Is your research question too broad or too narrow?
Make sure your question isn’t too broad or too narrow. If you notice any of the following while searching for articles and books, you may need to refine your topic.
| Too Broad? | Too Narrow? |
| can be summed up in one or two words | difficult to figure out where you would locate information (e.g., data may not exist) |
| difficult to come up with a thesis statement | hard to research because there is so little current information (e.g., you only found 3 or 4 results in your searching) |
| hard to research because there is so much information (e.g., you found 1000s of hits in your searching) |
Examples of topics that might be too broad:
"Is Medical Nutrition Therapy effective?"
Strategies to improve a too broad topic:
Apply journalistic question words (Who | What | Where |When | Why | How) to your topic to narrow your focus. (e.g., “Bicycle Helmets” could be narrowed to “What is the impact of wearing bicycle helmets on patients in the United States younger than 18 years old on emergency room admittance statistics” = who, where)
Examples of topics that might be too narrow:
"Is a one-shot motivational interviewing session effective for reducing after-school soda consumption among teens?"
Strategies to improve a too narrow topic:
Remove one aspect of your topic