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Research Tutorial

Activity: Avoid Being too Narrow

Be careful about getting too specific with your research question. Not every question you come up with will be searchable.

Example of a topic that is too narrow: How can individual therapy compared to group therapy help treat senior level male police officers suffering from PTSD?

How do you know if a topic is too narrow? 

A topic that is too narrow will not have enough research.

If you get too few results when you start researching, go back to Step 2 and adjust your topic.

The bottom line is, you are working toward a balanced research question that is specific enough to guide your research, but not so restrictive that you cannot find enough research on the topic.

Now it’s your turn to practice thinking about balanced research questions.

Instructions: 

  • For each of the 3 pages below, choose which topic/question is too broad, too narrow, and just right.
  • Use the Arrow button under each question to move to the next question
  • Use the Check button to check your answer

When you have completed the activity, you can move to Module 3: Types of Sources.

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Unless otherwise noted, this guide is licensed under a CC BY-SA 4.0 (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License).