Narrowing a research topic
People conduct research for many reasons; some of these reasons can be to find additional information on topics they are interested in. They can conduct searches to find information for family and friends or they can conduct research for more formal reasons. Conducting research typically starts with an idea that can come from an assignment, ideas or topics you are interested in learning more about, or the subject covered in a course you are taking.
Most often these ideas can be very broad and unrealistic in scope for conducting research. These types of ideas or topics will return numerous search results that can be overwhelming. To help you start to narrow your topic and give your research topic or idea direction you should use the following familiar words who, what, where, when, why, and how to narrow your topic or idea.
Here is how it works:
You are taking a course on “Managing a Small Team” and have been asked to write a paper about “Small team dynamics”
If we take this topic and enter “small team dynamics” into a few search engines let's see what happens. You may have noticed that I did not use capitals in my search string. Some search engines will only find words that start with a capital for those words.
We will enter in “small team dynamics” into each of the following search engines Google, Bing (default search engine for Microsoft Explorer), and Yahoo.
| Search Engine | Search Results |
|---|---|
| 1,710,000 results | |
| Bing | 5,990,000 results |
| Yahoo | 56,200,000 results |
As you can see the number of search results is unrealistic and not manageable. So we need to use the familiar words to narrow out research topic and give it direction.
You do not have to apply all of the familiar words but there are a few that will help your research take direction and focus your research.
Try it yourself!
Open up your favourite internet browser and use the search function to see how many results you fine for “small team dynamics”.
Add capital letters to the words and see if your results change.
Using the familiar words:
We will start with “Small team dynamics” and use the familiar word of “Where?”
Where can be narrowed geographically, regionally, locally or by industry
For the purpose of this example we will look at regionally and change our focus to
Small team dynamics in rural areas
Our new search results for this search string have been narrowed to the following.
| Search Engine | Search Results |
|---|---|
| 149,00 results | |
| Bing | 828,000 results |
| Yahoo | 6,190,000 results |
Next we will look at “What”
What aspect of small team dynamics in rural areas are we interested in?
Examples are:
Effectiveness, conflict, productivity, innovation, interactions... You get the idea.
You need to determine what aspect of small team dynamics you are interested in. Once you have determined this then you add it to the topic.
We will use effectiveness.
Effectiveness of small team dynamics in rural areas
Our new search results for this search string have been narrowed to the following.
| Search Engine | Search Results |
|---|---|
| 146,00 results | |
| Bing | 320,000 results |
| Yahoo | 2,110,000 results |
Now we will evaluate the results based on how we have narrowed our topic. Let’s take a look at the Google results.
Example
Figure 1. Search results for narrowed topic
We can continue to narrow our topic or we can begin to search through the returned results as a way of focusing our research. As we can see from Figure 1 the search results still cover a large area of topics, many of which are outside of what we want to focus on.
To help us focus our research and improve the quality of the search returns we need to build a list of search words that we can use. These search words can be used to narrow or widen the search results depending on what you are looking for.
Try it yourself!
Open up your favourite internet browser and use the search function to see how many results you fine for the narrowed research topic “effectiveness of small team dynamics in rural areas”.
As you look through some of the result descriptions begin a list of key words you could use to focus your search results.
The next section of this Basic Research Skills will take you through the process of developing your search words to help you find the information you need to answer your questions.
Even if you are just looking for answers to questions you have, using this process will help you find your answers move effectively and efficiently.