Module 2: Academic Disciplines
2.4 Narrowing a Topic
In this module, your assignment asks you to brainstorm one potential research problem related to an academic discipline you studied. This topic should not be overly broad. This reading provides a process for narrowing your topic.
Narrowing a topic is a process of working from the outside in
You start with the world of all possible topics (or your assigned topic) and narrow down until you’ve focused your interest enough to be able to tell precisely what you want to find out, instead of only what you want to “write about.”
You’ll need to narrow your topic in order to do research effectively. Without specific areas of focus, it will be hard to even know where to begin.
(Teaching & Learning, 2015).
Background Reading
One strategy to narrow your topic is background reading.
“Reading some general info from websites (that is, doing background reading) will help you get a general overview of your topic. It can also help you begin to think of ways to narrow your topic.
For example, while reviewing a few websites about homelessness, you may find facts about how women are affected by homelessness. That could spark your interest and become the topic for your projects in this class: homelessness and women.”
(University of Maryland Global Campus Library, 2023).
Brainstorming
A second strategy to narrow a topic is brainstorming.
Brainstorming is the process by which ideas are produced using techniques like concept mapping, free-writing, etc. Choosing a topic can be a difficult process when starting an assignment or writing a paper, and brainstorming can be used to choose a topic or narrow down a broad topic. Narrowing your topic is an important step in the research process. A broad, general topic makes it difficult to find specified research, so narrowing down the topic is needed.
WHAT ARE KEYWORDS?
Keywords are specific words or phrases that relate to your main idea or research question. They are used in brainstorming to determine search terms to use in finding research or narrowing down a topic. Keywords can be specific search words found in your research question, synonyms, phrases, or jargon that are common in the field of study.
HOW TO NARROW YOUR TOPIC
- Start by writing down your broad topic.
Example:
Use of social media and children
- Next, identify the main ideas or terms.
- social media
- children
- Using your list of ideas, try to describe Who, What, Where, When, How, and Why about your topic to determine specifics. Do any of these topics sound interesting? Would you be interested in researching them for your assignment?
Example: Who Juvenile, pre-adolescent, adolescent, teenage What Twitter, Instagram, Facebook Where Online, in daily life, at school When Early life, childhood, puberty, young adulthood How Social, emotional, physical, behavioral Why Causes, effects
- Once you have determined which words you’d like to use, combine aspects of your list to create a narrowed down topic.
Example: Who Juvenile, pre-adolescent, adolescent, teenage What Twitter, Instagram, Facebook Where Online, in daily life, at school When Early life, childhood, puberty, young adulthood How Social, emotional, physical, behavioral Why Causes, effects Narrow research question: What are the effects of using Instagram on the behavior of adolescents?
(Knowledge Market, 2022)
Or stated as a research problem: Instagram has negative effects on the behavior of adolescents.
You can use these keywords and phrases to start searching for sources.
References
Knowledge Market. (2022, August 24). Brainstorming strategy: Narrowing a topic. Grand Valley State University. Retrieved April 24, 2024 from https://www.gvsu.edu/library/km/brainstorming-strategy-narrowing-a-topic-36.htm
Teaching & Learning. (2015). Narrowing a topic. In C. M. Lowry (Ed.), Choosing & using sources: A guide to academic research. Retrieved April 24, 2024, from https://ohiostate.pressbooks.pub/choosingsources/chapter/narrowing-a-topic/. CC BY 4.0.
University of Maryland Global Campus Library. (2023, August 8). Background reading on your topic. BEHS 210: Introduction to Social Sciences. Retrieved April 24, 2024 from https://libguides.umgc.edu/c.php?g=1084580&p=7994911
