Narrowing Your Topic
Once you have selected a broad topic that interests you and aligns with the course theme, you'll need to work on narrowing it down to provide a clearer focus for your research. Narrowing down your topic does not mean that you are developing a thesis statement or central research question. That comes after you narrow your topic.
Most topics are just too big. For example, if you were interested in the history of family planning in the United States, that topic would be too broad for a focused research project. That topic has many parts, sub-topics, and timelines. For this example, you would need to ask yourself what interests you about the history of family planning? What aspects, perspectives, or time eras interest you the most?
The image below illustrates how you might narrow your focus from a broad topic to one that's more narrow and specific. Click on the image for a larger view.
This example starts with family planning in the U.S. Then, it narrows to a sub-topic, contraception. The next two layers further narrow the topic to social activism and to a specific social activist, Margaret Sanger. Still, there is much that one can focus on in Margaret Sanger's life. So, let's go one step further and focus more specifically on her work in founding the American Birth Control League (1921) which later joined other groups to form Planned Parenthood Federation of America (1942).
Now that we have a narrowed, specific, topical focus, geographic location, and time, we can begin working on formulating our research questions.
To help narrow your topic, try writing it down on paper, on a Google Doc, or by using the free version of an online brainstorming/mind mapping tool like bubbl.us.