This page will walk you through strategies to spark your curiosity as you ask and develop research questions. Leading with curiosity makes for a more engaging research experience. Pick and choose the strategies that work for you!
This self-assessment will help you understand the different types of curiosity you gravitate towards and give you a way to frame your exploration.
Reflect: How do you see evidence of the kinds of curiosity from the self-assessment in your everyday life and in class?
These reflection questions are intended to get you thinking. It can be helpful to bounce ideas off your classmates, professors, or a librarian.
Browse through your notes and look for ideas introduced during class that piqued your interest or that were related to something you care about. Think about your answers to these questions:
Background reading involves reading works related to your topic in order to get a big picture overview before diving into your research. Looking up your topic on Wikipedia, in a reference book or site, or in a web search can give you the overview you need and identify unresolved questions or areas of ongoing research.
Though Wikipedia and reference books may not be what you cite in your final assignment, they usually contain bibliographies that can point you toward resources for further reading.
Brainstorm a list of possible topics and questions.
Based on your background reading and content from class, take a few minutes and brainstorm as many topics or questions as you can. Don't stop to refine, as that can be done later. As you go, see if you can rephrase topics or statements into questions.
Activities like this provide you a great starting point for identifying what really piques your interest. Once you have a list, you can prioritize the topics and questions you brainstormed to find the one that both interests you and fits within the bounds of your assignment.
Once you have a topic, your natural next step may be to gather a few sources related to the topic and summarize what those sources say. But this approach lacks your unique ideas—what interests you about the topic and how you interpret the information you find.
Your goal in conducting research should be to answer a question or solve a problem. This approach leads you to select sources carefully, extract meaningful and useful information, and draw your own conclusions.
Just like creating strong passwords, you should also try to develop strong research questions.
Remember: You can revise weaker research questions to make them stronger.
A too-broad question has a lot of problems. The depth of research suffers when there are too many avenues to explore, and not enough time to explore them. However, questions can also be too narrow. There may not be many, if any, resources available if a topic is too narrow. This doesn't mean the topic shouldn't be studied, but your assignment may not be the right avenue for answering your particular question.
Initial topics are often too broad for assignment requirements, and will need to be narrowed down. If you find yourself stuck when trying to narrow a research question, consider these guiding questions:
Asking yourself about the 5 Ws can help you identify what you already know and want to learn, and even highlight some possible intersections with other topics!