Project...Research Paper Option Research Paper Tutorial Picking a Topic This is probably one of the more difficult tasks to complete when starting a research paper. You have likely heard of "Writers Block", well this is "Topic Block"! You are, however, in an introductory course and are not expected to do research paper that will demystify some confusing aspect of the world...in fact, what you are doing is not very much a "Research Paper" at all...it is technically a "Literature Review". In my classes the PURPOSE of a research paper is to find out what other professionals in the field have to say about your topic. It is to get THEIR perspective, and THEN to evaluate it based on your comparison of different viewpoints and applications...you are not going to create something new as much as you are going to SYNTHESIZE ideas together to create your paper. In picking a topic for my class you have the opportunity to look at, with some detail, something that you are interested in. If you are going to be spending this much time reading about something it might as well be interesting to you! I've had students do research on how to discipline children, train dogs, deal with math anxiety, on various mental conditions, on how to get along in groups, etc. etc...each of these reflected a personal INTEREST and USEFULNESS in the paper for the writer. Getting to the Topic The best place to start is your textbook. Your book is full of topics, definitions for these topics, and often, your lead research (I will explain this in the Initial Research section of this tutorial). Scan your book for areas in the field that you find interesting. Read the topic definitions, read the little boxes that highlight ideas and such. The goal here is to get an idea as to the area in the field you are going to do some reading in. For an example I'm going to us my Sociology text. The first pages in the Chapter on Deviance and Crime are about Gangs. I find this interesting so I'm going to do my paper on something to do with Gangs. First I want to find out what the text has to say about Gangs...so I go to the Subject Index and find all the occurrences of the term "Gang". Reading up on each of these I find that the text covers the following issues associated with Gangs...
WOW! ...and this is just an introduction to the subject of Sociology, not even a book on Gangs itself! Now we have an interesting topic...Gangs...and of the subtopics, I'm going to pick "Females Gangs". Getting to the Question In my courses I ask that you title your paper in the form of a question. After all, why do research if you don't want to answer some sort of question...in reality, this is what research does...it answers questions. So what do I want to know about "Female Gangs"? If there is something burning I want to know about Female Gangs I can state my question right now...let's say I'm interested in what happens when a female gang member becomes pregnant. I might write a question such as: "What happens when a member of an all-female gang becomes pregnant?" Now THAT might be a good question to do some research on! Or...you might have a topic of interests, but you are not sure where to go from here...well, it is time to do some Initial Research! Links for Research Paper Tutorial Introduction | Picking a Topic | Initial Research | Peer-Reviewed Articles | Outlining | Structure of a Paper | Giving Credit and Avoiding Plagiarism | Submitting the Paper |