Organizing Academic Research Papers: 1. Choosing a Topic

A topic is the main organizing principle guiding the analysis of your research paper. Topics offer us an occasion for writing and a focus that governs what we want to say. Topics represent the core subject matter of scholarly communication, and the means by which we arrive at other topics of conversations and discover new knowledge.

Do not expect choosing the topic to be a quick or easy task! You should be thinking about it right from the start of the course. There are generally three ways you are asked to write about a research problem:

1. your professor provides you with a general topic from which you study a particular aspect of;
2. your professor provides you with a list of possible topics; or
3. your professor leaves it up to you to choose a topic and you only have to obtain his/her permission to write about it before beginning your investigation.

Here are some strategies for getting started for each scenario.

I.  How To Begin:  You are given the topic to write about

Step 1: Identify concepts and terms that make up the topic statement. For example, your professor wants the class to focus on the following research problem: “Is the European Union as a whole becoming a credible security actor with the ability to contribute to global security?” The main concepts are: European Union, global security, credibility [hint: focus on identifying proper nouns, nouns or noun phrases, and action verbs in the assignment description].

Step 2: Review related literature to help refine how you will approach focusing on the topic and finding a way to analyze it. You can begin by doing any or all of the following: reading through background information from materials listed in your course syllabus; searching the SHU library catalog to find a recent introductory book and, if appropriate, more specialized works about the topic; conducting a preliminary review of the research literature using multidisciplinary library databases such as EBSCOhost's Academic Search Premier or subject-specific databases found here. Use the main concept terms you developed in Step 1 to retrieve relevant articles. This will help you refine and frame the research problem. Don’t be surprised if you need to do this several times before you finalize how to approach writing about the topic.

NOTE:  Always review the references cited by the authors in footnotes, endnotes, or a bibliography to help locate additional research on the topic. However, if you’re having trouble at this point locating related research literature, ask a librarian for help!

Step 3: Since social science research papers are generally designed to get you to develop your own ideas and arguments, look for sources that can help broaden, modify, or strengthen your initial thoughts and arguments [for example, if you decide to argue that the European Union is ill prepared to take on responsibilities for broader global security because of the debt crisis in many EU countries, then focus on identifying sources that support as well as refute this position].

There are least four appropriate roles your related literature plays in helping you formulate how to begin your analysis:

• Sources of criticism -- frequently, you'll find yourself reading materials that are relevant to your chosen topic, but you disagree with the author's position. Therefore, one way that you can use a source is to describe the counter-argument, provide evidence from your review of the literature as to why it is unsatisfactory, and discuss how your own view is more appropriate based upon your interpretation of the evidence.

• Sources of new ideas -- while a general goal in writing college research papers is to approach a research problem with some basic idea of what position you'd like to take and what grounds you'd like to stand upon, it is certainly acceptable [and often encouraged] to read the literature and extend, modify, and refine your own position in light of the ideas proposed by others. Just make sure that you cite the sources!

• Sources for historical context -- another role your related literature plays in helping you formulate how to begin your analysis is to place issues and events in proper historical context. This can help to demonstrate familiarity with developments in relevant scholarship about your topic, provide a means of comparing historical versus contemporary issues and events, and identifying key people, places, and things that had an important role related to the research problem.

• Sources of interdisciplinary insight -- an advantage of using databases like EBSCOhost's Academic Search Premier to begin exploring your topic is that it covers publications from a variety of different disciplines. Another way to formulate how to study the topic is to look at it from different disciplinary perspectives. If the topic concerns immigration reform, ask yourself, for example, how do studies from sociological journals found by searching Proquest vary in their analysis from those in law journals. Another role of related literature is to provide a means of approaching a topic from multiple perspectives rather than the perspective offered from just one discipline.

NOTE: Remember to keep careful notes at every stage. You may think you'll remember what you have searched and where you found things, but it’s easy to forget.

Step 4: Assuming you've done an effective job of synthesizing and thinking about the results of our initial search for related literature, you're ready to prepare a detailed outline for your paper that lays the foundation for a more in-depth and focused review of relevant research literature [after consulting with a librarian, if needed!].

II.  How To Begin:  You are provided a list of possible topics to choose from

Step 1: I know what you’re thinking--which topic from this list is the easiest to find the most information on? An effective instructor should never include a topic that is so obscure or complex that no research is available to review and from which to begin to design a study. Instead of searching for the path of least resistance, begin by choosing a topic that you find interesting in some way, or that is controversial and you have a strong opinion about, or that has some personal meaning for you. You're going to be working on your topic for quite some time, so choose one that's interesting or that makes you want to take a position on.

Once you’ve settled on a topic of interest from the list, follow Steps 1 - 4 listed above to further develop it into a research paper.

NOTE: It’s ok to review related literature to help refine how you will approach analyzing a topic, and then discover that the topic isn’t all that interesting after all. In that case, you can choose another from the list. Just don’t wait too long to make a switch and be sure to consult with your professor first.

III.  How To Begin:  Your professor leaves it up to you to choose a topic

Step 1: Under this scenario, the key process is turning an idea or general thought into a topic that can be cast as a research problem. When given an assignment where you choose the research topic, don't begin by thinking about what to write about, but rather, ask yourself the question, "What do I want to know?" Treat an open-ended assignment as an opportunity to learn about something that's new or exciting to you.

Step 2: If you lack ideas, or wish to gain focus, try some or all of the following strategies:

• Review your course readings, particularly the suggested readings, for topic ideas. Don't just review what you've already read but jump ahead in the syllabus to readings that have not been covered yet.
• Search the SHU library catalog for a good, recent introductory book and, if appropriate, more specialized works related to the discipline  area of the course.
• Browse through some current journals in your subject discipline. Even if most of the articles are not relevant, you can skim through the contents quickly. You only need one to be the spark that begins the process of wanting to learn more about a topic. Consult a librarian or your professor about the core journals within your subject discipline.
• Think about essays you have written for past classes and other coursework you have taken or academic lectures and programs you have attended. Thinking back, what most interested you? What would you like to know more about?
• Search online media sources, such as CNN, the Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, or Newsweek, to see if your idea has been covered in the news. Use this coverage to refine your idea into something that you'd like to investigate further but in a more deliberate, scholarly way based on a problem to research.

Step 3: To build upon your initial idea, use the suggestions under this tab to help narrow, broaden, or increase the timeliness of your idea so you can write it out as a research problem.

Once you are comfortable with having turned your idea into a topic, follow Steps 1 - 4 listed in Part I above to further develop it into a research paper.

Answering the Question. Academic Skills Centre. University of Canberra; Brainstorming. Department of English Writing Guide. George Mason University; Brainstorming. The Writing Center. University of North Carolina; Choosing a Topic. The Writing Lab and The OWL. Purdue University;  Coming Up With Your Topic. Institute for Writing Rhetoric. Dartmouth College; How To Write a Thesis Statement. Writing Tutorial Services, Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning. Indiana University; Identify Your Question. Start Your Research. University Library, University of California, Santa Cruz; The Process of Writing a Research Paper. Department of History. Trent University; Trochim, William M.K. Problem Formulation. Research Methods Knowledge Base. 2006.

If you are having difficulty identifying a topic to study or need basic background information, the following web resources and databases can be useful:

• Global Issues in Context - Offers international viewpoints on a broad spectrum of global issues, topics, and current events, with rich multimedia - including podcasts, video, and interactive graphs.
• New York Times Topics -- each topic page collects news, reference and archival information, photos, graphics, audio and video files published on a variety of topics. Content is available without charge on articles going back to 1981.
• Social Science Research Network -- a service providing scholarly research papers, working papers, and journals in numerous social science disciplines.

Don't be a Martyr!

In thinking about a research topic to study, don't adopt the mindset of pursuing an esoteric or incredibly complicated topic just to impress your professor but that, in reality, does not have any real interest to you. As best as you can, choose a topic that has at least some interest to you. Obviously, this is easier for courses within your major, but even for those nasty prerequisit classes that you must take in order to graduate [and that provide an additional revenue stream to the University], try to apply issues from your major to the general topic given to you. For example, if you are an IR major taking a philosophy class where the assignment asks you to apply the question of "what is truth" to some aspect of life, you could choose to study how government leaders attempt to shape truth through the use of propaganda.

Not Finding Anything on Your Topic? Ask a Librarian!

Librarians are experts in locating information and providing strategies for analyzing existing knowledge in new ways. Do not immediately assume that your topic is too narrow because you haven’t found any information about it. Always consult a librarian before you consider giving up on finding information about the topic you want to investigate. If there isn't a lot of information about your topic, a librarian can often help you identify a closely related topic you can study.