Use the following databases and resources to get topic ideas for a paper or speech.
Think about how feasible it will be to answer your research question within the confines of the assignment.
Example 1: Smoking. This is too broad.
Any time you have a single word or phase as your topic, you'll need to think more specifically about what aspect you're going to cover. Do you want to examine the financial aspects of smoking bans? The medical affects of smoking? Public perception of smoking? Attitudes from different states/countries? Each of these different questions will affect how and what you search for.
Example 2: Does yelling at kids playing football motivate them? This is probably too narrow.
Assuming you could find any study that dealt specifically with youth football and yelling, you certainly wouldn't find much. In these cases, you may want to expand your terms. Think of synonyms or related words:
Yelling could be expanded to negative reinforcement or verbal abuse
football could be expanded to sports in general.
You'd be more likely to find information dealing with verbal abuse and youth sports, or younger athletes and motivation.
Example 3: What was the Civil War? This topic is too broad.
Unless you're planning on writing your own encyclopedia, there's way too much information here to fit into a paper. If you do a search for "Civil War" in a library catalog or database, you will find 100,000 things written about it. Try to focus on a particular aspect of the Civil War, such as:
What economic factors lead to the Civil War?
What role did free northern African-Americans play in the Civil War?
Example 4: Is there an epidemic of exploding toilets? Probably too narrow.
I'm not up to date on the exploding toilet literature out there, but I'm assuming there's not a whole lot of it. You'd have to come up with some broader concepts for exploding toilets, such as plumbing accidents, or exploding household objects, or, if it's just a rumor, something like urban legends.
It helps to choose your research topic by narrowing it down from a broad subject.
Some examples of subjects and possible research topics:
Education - What are the best methods for teaching children how to read?
Biology - What are the latest theories about the extinction of dinosaurs?
Sociology - What effect, if any, does violence in the video games have on children?
Psychology - What treatment for anxiety is most helpful for teenagers?
In some cases, your research question may touch on several different subjects. For example, you could examine the issue of human cloning from the point of view of biology, medicine, sociology, the law, politics, religion, or philosophy. Each of these perspectives might be found in different parts of the library.
Depending on how much you already know about your topic, you will need to find some background information on it. Why is this important?
Where can you find background Information?
Don't be afraid to use the Internet for background information--I often find the general information I need on general sites like Wikipedia. Remember encyclopedias? Those are helpful, too! Gale's Opposing Viewpoints database has videos from popular news shows about persuasive topics.
For example, let's say you've been assigned a research project on the 19th amendment to the Constitution. You don't know anything about it. If you look in an encyclopedia, you will see that this amendment gave women the right to vote. It will give you an overview of the important names, terms and dates that led up to the 19th amendment. Now you can look for books and articles on terms such as women's suffrage and the progressive era, on people like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, or browse History books on the 1920's.
Choose a topic that interests you. You will be spending a lot of time on this. Make it something you WANT to learn about.
Think of your topic as a question you hope to answer. Think about what specifically you hope to learn or research. For example, instead of "chipmunk love," try something like, "What behaviors characterize the mating habits of chipmunks?"