Now, It's Your Turn

A picture of a man pensively looking at a question mark written on a chalkboard.No matter what your topic is, you can follow the same four-level process in narrowing your topic and developing your research question.

Try following these steps once you have settled on a general topic:

  1. How many different aspects of this topic am I able to list? You may want to consult encyclopedias or web pages to get you started here if you are stuck. Write down the list.
     
  2. Of those aspects listed above, which am I most interested in learning more about? Write down one or two and follow steps 3 and 4 for each one. You may find that you come up with more than one interesting research question. Then you’ll need to choose!
     
  3. Of the aspect that most interests me, what elements of it am I able to find information about in an encyclopedia or on a web page? (Notice that you may need to repeat this step more than once to really get down to a workable limited focus.) Make a list.
     
  4. What relationships between these elements are suggested by combining them using what, when, where, why, or how words?

 
 
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