📚 Research Papers & Citations · Lesson 1 of 7

From topic to research question

Narrow a broad topic into a question you can answer.

Topic → focus → question

Broad topic	Social media
Narrower	Social media and teen sleep
Focused	Nighttime phone use and sleep in US high school students
Research question	How does nighttime phone use affect sleep duration in US high school students?

A good research question is…

Focused	Can be answered in the length you have
Arguable	Not just a yes/no fact you can look up
Researchable	There are scholarly sources on it
Interesting	To you — you’ll spend weeks with it

Narrowing tools

Add a population (college students, nurses), a place (the US, rural Ohio), a time (since 2010) or a specific angle (economic effects, policy). Pre-search: spend 20 minutes in the library database to see whether sources exist before you commit.

Tip

💡 Start with a question, not an answer. If you already “know” the conclusion, you’ll only look for sources that agree.

✏️ Practice: your turn

Write down a broad topic you care about
Narrow it three times: population, place, angle
Turn it into a how/why research question
Do a 20-minute pre-search in your library database

✏️ APA & MLA citation generator with a saved works-cited list

🧠 Quick quiz

Answer all 4 questions correctly to mark this lesson as done.

1. Which is a research question?

2. A question that is too broad…

3. What is a pre-search?

4. Why start with a question rather than an answer?

0 of 4 correct

❓ From topic to research question