Beginning a Research Paper
Narrowing Your Topic
Combine your topic with another subject area to generate
- Suicide and Society
- Suicide and Public Policy
- Suicide and Medicine
- Suicide and the Media
- Other combinations?
Once you have decided on an area worth exploring, you will have
to narrow further.
- Example: Does the state have a compelling interest in
preventing suicide? Does society have an interest in those who
choose death because it seeks to defy death? (Burgess 213)
Testing your assumptions
Now that you have begun asking questions, try to answer one of
these in a preliminary way. In this stage it is likely that you
will have little evidence to go on. That's okay.
- Example: I always assumed society has an interest in those who
seek to defy death because it seeks to defy death (Burgess
Forming a research question
Now that you have had to articulate the assumptions behind your
assertion, you may be on your way to forming a research
- Example: are there situations in which social institutions can
aid the individual in dying?
Your research question?
Forming a working hypothesis
The working hypothesis is an idea that you are trying to test.
If you already know that answer, then you have probably not found a
true research question.
- Example: In cases where the individual has no hope for
recovery, social institutions are justified in aiding in that
Your working hypothesis:
Refining your thesis
As you read and think about your topic, you will discover that
your initial assertions should be refined. This is a natural step
in formulating a good thesis. You will have time to modify the
thesis to reflect the evidence you gather.
- Example: In efforts to research cases in which individuals have
"no hope of recovery," the writer found this phrase to be too broad
Comment: This would cause the writer to further refine the
meanings of terms. To do so, a case study could be used to help
define what is meant by "no hope of recovery."