Advanced 11, Honors, and AP Research Paper: Choose Your Topic

1. Find a subject area that interests and challenges you. You might have studied a certain topic in class that you would like to research further or you may be able to research and write about something you are particularly interested in. Writing about what you know can help you throughout the entire researching and writing process. If you are choosing a research topic from a list that your instructor distributed, again choose something that you are interested in.
2. If you are having trouble finding a topic that interests you, read through some current newspapers and magazines. You might find a news story or a subject area that you would like to research further.
3. You can also use the Issues & Controversies Issue Index by Subject to help select your topic. You can access specific parts of this index by clicking on any of the categories under Subjects at the top of any page in the database.
4. Once you have chosen a topic, decide whether you need to narrow or broaden its focus. If your topic is too broad, you might become overwhelmed by the amount of resources available on the subject and your research paper may prove almost impossible to write. If your topic is too narrow, you might have trouble finding resources and your paper might not be long enough. For example, writing about the Internet is too broad. Writing about publishing on the Internet is narrower. Writing about one document published on the Internet might be too narrow.
5. Ask yourself some questions about the topic. These questions will help you to focus on a certain issue or problem. One of these questions will form your research question, which your thesis statement will answer. For example, if you chose to write about publishing on the Internet, your research question might be "Has the fact that it is so easy to publish on the Internet made it difficult for students to find reliable information?"

If you already have topic idea, you can try searching in the databases to see if there is enough content to support your research.  See how your topic is covered.  Is there abundant information about your topic in at least two of these databases?  Is your topic one for which there is an entire resource page with links to information from a variety of perspectives and multiple formats?