Think about the prompt for your assignment, things you've covered in class, and anything you already know about the "big picture" topic you've been assigned. What interests you within this topic? Are there any questions you have about it that you want to explore? For environmental issues, are there issues you find yourself thinking about a lot in your daily life? Is there something you've discussed in class that you want to explore in more depth? Is there something that affects your life that you want to explore? Write down any ideas that come to mind. Are any of your ideas connected?
This is a great opportunity to bring in your own passions and interests and connect them to what you’re learning in your classes. Research doesn't have to be (and shouldn't be) boring. If you choose to research something you're curious about, you might find the research process much more interesting and exciting. Research is about learning something new and making new connections and discoveries. If you're interested in your topic, your audience will be too.
One strategy for brainstorming a topic is to make a mind map. All you need is a blank piece of paper and something to write with. Start with your main idea and write it in the center of the page. Then, think about different sub-topics or related topics and write them all around your main idea. Your background research may help inform you here - what themes did you find? Give yourself time to put everything you can think of down on the page. Once you have everything written down, see if you can group similar ideas together. Draw lines to connect related concepts or ideas.
You can see an example of a mind map around the topic of fast fashion here. Notice how there are connecting lines all over the place - a mind map doesn't have to be perfectly organized! The goal is just to get your ideas flowing and see what natural connections come up. In this example, you'll notice there are a lot of connections to the sub-topic of environmental impact. The creator of this mind map might decide to focus on the environmental impact of fast fashion as a whole, or they may focus on one of the even more specific sub-topics like waste or pollution.
Background research is an important step early in your research process. Spend some time looking for background information while you're developing your topic and again after you've chosen a specific topic or research question. Background research can help you figure out what conversations are already happening about your topic and what is already known about it. You can use newspapers, online publications, social media, textbooks, course readings, encyclopedias, and web sources like a Google Search or Wikipedia to get an overview of your topic. This research can help you identify important information like terminology, names, dates, specific events, and more.
When looking for background information, think about:
Newspapers, magazines, encyclopedias, and contemporary issue databases can all be helpful sources of background information. You can find many of these resources on our A-Z Database list, and some suggested resources are linked below.
Current access to the New York Times site, including news, columns and more -- courtesy of the Holy Cross SGA. ** To access, create an account with your HC email address. If you already have an account, there will be an option to click-through to log in.
Date(s): 1857-present
Articles, articles, newsletters, videos, podcasts, events, and more from TheAtlantic.com. ** To access: Choose “College of the Holy Cross" as your institution. Log-in with your HC email and password.
Date(s): 1980-present
Text-only articles from the Boston Globe.
Encyclopaedia Britannica Public Library Edition.
Encyclopedia of people, concepts and phenomena in the social sciences, with particular emphasis on how experts in the field understand them.
Environmental science encyclopedias, dictionaries and other reference books, published by Oxford University Press.
Summaries, viewpoint essays, data and further reading on "hot topic" social issues.
When you start brainstorming a topic, you might think of something fairly generic or broad. For successful research, it's important to take those broad, "big picture" topics and narrow them down into an idea or question that you can confidently research and answer within the scope of your assignment. For example, you might be interested in solving world hunger. This is an important topic, but not likely something you can cover in an eight page research paper. Instead, you might decide to focus on the effectiveness of free school lunch in the United States. This is a more manageable topic that is still part of your larger idea, but gives you the opportunity to make your research much more detailed and focused.
As you work on refining your topic, ask yourself the five W's: Who, What, When, Where, and Why.
It can be helpful to think of your topic in terms of a question you want to answer. This can move you towards crafting an argument instead of providing a summary or overview of a topic. Think about where information is missing or where there are gaps in your knowledge. What questions do you have about your topic? If you tell a friend about your topic, what questions do they ask? And remember, your research topic doesn't have to be set in stone before you even start researching. It is there to guide you as you discover sources and information.
Try to think of a research question that is:
This video from the University of Minnesota Libraries goes over the process of choosing and narrowing down a research topic. They present a few strategies for focusing your topic, including mind mapping, the 5 W's, and freeform/pre-writing.