Before you develop your research topic or question, you'll need to do some background research first.
Some good places to find background information:
When it comes to helping researchers make sense of the major issues of the day, SIRS Researcher® makes the grade by offering only the very best article selections from more than 1,600 sources—exploring social, scientific, health, historic, economic, political, and global issues.
Contains many core topics, each with an overview (objective background / description), point (argument), and counterpoint (opposing argument).
Now that you've done some background research, it's time to narrow your topic. Remember: the shorter your final paper, the narrower your topic needs to be. Here are some suggestions for narrowing and defining your topic:
Describe and develop your topic in some detail. Try filling in the blanks in the following sentence, as much as you can:
I want to research ____(what/who)____
and ____(what/who)____
in ____(where)____
during ____(when)____
because ____(why)____.
