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One of the hardest parts of beginning your research is to mold a topic into a focused 

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research question. 

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Usually we have a specific question we are trying to answer which is the reason behind why 

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we need to find information in the first place. 

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This could be for a school assignment, but it 

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could also be a question that comes up in the workplace.  

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We might have to do a presentation or write a paper to explain the answer, 

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but in order to answer this need we first need to formulate a focused question.



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Let’s watch how a broad topic can morph into a 

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focused specific question through a little bit of thought and hard work.

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Let's look at anabolic steroids. If I needed to find information about anabolic steroids

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I could write a thousand page paper about this, it is way too broad. How can we make this more specific?

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What about looking at the long term health issues of anabolic steroids?

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That is a little bit more specific but it doesn't really answer a question yet.

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Let's keep going!

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What about the long term health issues of professional athletes that use anabolic steroids?

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That sounds pretty good, but I think we can get it even further focused.

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How does the long term health of players who used steroids compare with those who did not?

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We have got a lot of pieces of information here.

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So, if I was going to do a research paper on this, we could look at long term health

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of professional players, steroids and try to find information that compares the players that used and those that did not.

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That is a pretty focused research question, could write maybe a 10 or 20 page paper.

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Do you see that morphs from very broad to now more specific.

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Finally, ask yourself is my question open ended? If your question can be answered

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by yes or no, that is not a good question. What would be the point of writing the paper or doing the presentation if you can say yes or no.

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Does your question address an issue or solve a problem?

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Try to pick a topic you can take a stand on, that will make your time researching the question and writing that paper even more enjoyable.

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Finally let's take a quick look at some other examples.

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Notice the topics on the left and how they morph into research questions to the right.

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It goes from topic, to subtopic, issue or problem and then the focused research question.

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If you still need help after this module, always contact a reference librarian.