Choosing a topic can be one of the most difficult parts of the research process. In fact, picking your topic IS research!

Brainstorming topics - ask yourself:

• Is there an aspect of one of your classes you would like to learn more about?
• Do you have an opinion on a current social or political controversy?
• Have you read or seen something recently that interested you?
• Is there a personal issue, problem, or interest you would like to know more about?
• The 5 Ws, if you have a basic topic in mind:
  • Why did you choose the topic? (What about it interests you?)
  • What are the major questions around this topic? Is there a range of issues and viewpoints to consider?
  • Where is your topic important: at the local, national, or global level? Are there specific places affected by the topic or that you want to focus on?
  • When did your topic occur, or is it a current topic? Do you want to look at your topic at a certain time period or over time?
  • Who is affected by this topic? Are there any organizations or institutions affiliated with the topic? Who are the information providers? Who might publish information about the topic?

Once you have a topic in mind, it helps to turn it into a research question so you don't fall down an information rabbit hole.

Your open-ended research question shouldn't be too broad or too narrow. For example:

Too broad: How can college students maintain good grades?

Too narrow: Can more sleep help liberal arts college students in first-year writing courses in Virginia get higher grades?

Better: How can sleep affect college students' grades?

Another example:

Too broad: How is AI impacting colleges?

Too narrow: Should liberal arts college students in Virginia be allowed to use ChatGPT to write summaries for annotated bibliographies?

Better: Should college students be allowed to use AI for writing assignments?

Research question frameworks

Researchers use question frameworks to break their research topic into key concepts and develop their research question.

5 Ws

A basic framework is the 5 Ws—who, what, where, when, why. However, you may find you have to zoom out on or remove one or two Ws to get your research question just right.

Notice in the above examples how the who (liberal arts college students) and the where (Virginia) made the questions a little too narrow? Zooming out to just "college students" and getting rid of the where helped make these particular research questions more manageable.

PICO

This comes from the health sciences and stands for population / intervention / comparison / outcome. Example:

In school-age children, what is the effect of a school-based physical activity program on a reduction in the incidence of childhood obesity compared with no intervention?

SPICE

This framework is more suited to the social sciences and stands for setting / perspective / intervention (or phenomena of interest) / comparison / evaluation. Example:

What are the benefits of a doula for low-income mothers in the developed world?

CIMO

This framework is suitable for management, business, and policy evaluations and stands for context / intervention / mechanisms / outcomes. Example:

What research exists evaluating the implementation and outcomes of source water protection programs involving Indigenous populations in Canada and the United States?