Narrowing Your Topic: Home

Have you been assigned a research paper, but you don't know where to start? That's okay! Many students struggle with topic selection. One of the most common issues is picking a topic too broad for the scope of the paper.

Why are broad topics a problem?

• You could find too much information, making it difficult to select which information to include and which to exclude.
• You might find information that is too general, making it difficult to compose a clear thesis statement.
• You find information that covers a wide variety of ideas that can't all be covered in one paper, causing you to go off on unnecessary tangents.

What can you do to narrow your topic?

You first will want to gather some background on your topic. Ask yourself some of the following questions:

• What are the main concepts of this topic?
• What are the issues surrounding this topic?
• What are some key terms that are being used to describe the topic?

If you need to present an opinion or argument about your topic, supported with academic resources, another good option is to formulate consequence based question, such as "What are the consequences of X on Y?" Here are some examples of what that may look like:

• What are the consequences of allowing individuals to conceal and carry handguns on college campuses?
• What are the consequences of not basing college admission on standardized tests?
• What are the consequences of erasing student loan debt on our economy?

Lastly, you can use the worksheets to the left of this column as a guideline. Using the 5 W's (Who, What, Where, When, and Why) can another way to narrow a topic.

Adapted from Finding & Narrowing Your Topic LibGuide, BYU Libraries, https://guides.lib.byu.edu/stepbystep and Narrowing a Topic Idea, USC Libraries, https://libguides.usc.edu/writingguide/narrowtopic