Research 101 for First Year Students

Narrowing/Refining Your Topic

In research, if our topic is too broad, we might have trouble finding quality sources for our assignment. If we search for very general topics, that are very popular (like global warming), we will get millions of results that discuss global warming in a variety of different ways. How can we refine our results to help us?

• What is the length of your paper or project? Shorter assignments will be more successful with a very specific research topic. If your topic is too general, you might have a hard time narrowing your research down enough to have a successful thesis. 
• What do you find interesting about this topic? Is there a subtopic, or a specific aspect of your broader topic that you find interesting? For example, if I am researching global warming, I might want to narrow it down to specifically how global warming is affecting our polar bear population. Polar bears would be my subtopic with my larger topic being global warming. You need to consider the subtopics that help you formulate a research question or a thesis statement. 
• What are the specifics of your topic? Thinking about very specific details will help you narrow down your search and make your research more compelling for your readers. What are some things we can be specific about? 
  • Geographic Locations: Does your topic affect a specific geographic area? For example, if I was researching global warming, I can focus my research specifically on Antarctica, and how global warming is affecting the region. Another example is looking at groups of people in location types (rural, urban, etc.). 
  • Specific Populations: Focusing your research to be about a specific group of people can be a great way to narrow your topic. You can think about how your topic impacts various groups, like medical trials for teens or elderly adults, or how technology in classrooms affects elementary-aged children. You can be as specific about your population as you would like, but make sure it somehow relates back to your overall thesis. 

Broadening Your Topic 

Sometimes you might need to widen the lens of your research, instead of narrow it. If you already have a very specific idea of what you are wanting to research, but are struggling with finding resources, you might need to take a few steps back. Sometimes broadening our topic can help us have more successful research. 

For example, let's say you are researching children's development in a specific small-town school district in Missouri. You might not find a lot of academic peer-reviewed research about that specific school district. You need to widen your topic by including all rural school districts, and then get some district-specific information from local websites to help build your research. 

Here are some common issues that might cause you to broaden your topic: 

• Your topic is too specific. Just like the example listed above, you might not find a peer-reviewed article that covers every specific aspect of your research question or thesis statement. As a researcher, we need to be willing to read various articles and condense the ideas into our own words. 
• Your topic is too new. Sometimes, if a topic is very current, you might struggle with finding enough peer-reviewed academic sources. It might be all over the newspapers and magazines, but peer-reviewing takes a lot of time. Articles on your topic might be in the works, but they will not be published right away. For example, during the 2020 Pandemic, there wasn't much peer-reviewed content about COVID-19. However, now (a few years later) we are able to find articles that cover COVID-19. 
• It's a topic that relies a lot on personal experiences. Sometimes if a topic is very personal, and relies on the experiences of a specific group of people, you might not find much academic research available. For example, many years ago, there were very few academic resources available for information on the experience of Transgender people. Most writings were from blogs and websites, rather than academic journals and databases. However, now, there are many more academic journals that focus on the Transgender experience. 
• You might not be searching in the correct place. Certain databases on the Reeves Library website will be better than others for various topics. We have subject-specific databases, as well as very good general databases. If you feel you might be searching in the wrong spot, ask a librarian for support! 
   

Remember that you can always reach out to Reeves Library for help if you are feeling stuck!