39.1: Selecting and Narrowing a Research Writing Topic Reading by H Morrison

Introduction

While it depends on the scope of the assignment your instructor provides, you will likely be spending a lot of time with your research topic. Not only is it a time investment that you’re making to your topic, it’s also an intellectual and even emotional investment. So, deciding on a research topic—and adequately narrowing it—is a quite important part of the research writing process.

Getting started

Some instructors will set tight parameters on research topics, while others will give you free reign to choose any topic you please.  Use this chapter as you need it: we will assume you have a lot of freedom to choose your topic.

Selecting a basic topic

The “basic topic” is the fundamental “what?” of your topic. Often, English 102 Instructors will provide these as the course theme. Public health, for instance, is a popular one. If you are not provided a basic topic or any direction from your instructor, choose something that is a current social issue, a lesser-known historical exploration, or an exploration of a scientific, medical, or engineering process/research.

SOCIAL ISSUES (INCLUDING EDUCATION)

HISTORY & PSYCHOLOGY/SOCIOLOGY

SCIENCE/MEDICINE/ENGINEERING

Decide which subject area, and then explore form there. What issues in that area interest you? What is an overlooked area, but relevant to our lives today? Use Google or even syllabi and textbooks from courses in those subject areas to generate ideas if nothing immediately comes to mind.

A word of caution

Since you know you’ll be spending a lot of time and energy on this topic, you may be inclined to choose a topic that is very personally important to you. But sometimes, those issues that are very important to us are also very upsetting and even traumatic. The research writing process is a long, deep dive into a topic, and if you’re working with a topic that has caused you a great deal of harm, you may negatively impact your mental health. Also, even if a topic is not directly related to our trauma, we still may be “too close” to the subject to objectively research and report on it. Always take care of yourself, including your mental health. If you find yourself in over your head with a triggering topic, consult your instructor as soon as possible.  That said, there may be some befit for some students who explore difficult, personal topics:  some students, for example, who are in recovery from addiction issues anecdotally report some validation and encouragement from researching positive addiction issue treatment methods. Whatever these case, take care of yourself first, and do not choose a topic solely because you know a lot about it or have personal experience with it.

Also, be ready for your mind to be changed on your topic and anything related to your topic. You will find that people, events, systems, and phenomena are not what you thought. But, after all, that is college! If you leave the course thinking “yup, that’s exactly what I thought about that topic!,” you really have not benefited from this course and you have not actually completed the assignment, regardless of your grade.

The next step of the research writing process, inquiry-based researching, will guide you through this process. It is here that you will perform research that informs a thesis statement, rather than performing research to support a thesis statement.

Example Basic Topic: Redlining

We will take the topic of “redlining” as our example topic for the remainder of this chapter. For the sake of this example, we will assume that we only know that redlining refers to the highly discriminatory act of denying loans and mortgages to people living in certain areas, based on their race, or less frequently, ethnicity.

You don’t have to do the items below in order nor do you have to do all of them. Try these methods and see what works best for you.

Think and write: What do I already know about the topic? What do I think I know?

Make a list, free write a paragraph, write keywords/phrases

Example \(\PageIndex{1}\)

• Racist
• Obvious Discrimination/keeps people renting and poor (how?)
• Bad after The Great Migration
• doesn’t allow people to move to “white” neighborhoods too easily
• Doesn’t allow home ownership, I think

Think and write: What questions do I have about the topic and its components?

Here you want to engage in informal research to get the “lay of the land” of our broad topic: what questions are people asking about the topic, what conversions are happening/ what are people asking about it? What organizations are involved in the topic?
Generate questions by perusing articles, Googling, watching YouTube and other social media (see  below).*** While this line of inquiry may not lead you to the truth necessarily, it will allow you to see the conversation and formulate questions from there.

Example \(\PageIndex{1}\)

• Is this just an urban thing? Or an everywhere thing? Does this happen in suburbs and rural areas?
• What area is it worse it? It looks likes every region is pretty bad but mostly major city areas that have large black populations like Atlanta St. Louis, Oakland, Detroit, Baltimore, and Birmingham…that seems so weird. Or maybe it makes perfect sense? Like trying to keep segregation alive?
• Seems like black people were mostly impacted at first, and maybe still are the most impacted, but who else is largely impacted? Why?
• It’s illegal now—how are people still getting away with it???

The following two exercises can be done at the same time.  You may need to repeat these two processes several times.

A.  The what, where, when, who, and why of your topic

You’re not expected to have answers for all of these questions, or even most, as you start your preliminary research. These areas are meant to raise questions that will help you narrow your topic.

1.      What? What’s your topic, as it is now?

Example: Redlining in the United States

2.      Where?  Where, primarily, is the topic occurring? Consider if you need to narrow this to a region, state, county, city… ? If it's a global issue, you will likely want to narrow it to a region or country. However, you may find that narrowing it too particularly--say, to a a county or city, may be too narrow. This depends largely on the topic, but at this point, it's better to leave it more broad and narrow it as your find quality research later if needed.  Note that the more you narrow by location, the fewer quality sources you may have. However, for some topics, particularizing the location will be necessary and helpful.

Example: Redlining exists everywhere in the US, but isn’t quite as prevalent in the Western US, so you might want to narrow it to the Midwest at first, and later, when you’ve located more sources, to just Chicago.

3.      When?  When does the issue start, end (if applicable), and exist in history? What other events/situations are concurrent and/or adjacent (what’s happening at the same time, before, and after)? What historical events (may have) led to the public health issue, and what other historical events are related?

Example: Redlining started around the 1930s, during and after The Great Migration, when many black individuals and families from the South came North looking for good work and better living conditions (i.e. hoping for less racism and higher wages).

4.      Who? Who is/was impacted by the public issue? How are communities or individuals differently affected based on identity markers? For this question, dig into social location, which is the combination of factors including gender, race, social class, age, ability, religion, sexual orientation, and geographic location.

Example: Here, you’ll need to do your own digging (research) because you can go many different ways. You can focus on redlining against nuclear black families, you can includes latinos, you can include individuals, those with disabilities, LGBTQAI individuals…it’s all going to depend on where your quality research and your interests lead you.

5.      Why? Why does this topic matter? Who does the topic matter to? Who, do you believe, should it matter to? What relevance does your topic have for the present moment, and the future?

Example: This definitely cannot be told to you by anyone. You must determine the answers yourself. It is useful to know that you will have to account for this before you choose a topic. While I’m super interested in the formation of pyrite in natural conditions, I would struggle to answer to why it matters to broad audience, so I wouldn’t choose it as a topic. For this redlining topic we’re working with, there are many reasons it matters: one, it’s an issue of discrimination and breaking the law. Redlining is a racist practice that perpetuates poverty and segregation, both of which are known social maladies. Two, this topic helps the audience better under the world they inhabit. Why do certain cities, like Chicago, remain so segregated? Redlining is one reason. Why  does racism seems so baked into even wonderfully diverse cities like Chicago? Redlining is one reason.

B. Start Googling***. Google your topic phrase. Google keywords in your topic. With the example of redlining, you could google that word alone, and then try adding “articles on redlining” or “podcast on redlining”, “why is redlining a problem,” and “redlining and public health.” Podcasts, YouTube videos, TikToks, etc. can all help you understand what sort of info is out there and what sort of connections are being made.  This method provides you with “jumping off” points.

***At this point, any source is fair game because you are probably not going to use that source for any part of your research project. Why? Because this method does not yield quality, reliable sources, but it does get you into the conversations associated with the topics and thereby helps you narrow your focus. This is “casual research” or “informal research” and it is NOT academic or necessarily reliable. In your search, you may find suitable sources, but that’s not currently your goal.