I. The Research Process

Picking a topic is one of the biggest challenge of the whole research process. In her book Little Quick Fix: Research Question, Zina O'Leary (2018) recommends picking a topic that meets the following criteria:

• Is it a topic you're interested in? Maybe it's related to a hobby or interest you have outside of academics, or it has to do with a current event you care about. For examples: development of skate parks in rural communities or wildlife management techniques for osprey. 
• Is it relevant in the field you're studying? Does it fit the parameters of the assignment and class?
• Will research into this topic be useful in the field? You may not know this off the top of your head - your professor can help you understand if your topic could be helpful in the larger field of academics (pp.35)

Once you have a general topic, you need to move into a researchable question. One great way to do this is by brainstorming a concept map of sub- topics related to your topic. Once you've got some topics mapped out, you can ask yourself: what aspects am I most interested in? Do I have any insights I might be able to add? (O'Leary, 2016, pp. 43). 

This video by North Seattle College library shows a great example of using concept mapping to narrow in on a research topic.

Once you have your topic picked out, you'll want to do some preliminary reading on it. This will help you understand the topic more deeply, and help you form a more nuanced research question.

For this stage, we recommend "lateral reading." This means, reading briefly on your topic across several different sources that you can understand easily (versus diving into a single academic source). Take some notes as you go. The following sources are a great place to start for lateral reading:

• Wikipedia
• Newspapers
• Blogs
• Encyclopedias
• Dictionaries

The library has reference resources, like encylopedias or dictionaries, on most topics. Here are a few reference websites to get you started: