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Focusing Your Topic
Topic Selection | Refining
Topic Selection
If you need help selecting your topic:
- Think about what interests you in the course.
- Look through course readings for ideas.
- Discuss ideas with your professor.
- Look through specialized encyclopedias in the subject area. (e.g. SOPHIA
keyword search for women and encyclopedias)
For topics related to current social issues:
- The following websites can help get you started thinking on a topic:
- Search for the series Contemporary World Issues in
SOPHIA (title search). These books give broad overviews of
various issues.
Refining
- Get background information
- Use a general or subject specific encyclopedia (e.g. SOPHIA
keyword search for women and encyclopedias)
- Find a handbook on the topic (e.g. SOPHIA
keyword search for women and handbooks)
- Do a preliminary search in SOPHIA
for other books on the topic.
- Do a preliminary search in some GALILEO databases to determine aspects of the topic in the literature.
- Consider ways to narrow your focus. For example, for the topic abortion:
| Narrow by |
Examples |
| aspects of the topic |
law and legislation
pro-choice movement
pro-life movement
moral and ethical aspects
religious aspects
psychological aspects |
| time period
| 19th century
since Roe v. Wade |
| geography |
United States
Europe |
| population |
teens
Hispanic Americans |
- You may need to broaden your topic or search keywords, e.g. when searching for a subject encyclopedia, a statistical compilation
or when choosing a database. Information on abortion might be found in resources related to women,
to health or medicine, to ethics or to law.
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