Transcript: Christine
Chapter 1: Narrowing a Research Topic
The process of narrowing down a research topic has always been rather difficult for me. I would think of a vague and broad research question and find myself drowning in sources and things I wanted to include in my piece. I have had a rather recent experience with this in the comparative studies course that I am currently taking this semester.
This class is based on readings and movies to further understand injustices in the world. There was a large unit on the sexualization of women in every form of media. I found that to be an interesting topic and decided I wanted to write my final paper on that. Due to the knowledge I have learned from this course, I thought it would be wise to start a research log. Throughout the process of finding research that matched my topic, I discovered that my topic was far too broad, I had too many routes to take and the information was utterly overwhelming. Each topic I broke my research down into could have been its research question. I noticed this throughout my completion of the research log and I was stressed out because I did not know what to do. I then looked at all my topics and decided to change my research question to a smaller umbrella of my research.
My new topic focused on the effect of sexualizing women in the media on young women’s development. This decision changed the entire process of my research and I created a new research log with this topic. Instead, I separated my ideas into understanding the abundance of women who suffered from eating disorders, hypersexualization, and depression from this issue of oversexualizing women. I discovered groundbreaking statistics and many case studies that relate directly back to my research question.
The narrowing of my topic from a general to a more specific idea led me to a plethora of fantastic research that broke down and showed the problem with this issue and the effect that it has on developing and growing young women. Not only did I learn more about something I found remarkably interesting, but I was able to create enhanced and more focused research when I narrowed down my topic.
I just submitted my final project proposal and received supportive feedback from my professor. In the comments, she expressed joy that I took the initiative to break down and narrow my research topic further and the ability to hone in on a simpler idea.
I feel that narrowing a research topic down is vital when attacking a college-level piece because it takes away the overwhelming feeling of having too many sources and not a concrete idea that you want to stick to. My experience with college research has only begun this semester. However, I feel I learned a groundbreaking amount of information throughout my experiences, and narrowing down a research topic makes research way more approachable and allows students to become more successful.
