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Urban Sociology (SOC 234): Develop Your Topic

This guide is to help students in SOC 234 courses learn about key research resources and strategies in urban sociology.

Important Note

*Students in Prof. Molla da Silva's Spring 2023 course do not need to create a topic from scratch as shown below. She has provided you with sample topics for your final paper.*

Step 1: Select a Topic

When you're given a research assignment by a professor the first thing you'll need to do is to select a topic! The number one advice I was ever given was to pick something that I was excited to learn about when I woke up in the morning. In other words- try to pick something that truly interests you! 
 

Here are some other suggestions for deciding on a topic:

  • Look at general sources for background information, such as your textbook or encyclopedias 
  • Skim through your syllabus 
  • Talk to your professor, classmates, or librarians for ideas 
  • Look up a sociology journal via the library website and see what's being published

Step 2: Developing and Narrowing a Research Topic

Once you've decided on a broad topic, you'll want to begin brainstorming and narrowing your topic. If your topic is too broad it can be difficult to focus on researching and writing the paper (e.g. you may be given thousands of sources when you do an information search!)

One strategy that works for me is to think about what I know about a topic and what I don't know. What do I want to learn more about? How can my project help to develop knowledge about this subject area?

Some people also like to create a concept map to help them develop their topic. See below for a map created by Kelly Baumgarth starting with the broad topic of technology. 

Concept map for technology

Another idea for narrowing your idea is to take your broad topic and ask yourself: Who? What? When? Where? You can use the example below to practice with your own topic: 

Searching Databases with Keywords

Picking a Topic is Research!

Four Steps to Narrow Your Research Topic

Step 3: Creating Keywords

After you have identified a research topic, you can begin thinking of keywords (main ideas). Library resources are different from the natural language search abilities of Google - in order to find what you're looking for you won't write a question or a sentence. 

You'll use these keywords to search for information in places like the library catalog, OneSearch, or databases (online collections of newspapers, journals, book chapters, and more).

Let's say that you're writing a paper using the below research question: 

Should the United States government make it more difficult for individuals to buy a gun if they have a documented mental illness?

The main ideas (keywords) are underlined: United States government, gun, mental illness

You can then take these three keywords and type them into OneSearch and click the "search" button to begin looking for information. See below for a screenshot example.

Tip! It's helpful to brainstorm synonyms (similar words) of your keywords, because people may use different words for the same concept (e.g. adolescents, teenagers, young adults).