Information Literacy Instructional Program

Key Concepts & Practice

Refining Your Research Topic

Once you have defined your research topic and found some background information, you can refine your broad research topic into a narrow, focused topic. The sooner you can develop a broad subject into a focused topic, the sooner you can shape your research into a finished paper. 

Tips to refine your topic: 

• identify a specific population, geographic area or time period. 
• choose a subfield of your discipline or topic.

A topic that covers too much material or little material are common problems for students. Depending on your interests, a general topic can be focused in many ways. 

Using the Online Catalog to Narrow a Topic      Sometimes the online catalog can give you some ideas for narrowing a topic. Many subject headings in the catalog are broken down into subheadings that define geographical locations, material types, or specific aspects of a topic. Some subject headings also have Search also under notes and links that identify other related or narrower subjects.

 The online catalog may suggest other terms that are related to a subject heading. These terms show up when you click on "subject headings" under the title information.

Boolean Searching - narrowing your topic    Topics that are too broad are ones that you have too many responses. Or sometimes a topic may be too new and sources to your research questions may not yet exist. The logical operators AND and NOT can be used in database searches to narrow a search statement. 

Boolean Searching - broadening your topic      Topics that are too narrow are fairly simple to fix. The logical operator OR can be used in online database searches to broaden a search statement. For more information, consult Electronic Searching. 

More information about Boolean Searching

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