For a lot of college students, narrowing down a research topic and developing a research question can be tough because it is something they never learned to do in high school. Identifying a highly focused topic, as opposed to one that is too broad or generic, makes it easier to write a good thesis statement and an effective research paper.
Why is it Important to Narrow Down a Topic?
College students are generally required to do one or more of the following:
- A – Investigate a general topic as an assignment.
- B – Choose a problem to study from a list given by a professor.
- C – Identify their own topic to investigate.
In each of the above scenarios, it is important that the scope of the research problem is narrow enough for the student to adequately address the topic in the allotted space and time. Too broad a topic can cause the following problems:
- The student encounters too many sources of information and finds it hard to decide what information to include or exclude or identify the most important sources.
- Most of the information is too general in nature; thus, the student finds it difficult to develop a clear framework for addressing the research problem.
- There is a dearth of parameters that clearly define the research problem, thereby making it difficult to identify and use the methods necessary to analyze it.
- The gathered information encompasses too wide an array of concepts and cannot be integrated into a single paper.
How to Know if a Topic is Too Broad
- If a topic can be summed up in a word or two—corporal punishment, teen pregnancies, obesity, healthcare costs, education—it is obviously too broad.
- If an entire section of books in the library can be used as sources for the research topic, needless to say, it needs to be refined and narrowed down.
- If the student finds it difficult to compose a thesis statement for their paper, chances are the topic is too broad.
It is important to narrow a topic down to the point where a writer can be specific about what they would like to find out rather than just what they would like to write about.
Tips for Narrowing Down a Topic
Here are a few pointers to help students pick a pointed research topic:
1. Being Selective
A good researcher views a research problem through a single lens or focuses on just one angle. For example, instead of studying the different factors that have contributed to the obesity epidemic in America, they might choose to study how fast-food culture makes people obese.
2. Breaking it down
Another way to narrow down a topic is to break the larger topic into smaller components, so they can be analyzed with greater precision. For example, a study on the prevalence of smoking among young adults can be narrowed down to focus on 18–21-year-old male adults.
3. Using the Right Methodology
A seasoned researcher knows how important it is to use a data-gathering method that will reduce the scope of interpretive analysis required to address the research problem. For example, using a single case study to generate data (as opposed to using multiple cases) will require a less extensive explanation.
4. Understanding the Importance of Geography
Generally speaking, researching a smaller geographical unit automatically narrows down the focus of a topic. For instance, instead of focusing on post-WW1 poetry in Europe, it might be easier to focus on post-WW1 poetry in Britain as a case study to understand the effects of war on the creative mind.
5. Examining Relationships
An effective way to quickly reduce the scope of a topic is to identify how two or more variables relate to each other and to design a study around their correlation. These variables could be cause and effect, compare and contrast, problem and solution, group and individual, male and female, etc.
6. Assigning Shorter TimeframesA study focusing on a shorter period of time naturally has a narrower focus. For example, a researcher might want to focus on Indochina trade relations between 1900 and 1935 instead of the broader Indochina trade relations in the 20th century.
Applying any one of the above strategies in designing a study will lead to a feasible research problem. The next step is to review the literature on this specific problem in order to determine whether enough prior research exists for the researcher to move forward in their study. Combining two or more of the above strategies, however, will make the topic too narrowly defined, and the researcher might find it difficult to locate sufficient data or research to support the study.
