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“The journey of a thousand miles begins in a single step,” said Confucius. Indeed, starting any research project may be a daunting task and may determine the success of the journey.
The difference between you staring down an empty screen while piling up empty junk food wrappers and you researching and writing with purpose lies in that first step: your focus. Sure, anyone can find a topic to research, but turning that topic into academic discourse is another task, indeed.
Consider the following:
- Research is a problem worth solving. Once you discover an area of interest, you need to find in that interest a question that you think is worth asking.
- A narrowed topic will allow you to more easily recognize gaps and inconsistencies which can lead to a solid research question. Your topic is probably too broad to sustain focused research if you can state it in fewer than 5 words. To fix this, add modifying words/phrases, consider different categories of information. For example, do you want to focus on all areas of advertising or just on television commercials aimed at children under the age of 5?
Most people stop with a narrowed topic, but keep reading if you want your research to matter…
- You should do more than just inform – you should question and answer. The starting point for good research is what you do not know or understand but feel like you must. This saves you from the regurgitated, informational paper that doesn’t really say anything.
- After you have your research question, you should motivate it. Ask “so what”? What is the larger problem that your research question attepts to solve? If you can answer this, you have transformed your project into one that will interest others.
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