricular activities, create a two-column list. The first column lists research fields you found interesting. The second column lists ideas that align with your personal motivations for pursuing a career in STEM research. An example of this list may look like the following:

2. Read Widely

Given the two-column lists you created, start familiarizing yourself with the current state of the art. Starting with articles in popular science media outlets can be effective for initial cursory surveys. Any articles that pique your interest should be followed by deeper dives into related literature in Google Scholar. It is likely that several of the topics in the left column of your list get crossed off quickly when you realize they no longer interest you. Continue this process until a subset of around three areas remains. Your two-column list may then look like this:

Note that the right hand column remains unchanged. You very likely will not be able to address all of your personal motivations for pursuing STEM research in your eventual research topic, but now is when you can start connecting topics you find interesting to research applications that personally motivate you. 

3. Consider funding and lab focus areas

While the research topic definition process should be approached predominantly with your own interests in mind, at this stage, it is important to consider where your funding is coming from. Typically, there will be specific fields your research must overlap with based on your funding source. Schedule a discussion with your advisor to share your topic definition process so far and ask if there are topics you should add to your list based on research group and funding requirements. Based on this discussion, add a third column to the list you’ve created that describes the necessary areas of overlap for your research.

4. Continue reading and form a research statement

At this point you are trying to iterate on combinations identified in your three-column list. You can begin to formulate an overarching research statement from these combinations. Research statements generally have the form “To…by…while…”. This sentence structure explicitly identifies what you are trying to accomplish, how you will accomplish it, and which constraints you will account for. A possible research statement could be defined with one entry from each column, or you may be able to create a topic with multiple entries from each column. In this blog’s example list, a research statement could be the following:

To enable efficient natural disaster response for remote communities by developing an AI-powered rapid response scheduling algorithm for a remote sensing satellite while accounting for limitations to satellite operations imposed by the space environment .

5. Iterate and keep track of your work

You may create a few iterations of overarching research statements like this. As you continue to read focused areas in the literature, formulate a focus area Venn Diagram. By allocating articles in your literature search to portions of the diagram, you can stay organized and keep track of the work you’re doing. For the example statement above, your Venn Diagram could look like this:

Venn diagram of research topic focus areas. The most relevant literature review items can be added to each region of the diagram to track and organize your efforts.

At this point, you are well on your way to formalizing your research topic. The formalization step involves writing research questions, drafting objective statements, and identifying your research contributions. AeroAstro Communications Lab fellows can help you with these next steps through one-on-one appointments !

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How To Narrow Down a Research Topic

Once you’ve decided on a research topic, you’ll need to narrow it down into a thesis statement or a research question. You will save tens of hours because you will be able to conduct more focused searches much earlier in your research process as you complete this step.

As many tutors will explain, narrowing down a research topic not only simplifies your writing process but also encourages an in-depth investigation of the topic. It also shapes how you will conduct the research projects in high school and during undergraduate studies.

Selecting a great research topic necessitates approaching the problem from the outside in.  Starting with a broad topic and narrowing it down to the point where you can define what you’d like to discover rather than only what you’d like to “ write about “ is always a good common practice.

If you’ve been provided with a general topic to explore, a set of problems to research, or you’ve been asked to come up with your own topic, you should make certain that the scope of the research problem relevant to this study isn’t overly broad before proceeding.

How to Narrow Down a Research Topic, with Examples

The good news is that you can follow the steps below to narrow down the focus of your entire paper to a specific topic:

1. Pick a broad topic area to focus on.

Begin by writing down your broad area of interest. Employee turnover, for instance, could be the general topic area.

2. Demographic factors

Every research study focuses on specific individuals. Pick your group of interest and narrow your research paper topic based on demographic factors.

Reduce the scope of your research paper by age group, occupation, ethnicity, gender, and so on.

For example, international college graduates who are entering the workforce face a number of difficulties.

3. Provide a detailed description of the subject matter.

As a good example, consider the nursing industry and its turnover.

4. Move down to an aspect of that specific topic you have identified

In the next step, consider the factors that influence turnover among registered nurses in a particular specialty area.

5. Make a list of any additional details about the subject.

As an illustration, consider the stress and turnover experienced by registered nurses in the emergency units.

6. Condense the topic into a single sentence or a single statement.

To explain this, let’s say workplace stress has a serious influence on the turnover of registered nurses in emergency departments across the United States.

7. Consider fine-tuning the topic using other elements such as time and correlation

An example of a fine-tuned topic is “Emergency Department stress is correlated with increased Turnover among nurses in Ohio, United States.

When is a Topic Too Broad?

When a professor tells a group of college students that the topic they chose is too broad, they get discouraged. This is a very common occurrence. What is the best way to determine whether your topic is too broad?

Even if you can summarize the subject in one or two words, such as school cheating, capital punishment, drug abuse, or overweight teens, the subject is obviously too broad to be considered in isolation.

Similarly, if you go to the library and realize that you are staring at a whole section of books that can be used as sources for your study subject, the topic is likely to be too broad. A good topic should be focused on a specific problem or question that needs to be addressed. If you are looking for books that can effectively address a specific research problem, you should look for four to five books (or even fewer) on a shelf.

The likelihood that your topic is too broad is increased if you have difficulty coming up with a thesis statement for your research paper.

The Problems of Not Narrowing Down the Topic

If you don’t do this, you will find it difficult to complete the study problem within the time and space constraints. The choice to write on a very broad PhD research topic may present a number of difficulties to the writer. The issues are as follows:

• The abundance of information makes it difficult to decide what to omit or include, as well as which sources are the most important.
• The difficulty in developing a clear framework for addressing the research problem stems from the difficulty in locating generic information.
• Identifying and employing the appropriate methods for analyzing the research problem becomes difficult when there are insufficient parameters to effectively define the problem at hand.

Other challenges that you could encounter include:

• Throughout your research, you come across information that addresses a diverse range of concepts that cannot be covered in a single paper. As a result, you are prone to getting bogged down in unnecessary details.
• Beginning a research paper can be a difficult task because it requires deciding how to refine a research topic to a manageable size.
• Even if your professor assigns you a specific topic of study, you will be expected to narrow it down to a certain extent. Aside from that, the professor will find it tedious to mark fifty papers that all discuss the same subject.

That is why you should narrow the scope of your research early on in the writing process. You won’t try to cram too much information into a single research paper this way.

Guidelines for Narrowing a Research Subject

(a) multiple angles.

One lens should be chosen and used to view a research problem in more detail. The other option is to narrow your attention to a single perspective. For example, instead of researching the various factors that contribute to cancer, researchers could look into how smoking can lead to lung cancer.

(b) Different components

Determine whether the initial unit or variable of analysis can be subdivided into smaller components, allowing you to analyze them with greater precision as you progress. An investigation into teenage tobacco use, for example, can be narrowed down to chewing tobacco only, rather than all forms of tobacco use or teenagers in general. A more effective strategy would be to target male teenagers who chew tobacco in a specific age range and geographic region.

(c) Methodological approach

Data collection methods can limit the scope of interpretive analysis required to address your research problem depending on the methods used to collect the data. For example, you can design a single case study to generate data that does not necessitate the same level of explanation as data generated from multiple case studies.

(d) Location of study

Overall, investigating a smaller geographical unit means focusing on a more specific topic area. Rather than studying trade relations in Asia, you could instead concentrate on trade relations between China and Malaysia as a case study to guide you through the process of explaining challenges in that region.

(e) Association between variables

Learn how two or more variables or are related to one another by conducting an investigation. When you design a study around the correlation of different variables, you are able to narrow the scope of your investigation. The following are some examples of variables to keep an eye out for:

• compare and contrast
• group vs individual
• cause and effect
• males and females
• problem and solution
• current and previous

(f) Timeframe variations

Researchers can assign timelines to study periods if desired. In general, the shorter the time span of a study, the more narrowly focused the study’s focus becomes. For example, instead of focusing on the trade relations between China and the United States, consider the trade relations between China and the U.S. between 2015 and 2020 as a whole.

(g) The phenomenon

Concentrate on a specific group of people, phenomena, or locations when researching a particular topic. As an example, a study on the development of better housing near schools may concentrate solely on condominiums, universities, or construction materials.

(h) Combining different small topics

You can pick at least two of the suggestions above to help you narrow down your search to a specific topic.

It is critical to narrow down a research topic. We hope the guidelines will be useful to you.

In summary, you can either narrow down a broad topic provided by your instructor, or you can develop your own topic first and narrow it down later after receiving feedback (some teachers give this freedom). In either case, you should make certain that your narrowed topic is specific and contains more than a couple of words rather than only a few word.

Always remember that you want to be able to write a strong thesis statement from the topic and then proceed to write a paper on it. You can seek feedback from your peers or your instructor to determine whether the topic is interesting and worth writing about. As you can see, writing on a specific topic is much easier than writing on a topic that is too broad.

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How to Narrow Down a Research Topic Succesfully

Narrowing a research topic can be hectic, but it is important to do it upfront to ensure your research workflows well. However, this depends on the number of words, the research should have. Do you know how to narrow a research topic? We will provide an overview on narrowing down a topic.

Are you looking for online research paper help? We have the best professional writers that will turn your ideas into quality research papers. Our expert writers help students in college and university. Thereby, be assured of quality work that will gain you top grades at cheap prices.

How to Find a Research Topic?

This depends on your field of study, through this, you will be able to research a relevant topic that you can work on. Getting a research topic should be based on what you want to focus on. A narrow topic will help make it easier to do your research.

Enquire From The Professor – While searching for a research topic, request advice from your professor or supervisor to ensure you get the best topic for your course. In some cases, the supervisors can narrow down on the type of research that you can do. Thereby, making it easier for you to choose a topic. Check The Resources Available – It depends on the number of resources you have. It wouldn’t be right to do a topic that will require you to travel a long distance to go collect your data. Even though there are various ways you can collect data online, it is better when it is an accessible place to get information upfront. What is Your Interest or Hobby? – Your research topic should be based on your hobbies or interests. It shouldn’t just be a topic, but one that you feel most interested in. This will give you the zeal to research more and do your best to provide the best paper to your professor. Your interests will make sure that you are highly motivated to carry out your research in college or university. As time goes by, when you further your studies, you can still do broader research on the same. Previously Done Research – While choosing a topic, ensure there is evidence of previous research on it. It might be hectic if you decide to just do a topic that no one else has ever dealt with. Remember to stick to your field and not just do anything for the sake. There is a wide variety of narrowing a topic examples that you can use as a starting point. The topic needs to be researchable to prevent you from getting issues when carrying out your research. Ideas From Books – Getting a place to begin may be hectic at first. You can even get an idea from books you have been reading and strike an interest. Always choose a topic that sounds interesting. There are a wide variety of books that you can use to get ideas. However, try to get a narrow topic from the broad topics.

How to Narrow Down a Topic

Now that you have gotten a suitable general topic, we can work on how to narrow down the topic. You can either decide to use one or two of the methods. However, using a combination of the methods is most suitable.

Ask Yourself the Three W’s And H.

While choosing a topic you need to ask yourself, why, what, where, when, how, and who? This will help you know whether the topic of interest is good

One of many narrow topic examples includes: Examine food security impact on health in America. Who? People in America

What? Food security

When? Currently in the 21 st century

Where? America – which state specifically?

Why? The impact of food security on health

How? Food security impact.

Through that, you can see whether your general topic is relevant and how to break it down.

Ask Further Questions

On this, you need to consider whether the topic is going to be of importance a few years from now or is just going to be relevant at the moment. In this, ask yourself about the problems, the effect on the target group, how the target group benefits, and the group responsible for it.

Hence, in this, you will research how food security impacts the target people. What problems can be faced if it is not achieved? On this, get to know the motives and effect on the people the food is intended for.

Narrowing down a research topic helps you get a better overview of what you are researching. You can check other scholarly articles to know what people have previously researched and the gap left to fill.

Consider Using the SOCRAPR Model

Take your research topic and narrow it down using the SOCRAPR model . With this, consider these different aspects.

Similarities – How is food security now compared to earlier years? Opposites – How has food security changed over the years? Contrast – How is food security affecting the kind of health people have? Relationship – This is between the accessibility of food and its impact on health. Anthropomorphism – This is in terms of human values – how the lack or plenty of food affects human behaviors. Personification – Give descriptions of human qualities. Repetition – Will food security establishment be a recurring thing?

Compare and Contrast Other Research Papers

You need to compare and contrast previously done papers on the same. This will provide a greater overview of what to expect. While comparing, you will get some great ideas on what to expect and the kind of points that you can write.

You can choose a topic that deals with comparing or contrasting two elements. For example, how food security had an impact on health in the 20 th century as compared to the 21 st century.

Try to read any scholarly articles you can get on the same and gather all the information that seems relevant to your research.

Remember to familiarize yourself with the topic and know how a compare and contrast research topic is done. Think about the topic as two mini papers you are doing while comparing.

The Dangers of Not Narrowing Down A Research Topic

If you work with a general topic be assured that it will be hectic to do the research. However, if you narrow down the topic to minimal it will be easier to narrow down the topic.

Too Much Irrelevant Information. If you do not narrow down a research topic, you will have too much irrelevant information. This will make it hard to know the kind of information to include or omit. It is like going to a store with a wide variety of clothes that look fabulous. You will be caught in between and not know the best one to choose. Hence, narrowing down, makes it easier to choose the resources to use. Difficulty in Coming up With A Clear Framework. It can be hectic to come up with a clear framework to address a research problem. However, if you are working with a straight topic, you will be able to get a clear framework to do your research. A broad topic can make it hard to find the right method you can use for analysis. Lack of Specific Information That Fits. When the topic is too broad, you get too much irrelevant information or relevant information that will make it hard to decide what to put and what to leave out. Getting the specific information that fits can then take you a while.

Hence, broad topic examples can affect how well you will carry out your research. The topic should be educational for at most relevance. Yes, there might be enough information that doesn’t fit your study.

The Best Tips on How to Narrow Down a Research Topic

This is how you can narrow down a research topic through the aspects, methodology, time, place, and type. However, you can either use some of the tips or a combination of all. In the end, it depends on your preference.

Consider the Aspect

From what view would you want to research your topic?

For example in our food security topic, consider finding out, whether the impact on health is different in different age groups; the young and the old.

This will help make you focus on what’s relevant most. Get to know how the initial topic can be partitioned into smaller components for analysis. This will make it easier to focus on the specifics and get relevant information

Methodology to Use

What kind of research methodology are you planning to use in your research? This will help provide a better overview of the research that you should expect to do.

Is it going to be a qualitative or quantitative research paper? Narrow down to what kind of methods are most specific for that specific region. Collection of data is a major factor that you shouldn’t take for granted.

Narrowing it down to a specific area will help make the research much easier to do. However, if it is a global issue, you can consider choosing a larger area. Your scope of the study should cover all the relevant information to make your research paper a success.

For example, where specifically in America? How many states are you planning to study?

Relationship

Get to know your two major variables and see how they relate to each other. Designing a study around the correlation of different variables will put you in a better place.

For example food and health. Those are our major variables as we try to find out how best they relate. Other examples are: cause and effect, compare and contrast, currently or historically, male and female, and opinion and reason.

Thereby, this will make doing the research easier.

At what phase, century or time do you want your research to be based. Is it during the historical or current period? Studies need to be based on the current timeframes. For example, food security impact on health in Washington DC during the 21 st century . Having a specific timeframe makes it easy to perform the research. Remember that different periods have different circumstances and causes.

Don’t Know How To Narrow Your Research Topic?

Remember to narrow down a research topic, you need to first choose a general topic, giving a specific description of the topic, ask yourself questions on the topic, mention the specific aspects in the topic, narrow down the specifics of the topics, turn the topic into a sentence or statement, and get to know the specific place that you want to do the research. How to narrow a topic is easy if you follow all the relevant steps.

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POV: Sexual Pleasure Should Be Integrated into Scientific Research on Sexual Health

Aside from disease prevention, elements of sexual health, including pleasure and orgasm, don’t receive much research funding, limiting what’s known.

Photo via iStock/Prostock-Studio

Julia Bond (SPH’24)

In a splashy piece in 2022, the New York Times detailed what many doctors and medical researchers know, but rarely talk about: we really do not know enough about the clitoris. This component of female anatomy has been routinely overlooked and ignored by the medical establishment, despite its substantial role in sexual pleasure for many people. When asked why, the medical experts interviewed in the piece shared the same sentiment: female sexual pleasure has long been viewed as secondary to male sexual pleasure. Unnecessary, even frivolous. Why, then, would this organ, perceived by many to play no role beyond orgasm, be suitable for serious scientific research? I believe the deep-rooted ignorance of the clitoris is a good example of the consequences of a larger, pervasive problem in the field of medical research: the routine dismissal of sexual pleasure as something worth studying.

This year, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the largest funder of scientific research in the United States, will allocate an estimated $388 million towards the study of sexually transmitted diseases. This is a critical effort, particularly as cases of some sexually transmitted infections have increased in recent years. But the risk of sexually transmitted infections is just one component of sexual health. In 2022, the World Health Organization published an updated definition of sexual health, defining it as more than just the absence of disease. Their definition includes the “possibility of having pleasurable and safe sexual experiences.” Elements of sexual health beyond disease prevention, including pleasure, orgasm, or even pain, do not receive much research funding, which limits what is known.

In addition to little funding, sexual health research is also curtailed by scientists themselves. Researchers are impacted by cultural influences. Across different cultures, it is common for sex and sexual pleasure to be considered a taboo topic. Researchers’ discomfort with topics related to sexual pleasure poses real barriers to the meaningful study of sexual health. If someone is uncomfortable even saying the word “orgasm,” how can they effectively research the full range of human sexual experience?

The lack of scientific research focused on the positive elements of sexual behavior, including pleasure and orgasm, has real consequences. Beyond the ignorance of female sexual anatomy, research also suggests that public health programs that incorporate sexual pleasure might work better. Downplaying or ignoring pleasure may result in less successful efforts to promote sexual health. A narrow research focus on the risk of sexually transmitted infections can also obscure other important issues that are deeply relevant to people, including sexual dysfunction, which is estimated to affect 40 percent of women and 30 percent of men in the United States. The stigma against discussing sexual pleasure and pain also pervades medical care. Research shows that people experiencing sexual health issues often do not discuss them with their providers and providers do not routinely ask about them. This contributes to the often years-long wait that many people experiencing chronic pelvic pain conditions, like endometriosis, experience before receiving a diagnosis.

I believe that scientific and medical research that aims to improve sexual health should incorporate a sex-positive lens. By this, I mean taking into consideration the many reasons people may have sex, including interpersonal connection, pleasure, and joy. This is the focus of a recent commentary I published in the American Journal of Epidemiology , alongside Dr. Jessie Ford of Columbia Mailman School of Public Health. We emphasize that sexual pleasure is important to many people, and therefore should be integrated into scientific research on sexual health. This could help public health research be more aligned with people’s lived experiences, in which pleasure and connection are often central to sexual experiences. In an era where humans have gone to the moon, the intricacies of the clitoris should not be a mystery. Scientific researchers have the potential, and, I would argue, the responsibility, to help bring sexual pleasure out of the darkness, and into the light.

Julia Bond (SPH’24), a research associate in epidemiology at Boston Medical Center, can be reached at [email protected] .

“POV” is an opinion page that provides timely commentaries from students, faculty, and staff on a variety of issues: on-campus, local, state, national, or international. Anyone interested in submitting a piece, which should be about 700 words long, should contact John O’Rourke at [email protected] . BU Today reserves the right to reject or edit submissions. The views expressed are solely those of the author and are not intended to represent the views of Boston University.

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Julia Bond (SPH’24) Profile

Julia Bond (SPH’24), a research associate in epidemiology at Boston Medical Center, can be reached at [email protected].

Comments & Discussion

Boston University moderates comments to facilitate an informed, substantive, civil conversation. Abusive, profane, self-promotional, misleading, incoherent or off-topic comments will be rejected. Moderators are staffed during regular business hours (EST) and can only accept comments written in English. Statistics or facts must include a citation or a link to the citation.

There are 2 comments on POV: Sexual Pleasure Should Be Integrated into Scientific Research on Sexual Health

I heartedly and fully agree with you.

Yes, yes, yes! Really nice piece, Julia!

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August 15, 2024

This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility:

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Why do researchers often prefer safe over risky projects? Explaining risk aversion in science

by Public Library of Science

A mathematical framework that builds on the economic theory of hidden-action models provides insight into how the unobservable nature of effort and risk shapes investigators' research strategies and the incentive structures within which they work, according to a study published August 15 in PLOS Biology by Kevin Gross from North Carolina State University, U.S., and Carl Bergstrom from the University of Washington, U.S.

Scientific research requires taking risks , as the most cautious approaches are unlikely to lead to the most rapid progress. Yet much funded scientific research plays it safe and funding agencies bemoan the difficulty of attracting high-risk, high-return research projects. Gross and Bergstrom adapted an economic contracting model to explore how the unobservability of risk and effort discourages risky research.

The model considers a hidden-action problem, in which the scientific community must reward discoveries in a way that encourages effort and risk-taking while simultaneously protecting researchers' livelihoods against the unpredictability of scientific outcomes.

Its challenge when doing so is that incentives to motivate effort clash with incentives to motivate risk-taking, because a failed project may be evidence of a risky undertaking but could also be the result of simple sloth. As a result, the incentives that are needed to encourage effort do actively discourage risk-taking.

Scientists respond by working on safe projects that generate evidence of effort but that don't move science forward as rapidly as riskier projects would.

A social planner who prizes scientific productivity above researchers' well-being could remedy the problem by rewarding major discoveries richly enough to induce high-risk research, but in doing so would expose scientists to a degree of livelihood risk that ultimately leaves them worse off.

Because the scientific community is approximately self-governing and constructs its own reward schedule, the incentives that researchers are willing to impose on themselves are inadequate to motivate the scientific risks that would best expedite scientific progress.

In deciding how to reward discoveries, the scientific community must contend with the fact that reward schemes that motivate effort inherently discourage scientific risk-taking, and vice versa.

Because the community must motivate both effort and scientific risk-taking, and because effort is costly to investigators, the community inevitably establishes a tradition that encourages more conservative science than would be optimal for maximizing scientific progress, even when risky research is no more onerous than safer lines of inquiry.

The authors add, "Commentators regularly bemoan the dearth of high-risk, high-return research in science and suppose that this state of affairs is evidence of institutional or personal failings. We argue here that this is not the case; instead, scientists who don't want to gamble with their careers will inevitably choose projects that are safer than scientific funders would prefer."

Journal information: PLoS Biology

Provided by Public Library of Science

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• 06 August 2024

Our local research project put us on the global stage — here’s how you can do it, too

• Seyoon Lee 0 ,
• Hanjae Lee 1 ,
• Juhyun Kim 2 &
• Jong-Il Kim 3

Seyoon Lee is a PhD candidate at the Genomic Medicine Institute, Medical Research Center, Seoul National University, and in the Department of Biomedical Sciences, Seoul National University Graduate School, Seoul, South Korea.

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Hanjae Lee is a PhD candidate at the Genomic Medicine Institute, Department of Translational Medicine, and in the Department of Dermatology, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, South Korea.

Juhyun Kim is a PhD candidate at the Genomic Medicine Institute and in the Department of Biomedical Sciences, Seoul National University Graduate School, Seoul, South Korea.

Jong-Il Kim is director of the Genomic Medicine Institute, chair of the Department of Biomedical Sciences, Seoul National University Graduate School, Seoul, South Korea, and head principal investigator of the SCAID project.

You have full access to this article via your institution.

People travel from across South Korea to receive medical treatment in Seoul. Credit: Will & Deni McIntyre/Getty

Later this year, South Korea is expected to sign up to the European Union’s research-funding programme, Horizon Europe . It’s a good time to reflect on the nature of large collaborative projects — and, in particular, when cross-border collaboration is most beneficial and when a deeper dive into local issues can be more rewarding.

Large international collaborations have unquestionably produced great breakthroughs. Sequencing the human genome , for example, took 13 years of work by 20 institutions in 6 countries 1 . But large consortia such as these are almost always established in the same few countries: the United States, the United Kingdom and others in Europe. For scientists working elsewhere, setting up a large international project can seem unachievable, given the billion-dollar price tags and the networks of contacts required.

And, sometimes, it is not the best solution. Global projects spearheaded in a few countries can have biases — for example, people of Asian descent are often under-represented in international genetic studies initiated in the West. National laws on acquiring data can differ, meaning that researchers need to conduct experiments differently in different regions, introducing biases. And the logistical complexity of coordinating a project across multiple countries in different time zones and with different work cultures can be problematic when rapid data collection and analysis are crucial 2 .

There is an alternative — set up a large local consortium in one nation.

Cancer research needs a better map

We’ve done just that in Seoul. Our single-cell atlas of immune diseases (SCAID) consortium is a multi-institutional effort led by one of us (J.-I.K.), alongside 23 others. Running since April 2022, the project now involves 120 South Korean clinicians, immunologists, geneticists and bioinformaticians (including S.L., H.L. and J.K., who work in J.-I.K’s group).

We aim to map gene expression in millions of individual cells from people who have immune-related diseases , including (but not limited to) rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, interstitial lung disease and alopecia areata. Systemic immune diseases are thought to affect at least 1 in 20 people 3 . They are often incurable and cause debilitating symptoms, from chronic skin rashes to skeletomuscular changes. They can be fatal if they are not managed appropriately. We hope that our research will reveal similarities between 16 diverse diseases that manifest across the body, and help to uncover ways to use treatments more effectively.

Our experiences have shown us that a regional consortium can be an efficient way to ask crucial research questions. Here, we share two broad lessons that we hope will help others to build effective regional consortia.

Find a niche

To compete in international circles, local consortia need to focus on addressing research questions that they are in a unique position to answer. This might be because of the particular mix of expertise of local researchers. It might be the regulatory environment in a country. Or it might be specific to the geography of the place where the research is done.

In our case, we were inspired to set up SCAID by an international consortium called the Human Cell Atlas (HCA) . Since 2016, it has been trying to map every single cell type in the human body using state-of-the art genomic technology. The next logical step is to create similar atlases for diseased cells. But this involves bringing in specialized clinicians for each disease and obtaining proper consent from a large number of people.

This can be hard to achieve in a global consortium, in which each country has distinct legislative frameworks, ethics committees and medical systems 4 . For instance, the International HapMap Project — a genome-sequencing project launched in 2002 with researchers from six countries — needed to spend months in community consultation in Nigeria before it was able to obtain ethics approvals 5 . It also faced concerns raised by community advisory groups in Japan and China around depositing biological samples in overseas repositories. Overcoming these obstacles took 18 months 6 .

For these reasons, most single-cell studies of disease data sets have focused on single diseases in single tissues, for simplicity. By contrast, restricting our study to a single country with one legislative framework has made it easier for us to gain ethics and individual approval, allowing us to study multiple diseases across multiple tissues.

Seoul National University Hospital is one of 56 general hospitals in the South Korean capital. Credit: Anthony Wallace/AFP via Getty

Seoul also has other benefits for such a project. First, it’s easy to enlist a diverse range of participants in the city. South Korea has a universal medical-insurance system that is mandatory for all residents 7 . This avoids biases that can arise when participants are part of a private health-insurance system. And people from across the country and all socio-economic classes travel to Seoul for treatment — the city’s cluster of 56 general hospitals can be reached from anywhere in South Korea in half a day.

The concentration of hospitals also makes it easy to transfer samples quickly from donors to our central laboratory for analysis — it is no more than two hours’ drive from any hospital. Such proximity is a great advantage in single-cell genomics, because RNA — which is analysed to ascertain gene expression — degrades within hours once a sample is collected. A US National Institutes of Health large-scale genetics project called the Genotype–Tissue Expression project, for instance, found variability in the quality of RNA in its samples, depending on the time between collection and processing. This variability could skew interpretations of gene-expression data, and the researchers had to develop ways to account for it in their analyses 8 .

Having a centralized hub prevents the problem of batch effects — undesired differences between samples — that can arise if samples are processed or analysed differently by different centres 9 , 10 . Handling batch effects is a big task for international consortia. The HCA, for instance, has a dedicated team of researchers to check for and minimize such effects 11 .

Exploiting this niche is already proving fruitful for us. So far, we’ve collected more than 500 samples from 334 donors. We have analysed more than two million cells — equivalent to the second-largest data set collected in the HCA project so far. Our early analysis hints at common features between diseases: although symptoms arise in different organs, we are identifying distinct immune profiles that group the diseases into a few major categories.

Unblock research bottlenecks with non-profit start-ups

Still, being small and nimble comes with challenges. Local consortia need to be aware that they might lack some expertise , and they need to be prepared to seek help. Our consortium faced obstacles in obtaining ethics approvals, because each hospital review board had different requirements and concerns. Getting approval from each board was arduous, and required persistence when asking for opinions of the boards themselves, along with those of the Korea National Institute for Bioethics Policy and Korean Bioinformation Center. Nonetheless, it was easier than grappling with multiple international rules around ethics and data collection.

To make this process smoother for others, it would help for institutions in a country to standardize their ethical-review processes and data-sharing agreements, ensuring that both comply with national regulations. Furthermore, institutions should establish collaborative networks to share best practices and discuss common challenges. These steps could ease the administrative burden on local consortia considerably, and accelerate their progress.

Not all countries will have the strong technical skills of the South Korean workforce, nor the established biobanking repositories for genetic and clinical data, which are essential in projects such as ours. For scientists in countries without this infrastructure, international consortia can be a valuable source of guidance. For instance, the HCA’s Equity Working Group specifically aims to engage diverse geographical and ethnic groups in its projects 12 . By participating in such initiatives, countries can gain access to expertise, resources and best practices, helping them to overcome technical challenges and build their capabilities.

Build in local benefits

Regional projects should reflect the needs of the local community, both for ethical reasons and to attract funding. Funders are more likely to invest in big projects that can benefit citizens. Researchers must make those benefits clear.

This might mean championing a field to governments and other funders. In South Korea, most research funding comes from the government — scientists propose broad topics that need funding, and the government selects those that align with its own goals and puts out funding calls, for which all researchers can apply. So genomicists, immunologists and bioinformaticians — not all of whom are members of the SCAID consortium — requested that the South Korean government fund a large-scale disease single-cell atlas. These scientists spelled out how the data could ultimately help researchers and clinicians to improve understanding of the disease predispositions that are unique to South Koreans. This will hopefully speed up the development of precision medicines tailored to the country’s own population.

South Korean scientists’ outcry over planned R&D budget cuts

In countries that do not have official channels for petitioning the government, raising the profile of a field might involve using networks of contacts to meet with funders, or publishing papers that outline a field’s potential. Persistence is key — scientists must keep voicing their needs and perspectives.

Researchers must also give careful thought to how their project will benefit local science. SCAID was designed to maximize the long-term benefits for the South Korean researchers and clinicians involved.

To develop researchers’ careers, we hold regular seminars and workshops focused on learning skills and network building. Cross-disciplinary collaborations are one focus. For example, bioinformaticians are working with clinicians on a strategy pinpointing the specialized data that should be collected for each disease — such as acquiring information on immune receptors for specific disorders. Bioinformaticians are also exploiting the expertise of clinicians to help interpret their analyses. This includes the identification of abnormal cell states, which can be hard to distinguish from artefacts in the data without a deep knowledge of disease. These networks of contacts will be useful for many projects long after SCAID is completed.

Once established, local consortia need not exist in isolation. They can complement existing global projects by adding diverse data, and can act as stepping stones for future global consortia. For instance, many scientists have approached us, intrigued by the scale and potential of our work, and enquired about possible collaborations.

We are keen for other regional groups to generate international databases from separate efforts led by those who understand their own local needs and niches best. We encourage them to start by seeking funding for a consortium to address the needs of their fellow citizens, and to eventually pool their knowledge.

Whatever the field, if a consortium is run well, it can cultivate a dynamic cluster of competent researchers, laying the groundwork for international recognition and collaboration.

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Research: How IT Can Solve Common Problems in DEI Initiatives

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• Marta Stelmaszak

Lessons from three organizations that successfully leveraged IT to drive structural change.

The authors’ research found that three persistent problems plague DEI initiatives: They do not connect to operational or strategic goals and objectives; they do not include the rank-and-file; and they are often implemented through periodic efforts like annual diversity training that aren’t integrated into day-to-day work processes. Organizations can overcome these problems by using IT in three ways.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs are under attack. Confronted by high costs, mixed outcomes , unclear organizational benefits , and a political and regulatory backlash , organizations are rolling back their initiatives. Google and Meta, for example, recently reduced investment in their DEI programs and let go of DEI staff.

• Monideepa Tarafdar is Charles J. Dockendorff Endowed Professor at the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
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How do states fill vacancies in the U.S. Senate? It depends on the state

This year, as in every even-numbered year, about a third of U.S. Senate seats are up for election. Given the 51-49 split in the Senate between Democrats and Republicans (including the four independents who caucus with Democrats), each of those races has the potential to tip the chamber’s balance of power. But elections aren’t the only way that can happen.

We compiled information on state procedures for filling U.S. Senate vacancies from each state’s online code of state law. Data on senators’ ages, party affiliation and length of service comes from the  Biographical Directory of the United States Congress .

All ages are calculated as of July 31, 2024. In the comparison of senators’ and governors’ party affiliations, the four independent senators are counted as Democrats, since they all caucus with the Senate Democrats.

Should a sitting senator resign, die or otherwise leave office during their term, governors in 45 states have the power to appoint a temporary replacement. In most of those states, governors have free rein to appoint whomever they wish, with the appointee serving until a successor is elected to fill out the rest of the term.

This has already happened twice during the current Congress. In January 2023, Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska resigned to become president of the University of Florida. Nebraska’s GOP governor, Jim Pillen, appointed the state’s former governor , Pete Ricketts, to replace Sasse. (Ricketts is running in a special election this year to complete the rest of Sasse’s term, which ends in January 2027.)

And in September 2023, longtime Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, died at age 90. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom appointed Laphonza Butler to fill the vacancy. (Butler is not running for the remainder of Feinstein’s term or for the new term that begins in January 2025.)

A third senatorial appointment likely will come soon. Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, who has been convicted of multiple federal corruption charges , has said he will resign his seat effective Aug. 20. Gov. Phil Murphy, a fellow Democrat, is expected to quickly appoint a successor to Menendez.

There may be another appointment, too. Should the Republican presidential ticket of Donald Trump and JD Vance win in November, GOP Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine would appoint someone to fill Vance’s Senate seat.

The possibility of appointed senators tipping the partisan balance – or at least giving an electoral advantage to one party or the other – is brought into sharper relief when one considers that this is the oldest Senate of any in U.S. history . The  mean  age of current U.S. senators, as of July 31, is 65.2. Almost a third of senators (31) are in their 70s, five are in their 80s, and one (Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley) will turn 91 in September.

One senator in the 80-plus club, Maryland Democrat Ben Cardin (age 80), is retiring at the end of his term this year. Two octogenarian independents – Bernie Sanders of Vermont (82) and Angus King of Maine (80) – are running for reelection. Iowa’s Grassley won his eighth term in 2022. The terms of the other two oldest senators – Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell (82) and Idaho’s Jim Risch (81) – don’t expire until 2027.

Senate replacement procedures vary by state

The current system for filling vacant Senate seats dates to the ratification of the 17th Amendment in 1913. Along with letting people elect their senators directly – state legislatures had chosen them up to that point – the amendment gave states the option of letting their governors appoint temporary replacements.

The only states  not  to do so are Kentucky, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island and Wisconsin. In those states, vacancies can only be filled by special election. Kentucky is the latest to join this group, after its majority-Republican legislature took the appointment power away from Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear earlier this year.

Among the 45 states that do give their governors authority to name replacement senators, 11 limit their field of choice in some way. Six states – Hawaii, Maryland, Montana, North Carolina, West Virginia and Wyoming – make the governor choose from a list of three nominees submitted by the previous senator’s party. Utah requires the same kind of list, but from the state legislature. Arizona, Nevada and Oklahoma simply require the governor to choose someone from the previous senator’s party.

Connecticut has the most restrictive rules: The governor can fill a Senate vacancy only if there’s a year or less remaining in the term, and their choice must be approved by a two-thirds vote in each house of the state legislature.

One reason for such limitations is to prevent a governor from appointing someone of their own party to a Senate seat formerly held by the other party. In 2013, for instance, New Jersey’s then-Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, appointed state Attorney General and fellow Republican Jeffrey Chiesa to the seat that had been held by the late Frank Lautenberg, a Democrat. Chiesa served for just under five months, until Democrat Cory Booker won the special election for the rest of Lautenberg’s term.

Currently, 13 of 50 governors belong to a different party than at least one of their state’s senators. But only seven of those 13 would be able to do what Christie did in New Jersey. The others either can’t appoint temporary senators at all or are required to choose someone of the same party as the former senator.

The 17th Amendment also gives states considerable leeway in deciding how long temporary senators can serve until a special election. In 31 states, special Senate elections are held concurrently with regular general elections. In some cases, those special elections coincide with the next scheduled general election, but in other cases – especially if the vacancy occurs late in the election cycle – they coincide with the general election  after  the next one.

Six states have specific timetables for holding special Senate elections, usually a certain number of days following the start of the vacancy. Nine states either set a separate date for the special election or hold it concurrently with the next general election, depending on when the vacancy occurs. And four states have few or no rules on when a special election must be held, effectively leaving the decision up to the governor.

Note: This is an update of a post first published May 3, 2022.

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Drew DeSilver is a senior writer at Pew Research Center .

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