|Coming up with a topic for your paper can sometimes be the hardest or most frustrating part of the research process|
Understand the assignment
Is it an assigned topic or can it be one of your own choosing?
How many pages should it be?
Are you required to use certain types of materials, such as scholarly articles?
Keep your question clear and open-ended
Unless you're writing a book or dissertation, think about how much you can cover in a research paper.
Select something that interests you!
If possible, choose a topic that you find interesting and that you want to know more about.
Click the image above
or this link to a Beginner: Search Techniques Tutorial on how to use AND, OR, & NOT effectively while searching.
Divide the topic into a few main concepts
Expand the list of keywords to expand results
Sample topic: Is memory loss related to aging?
The keywords are memory loss & aging
Link similar keywords with OR:
Combine these two collections with AND to get a larger search result: