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Are you really sure you know exactly what topic you’re going to research? Check it once more. The most common research time waster and the biggest one is not having an exact fix on the topic. For instance, researching about car can take months; researching the quality of specific car will take less than half an hour in a halfway decent reference room. I know one of friend who hunted for days in the stocks of engineering library for information on how computerized exams are put together, thinking that the topic was computers. But the topic really was exams, and all the information was easy to find in the library.
To zero in on an exact topic, check each research subject against two criteria:
Do you have just one main topic? Let’s take for example of the student who wanted to write about computerized exams. Computer is one subject, exams another. To combine both in one paper, she should have decided on the main topic. As a general rule, grammatical modifiers are subtopics, not main topics. So in writing about computerized (adjective) exams (noun), exams are the topic and that’s where the research begins.
Here is another example:
1. Freud and the nineteenth century. If you want to show Freud’s influence on the nineteenth century, your main topic is nineteenth century. But if you are going to research the nineteenth century’s influence in Freud, Freud becomes the topic.
2. Is your main topic specific enough? Researching for a specific car is the best practice to be considered than researching the entire subject of cars. Just consider how much you don’t have to read through, if your subject can really be narrowed down to a specific car, becomes an easier research chore if you know that it’s just her thinking or her dress that you’re interested in or assigned to study.
So narrow down your subject to the most specific aspect that concerns you. Be careful not to make your topic too narrow if you’re interested in that topic.
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