Hot Topics & Pro/Con Issues: Finding Topic Ideas & Resources for Your Paper

Your first step towards a successful research endeavor is to choose a good topic.  A good topic should be:

• Interesting to you: It should be a topic that you want to know more about and can hold your interest to the end of your research.
• Neither too broad nor too narrow: A topic that is too broad may not be manageable within your time frame.  A topic that is too narrow may not be researchable with no or very few written documents available. 
• Well defined & focused:  Always try to state your topic as a question or sentence, which becomes the thesis statement.  This will help you clarify your thoughts and remain focused.

The video below demonstrates how using the questions Who?, What?, Where?, Which?, Why?, When?, and How? will help you narrow down a topic that is big enough to write a book when you only need to write a several page research paper.

Not finding enough information or anything at all on your topic?  Watch the video below for some tips on how to move toward a topic that doesn't drown you in information and, also doesn't leave you hanging out to dry.