Skip to Main Content
MCC shield logo with text: Library Services, Monroe Community College

Topics: Selecting & Refining Your Essay Subject

Tips on choosing a topic for a research assignment.

Beginning Research

In addition to the Topic Ideas tab to the left, the following resources can aid in deciding on a topic and beginning the research process:

Selecting a Topic

1. Choosing a topic based on emotion, career goals, or personal experience may make the research more interesting.

2. Narrow the subject by focusing on a smaller issue. The focus may be a cause, effect, mystery, case study, controversy, or issue. This focus will be the topic of the paper.

Examples:

Subject: Criminal Justice
Topic: Community policing

Subject: Nutrition
Topic: Obesity in children

Subject: Education
Topic: School uniforms in public schools

3. Conduct preliminary research such as reading an encyclopedia, magazine or journal article. Write down keywords, names, and subject headings while reading. This will help when searching for books, journals, web sites, and visual media.

4. The research paper should have a goal (thesis). When conducting preliminary research, write down questions about the topic. Choose one as a major question or goal of the paper and concentrate on research for that goal.

5. Refine the topic. What time period should be covered, is there a region or country to focus on, is there a particular person or group to discuss, what aspects of the topic are interesting (economic, sociological, political, historical, etc.)?

This tutorial may also help in topic selection:

Accessibility is important to us. While we have made efforts to make our guides as accessible as possible, it is possible that issues could be present. If you are having difficulty accessing content in these guides or if you have any questions about the accessibility of online information posted by the MCC Libraries, please contact us.