Social/Behavioral Sciences Research Guide: Finding a topic

Start by thinking about your areas of interest within the subject you’re studying. Examples of broad ideas include:

• College Students
• Social Media
• Health Issue

To get a more specific sense of the current state of research on your potential topic, skim through a few recent issues of the top journals in your field and encyclopedias. Be sure to check out their most-cited articles in particular. You can also search Google Scholar, subject-specific databases, and your university library’s resources.

As you read, note down any specific ideas that interest you and make a shortlist of possible topics. If you’ve written other papers, such as a 3rd-year paper or a conference paper, consider how those topics can be broadened into a research proposal.

After some initial reading, it’s time to start narrowing down options for your potential topic. This can be a gradual process and should get more and more specific as you go. For example, from the ideas above, you might narrow it down like this:

• College Students-Deaf College Students--Deaf College Students Perceptions of Online Courses
• Social Media-Generation Z and Social Media---Generation Z, Self-Image, and Social Media
• Health issue--Reproductive health----Deaf population---Deaf Women and Unintended Pregnancies (you may be thinking:  deaf women tend to have unintended pregnancies more often… because deaf young women don’t have access to sex education because of language barriers).

These topics are still broad enough to find many books and articles about them. Try to find a specific niche where you can make your mark, such as something not many people have researched yet, a question that’s still being debated, or a very current practical issue. If there’s already a lot of research and a strong consensus on your topic, it will be more difficult to justify the relevance of your work. However, you should also ensure enough literature to provide a strong basis for your research.

Your topic must be interesting to you, but you’ll also have to make sure it’s academically, socially, or practically relevant to your field.

• Academic relevance means that the research can fill a knowledge gap or contribute to a scholarly debate in your field.
• Social relevance means that the research can advance our understanding of society and inform social change.
• Practical relevance means that the research can be applied to solve concrete problems or improve real-life processes.

The easiest way to make sure your research is relevant is to choose a topic that is connected to current issues or debates, either in society at large or in your academic discipline. The relevance must be clearly stated when you define your research problem.