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Communication Sciences and Disorders (CSD)

Getting Started With Research

If given the option to choose your own research paper topic but you find yourself struggling to choose what to write about, this guide contains some basic guidelines to keep in mind as you choose what to write about, and contains a large list of possible topics to help spark some ideas.

Things to keep in mind:

  • Choose a topic that is relevant and current: There needs to be a reason why you need to research this topic at this particular point in time. If choosing a topic within a discipline, look at recent issues of the journals in that discipline to think about what topics scholars in the field are concerned about. In a beginning composition course, where you are writing about a social issue, look at headlines in The New York Times or other internet media sources: What events have transpired that makes a particular issue important right now? What issues are there important conversations about?
  • Choose a topic that interests you: The best research projects come out of curiosity on the part of the researcher. You might think about topics that effect your community, however you define it, such as topics important to college students. You might think about a topic that affects your future profession. Or, you could come across something in your daily reading or daily life that you are curious about, and go from there.
  • Choose a topic that leads to complex questions: You generally want to avoid topics that provoke questions that have simple yes/no answers.

Keep in mind that there are some topics that are too broad, general, or have nothing new to say. You may want to avoid the usual social issue topics, including: abortion, the death penalty, gun control, euthanasia, violence in video games, steroid abuse, the SATs, the “obesity epidemic,” and marriage equality. These topics often lead to more simplistic research questions or pro/con arguments. Original takes can be interesting, or there may be specific new developments about a topic worth discussing, and some of these topics are included in this guide's list of topics, but be mindful of how you approach them.

While you want to choose something you are interested in, don’t choose something you have already made up your mind about. Doing so will lead to more simplistic arguments where you may overlook ways to make a more nuanced argument or overlook important evidence that doesn’t support the argument you want to make. After all, if you already know the answer to your research question, then why are you researching it?

The best topics will come out of your own curiosity and reading. If you find a source that says exactly what you want to say, however, then you want to change your approach to your topic (because why would you want to say everything someone else has already said). You might think of your task as synthesizing other views into your own view.

This material is adapted from Wendy Hayden and Stephanie Margolin's Research Toolkit at the Hunter College Libraries under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

What is a research question?
A research question is the question around which you center your research. It should be:

  • clear: it provides enough specifics that one’s audience can easily understand its purpose without needing additional explanation.
  • focused: it is narrow enough that it can be answered thoroughly in the space the writing task allows.
  • concise: it is expressed in the fewest possible words.
  • complex: it is not answerable with a simple “yes” or “no,” but rather requires synthesis and analysis of ideas and sources prior to composition of an answer.
  • arguable: its potential answers are open to debate rather than accepted facts.

As with choosing a topic, you should ask a question about an issue that you are genuinely curious and/or passionate about.

The question you ask should be developed for the discipline you are studying.  A question appropriate for Biology, for instance, is different from an appropriate one in Political Science or Sociology.  You may also want to discuss your ideas for a research question with your professor.  The Reading/Writing Center on campus can also help.

Why is a research question essential to the research process?
Research questions help writers focus their research by providing a path through the research and writing process.  The specificity of a well-developed research question helps writers avoid the “all-about” paper and work toward supporting a specific, arguable thesis.

Steps to developing a research question:

  1. Choose an interesting general topic.  Most professional researchers focus on topics they are genuinely interested in studying.  Writers should choose a broad topic about which they genuinely would like to know more.  An example of a general topic might be “Slavery in the American South” or “Films of the 1930s.”  See the tips listed above for help with brainstorming an interesting topic.
  2. Do some preliminary research on your general topic.  Do a few quick searches in current periodicals and journals on your topic to see what’s already been done and to help you narrow your focus.  What issues are scholars and researchers discussing, when it comes to your topic?  What questions occur to you as you read these articles?  You might also try a general web search to see popular takes on the topic or to gather useful keywords.
  3. Consider your audience.  For most college papers, your audience will be academic, but always keep your audience in mind when narrowing your topic and developing your question.  Would that particular audience be interested in the question you are developing?
  4. Start asking questions.  Taking into consideration all of the above, start asking yourself open-ended “how” and “why” questions about your general topic.  For example, “Why were slave narratives effective tools in working toward the abolishment of slavery?” or “How did the films of the 1930s reflect or respond to the conditions of the Great Depression?”
  5. Evaluate your question.  After you’ve put a question or even a couple of questions down on paper, evaluate these questions to determine whether they would be effective research questions or whether they need more revising and refining.
    • Is your research question clear?  With so much research available on any given topic, research questions must be as clear as possible in order to be effective in helping the writer direct their research.
    • Is your research question focused?  Research questions must be specific enough to be well covered in the space available.
    • Is your research question complex?  Research questions should not be answerable with a simple “yes” or “no” or by easily-found facts.  They should, instead, require both research and analysis on the part of the writer.  They often begin with “How” or “Why.”
  6. Begin your research.  After you’ve come up with a question, think about the possible paths your research could take.  What sources or types of sources should you consult as you seek answers to your question?  What research process will ensure that you find a variety of perspectives and responses to your question?  Consider creating an annotated bibliography as you gather research.  These can help you to organize the research that you find in context with your topic.  Writing annotated bibliographies forces you to think about the material closely and summarize it into a short, concise paragraph. In doing so, you are able to better understand the text, which is invaluable making arguments and for source integration.  You will be able to easily find which source contains the information you need for the various parts of your argument, and the citations are ready for your final paper.  This alone makes annotated bibliographies useful.

This material is adapted from George Mason University's "How to Write a Research Question" Guide under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Using a structured question frame can help you clearly define the concepts or variables that make up the specific research question.  PICO(T) is the most common question frame used in health sciences research, where the question is composed of the:

  • Population/Problem/Patient
    • What is the problem to be addressed? What are the characteristics of the patient population, or disease of interest?  
    • Think of this element as the dependent variable
  • Intervention
    • What is the relevant treatment or exposure? What action or change would affect the patient/problem/population?
    • Think of this element as the independent variable
  • Comparison
    • What is the alternative to the intervention? (A different intervention? The usual standard of care? Not intervening at all?)
    • Think of this element like a "control group"
  • Outcome 
    • What are the relevant effects? 
    • Think of this element as what is measured to show what the intervention has accomplished or improved
  • Timeframe or Type of Study (Optional)
    • Think of this element as additional, optional constraints to narrow the question
      • In what time frame should the intervention achieve the outcome?
      • What type of study would best address the PICO question?

For example:

"For adolescents with type II diabetes (P) does the use of telehealth consultations (I) compared to in-person consultations (C) improve blood sugar control (O)?

Framing Clinical Questions

Different types of clinical questions are suited to different syntaxes and phrasings, but all will clearly define the PICO elements.  The definitions and frames below may be helpful for organizing your question:

Intervention/Therapy

Questions addressing how a clinical issue, illness, or disability is treated.

"In__________________(P), how does__________________(I) compared to_________________(C) affect______________(O)?"

Etiology

Questions that address the causes or origin of disease, the factors which produce or predispose toward a certain disease or disorder.

"Are_________________(P), who have_________________(I) compared with those without_________________(C) at_________________risk for/of_________________(O) over_________________(T)?" 

Diagnosis:

Questions addressing the act or process of identifying or determining the nature and cause of a disease or injury through evaluation.

In_________________(P) are/is_________________(I) compared with_________________(C) more accurate in diagnosing_________________(O)?

Prognosis/Prediction:

Questions addressing the prediction of the course of a disease.

In_________________(P), how does_________________(I) compared to_________________ (C) influence_________________(O)?

Meaning

Questions addressing how one experiences a phenomenon or why we need to approach practice differently.

"How do_________________(P) with_________________(I) perceive_________________(O)?" 

Adapted from: Melnyk, B. M., & Fineout-Overholt, E. (2011). Evidence-based practice in nursing & healthcare: A guide to best practice. Philadelphia: Wolters Kluwer/Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

Keywords are terms that represent the main concepts of your research topic. 

These terms are what you will use to search for sources (articles, books, etc.) to support or answer your research question. Keywords can be single terms or a phrase (if using a search engine or database, "put phrases in quotes" to search multiple words as a single term).

The right keywords are "key" to finding good sources.

When you are developing these keywords consider:

  • The most important words/phrases in your research question
  • How to describe your topic
  • How might someone else search for your topic
  • Do you need to use subject specific terminology
  • Synonyms

Start by identifying the main concepts in your research question:

For example, if my research question is: "For adolescents with type II diabetes (P) does the use of telehealth consultations (I) compared to in-person consultations (C) improve blood sugar control (O)?"

The main concepts areas here are:

  • adolescents
  • "type II diabetes"
  • consultations
  • "blood sugar control"

Then brainstorm related terms and synonyms for your concepts:

  • adolescents:

    • children
    • youths
    • K-12
    • juveniles
  • "type II diabetes":
    • "type 2 diabetes"
    • "Diabetes mellitus type 2"
    • "noninsulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM)"
    • T2D
  • consultations:
    • "telehealth consultations"
    • "in-person consultations"
    • e-medicine
    • "remote health consultations"
    • "office visit"
  • "blood sugar control"
    • "Glycemic control"
    • "Blood glucose"

This material is adapted from Charleston Southern University's Rivers Library "Where to Start Your Research" Guide under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Mind Maps are a great tool for effectively accessing natural creativity, harnessing that creativity for effective problem solving, and for helping to plan and organize essays.  Mind Maps work in the same way as your brain, meaning that when you have a thought – this could be an image, a word or a feeling – this instantly sparks off hundreds of connecting ideas.  The main branches of the Mind Map can be used in a variety of ways to support thinking about core concepts.  By creating a Mind Map to plan your essay, you generate more ideas quickly and, with the radial structure, you can quickly see the connecting topics, main paragraphs and structure.  Mind Maps are just a way of representing this process on paper, so start Mind Mapping and you’ll find countless ideas flooding out.  When you start Mind Mapping, students should note down any ideas that they have – no matter how crazy or random!  This is where the best creative plans come from – so don’t be afraid to be off the wall…

Some possible ways the main branches can be used are as follows:

  • Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats:  This is a well known technique for getting ‘out of the box’ of habitual thinking.  It originated as a way of helping groups to get away from the conflict that characterizes many meetings by adopting different thinking modes, which de Bono categorized as: logic, emotion, caution, optimism, creativity, and control.
  • Edward de Bono’s PNI approach:  This is a simple way of approaching problems by analyzing points on the basis of whether something is ‘Positive’, ‘Negative’ or ‘Interesting’.
  • Questions: Making the main branches questions can often act as an impetus for effective problem solving. The usual questions are Who, What, Where, Why, When and How.
  • Checklists: One way of using checklists would be to take an item and use the checklist to stimulate thinking about alternative uses. Typical branches may be: Magnify, Minify, Substitute, Rearrange, Reverse and Combine.
  • Forced Relationships and Analogies: One of the main challenges for anyone wishing to be creative is in provoking their thinking away from existing paradigms.  There are a number of ways of doing this, such as thinking of similarities to or differences from some of the more or less random words.  The choice of words is arbitrary since the key here is to provoking thinking.  Typical words (branches) may be: Animals, Transport, People, Textures, Shapes, etc.
  • Attribute Lists:  Again, primarily used to provoke thinking by looking at existing problems, objects or situations in new ways.  The way this technique works is simply to list different attributes and then use the natural process of the Mind Map to think divergently.

Peer Review

Not sure what peer review is? It's not a tough concept -- it just means that the article was written by and reviewed/fact-checked by experts/scholars and meets certain standards with regards to a publication or a discipline.

Here are some examples of types of scholarly articles that you may come across in your research:

Qualitative Study Quantitative Study Literature Review Meta-Analysis
Sample groups too small to analyze using statistics Produces numerical results / statistical analysis An article that provides an overview of important research on a particular topic Reviews several quantitative studies analyzing them looking for patterns/ trends within data
Case Study May involve experimentation Considered scholarly but not primary research / no new study is conducted Uses existing studies
Interview Survey / questionnaire   Usually considered another form of quantitative research
Focus Groups      

Empirical Studies

Reports of empirical studies are articles summarizing original research. They typically follow the following format:

Empirical Studies Format:

  • Title: is a concise description of the empirical research report. It should convey appropriate information about the study or studies presented in the report.
  • Abstract: provides a brief but comprehensive summary of the research.
  • Introduction: sets the research in a context (it provides the "big picture"), provides a review of related research, and develops the hypotheses for the research.  The introduction describes the problem, develops the theoretical and empirical background for the research questions, and elaborates a rationale for all parts of the study.
  • Method (or methodology): is a description of how the research was conducted, including who the participants were, the design of the study, what the participants did, and what measures were used. The detail is important so the reader can determine the appropriateness of the method for answering the scientific questions. It is also important for another researcher to be able to replicate the study. This section reads a lot like a recipe.
  • Results: describes the outcomes of the measures of the study. This section contains the summaries and analyses of the measures obtained in the study. This is where the "answers" to the research questions will be found.
  • Discussion: contains the interpretations and implications of the study. There may be more that one study in the report; in this case, there are usually separate Method and Results sections for each study followed by a General Discussion that ties all the research together.
  • References: contains information about all the articles and books that were cited in the report. The reference citations are used to support statements made in the article.

Finding Peer Reviewed and/or Empirical Studies in Databases:

In databases commonly used in CSD research like CINAHL, ERIC, PsycINFO, and others, you can typically find "limiters" in the Advanced Search functions that will allow you to search specifically by document type, methodology, population, data used, type of clinical query, and other special interests that will help you to focus your research.