Narrowing Your Research Topic: From Idea to Research Question

Check your dissertation or project brief, marking criteria and programme guidance. Identify:

• what kind of project you are expected to complete

• any requirements or restrictions on topic choice and methods

• the time, word count and resources available

• how your topic or proposal needs to be agreed

Then consider what interests you within those requirements. Useful starting points include a question raised in a module, a debate in your reading, a practical problem or an issue connected to your future work.

Write a short statement of your initial idea and what you would like to understand. Treat it as a starting point that you can refine.

Break a broad idea into smaller questions or areas of interest. For example, social media could lead you towards online communities, identity, advertising, political communication or wellbeing.

Ask:

• What particular issue, process or problem interests me?

• Whose experiences, practices or perspectives could I examine?

• Which setting, period or material would be relevant?

• What would I like to explain, compare, interpret, evaluate or test?

Use early searching and reading to see how the topic is discussed, learn relevant terminology and identify possible approaches. Look at the evidence and methods used in existing work as well as its findings.

For help developing searches, see Search effectively.

If it helps, make a mind map on paper or with a tool you already use. Put the broad topic in the centre, add possible angles and connect related ideas. Use it to organise your thinking and identify questions to investigate further.

Choose boundaries that fit what you want to investigate. Depending on the project, you could focus on:

• a particular issue, concept or aspect of a wider topic

• a population or group

• a location, organisation or setting

• a time period

• a case, dataset or defined collection of material

• a comparison between particular approaches, practices or examples

Choose each boundary for a reason. For example, one organisation may provide a suitable case for examining a particular practice, while a defined period may allow you to investigate a specific change.

Aim for enough focus to investigate the question in depth while retaining enough relevant evidence and scope for analysis. Making the topic increasingly narrow will not necessarily make it a better project.

A topic names the area you are interested in. A research question states what you want to find out within it.

Try writing one clear question that identifies the main issue and any boundaries essential to understanding it. Choose wording that fits the kind of investigation you intend to undertake.

Example: moving from a broad topic to a working question

The focus selects a group, a setting and one aspect of wellbeing. The question then identifies what the project would investigate: students’ accounts of the role of social media.

This could lead to an analysis of students’ experiences, interpreted alongside relevant research and concepts. It would still need an appropriate method, a feasible way to obtain evidence and any required permissions or ethical approval.

Be clear whether you want to investigate experiences, relationships, differences or causes. Choose wording that matches what your evidence and method can establish.

Read your working question back and ask whether someone else could understand what you intend to investigate. Define terms that are unclear or have a particular meaning in your subject. Follow programme guidance if your project uses an aim, hypothesis or design problem instead of a question.

Review your working question against the project requirements and what your searching and reading have shown.

Consider:

• whether the question is clear and relevant to your subject

• whether suitable literature can help you frame and develop the project

• what sources, data, participants, equipment or other resources you would need

• whether you can realistically obtain and use that evidence

• whether the proposed method fits the question and your available skills and resources

• what permissions or ethical approval may be required

• whether you can complete the investigation and analysis in the available time and word count

Use Checking literature for your dissertation topic to judge how the literature you find could support the project and what to do if directly relevant research is limited.

Discuss your working question with your supervisor. Bring a brief explanation of your focus, some relevant reading and the main questions or constraints you have identified.

You may need to adjust the boundaries, revise the wording or consider a different approach. Keep a short note of what changed and why, and revisit the question as your understanding develops.