A research paper is an academic writing that provides an analysis of a subject based on your research and interpretation. It is basically an expanded essay. Writing a research paper requires thorough research. You need to provide your sources of evidence or data and interpret the data in a way that supports your argument. Before starting your research paper, you must first formulate a topic. To come up with good research paper topics you need to know the types of topics first which are:
- Neutral topics
Also known as descriptive topics, they give the details of the research paper without revealing the findings
- Declarative topics
They sell out the content and verdict of the paper before one reads the paper
- Interrogative
Are more like questions which arouse the reader’s curiosity
When coming up with a topic, you must ensure that the topics formulated;
- Covers that scope of the assignment
- Is relevant to the assignment
- Is able to arouse a reader’s curiosity
Depending on your field of study, you then need to come up with topics relevant to your academic discipline so if for example you are a psychology student, you need to come up with psychology research topics relevant to the subject area such as social psychology. Once you identify the subject area you want to write your research on, you then decide the type of topic you want to formulate. This will however depend on the nature of the assignment. Your topic should be specific and straight to the point.
Rules of writing apply to the topic so depending on the format of the paper; you should always have it at the back of your mind that your formatting style matters a lot. If your paper is an APA essay format or MLA essay format, you should ensure you apply the titling rules.
Your topic must be written in the simplest terms possible. You should avoid short hand and taxonomical terms when writing your topic as not everyone who eventually reads it will understand the message you were trying to convey.
Finally your research topic should be relevant to the contents of the research paper. It can either be neutral, declarative or interrogative as alluded to earlier. Regardless of the type of topic chosen, it should always be relevant to the content. A captivating topic may give you extra marks in your paper leading to a good grade so you should never disregard the topic.
Examples of Research paper topics
In this example we will use Sociology. Sociology is the study of human behavior in their different groups or societies. When formulating Sociology research topics, you need to narrow down to the area you want to write your research about since sociology is a wide discipline. For example you want to formulate a topic on crime. You then have to decide the type of topic you want. So this could either be Neutral such as ‘The Sociology of Crime” or Interrogative such as “What do you understand by white collar crimes”? or declarative such as “An analysis of police violence against criminals”.
With this few pointers, you should be able to formulate your own research paper topic with ease .