CA 110: Public Speaking: Choosing a Topic

You can create a research question, and explore a research topic, by answering structured questions related to an initial interesting topic. These questions help you choose a scope for your research question and will help you if you need to adjust your research question in the future. 

Questions are: 

• Who? What populations or groups are involved in this concept? Are these people, plants, or animals? Who is affected by this phenomena? 
• Where? Where does this event happen? Is there a specific physical environment? Do you want to limit your research to a state or a type of institution?
• When? When does this event happen? Do you want to study a specific time frame? Do you have a decade you want to focus on? Is there a season or a time of day?
• Why? Why does this event happen? What is an inciting factor? What effect or result do you want to focus on? Why does this topic matter to the population you are studying?
• How? How does your topic happen? What factor do you want to focus on? How does your topic affect the world? 

A mind map is a visual way of building a topic into a research question.

A topic is the basic idea that interests you. This is the idea that sparks your research. A topic could be "barbeque," "The Cold War," "flightless birds," or "the common cold." If you are having trouble choosing a topic, review the class syllabus or canvas modules. Find a topic covered in class that you can see yourself spending time with.

A research question is the focus of your research project. It is the thesis of your paper or the point of your presentation.

Work with us through the mind map steps to build your own research question.

To create a mind map, you will need to be able to write or type text, and the text must also be rearrangeable.

1. Start with an idea like "Kitchen Design". Place your idea in the center.
2. 
3. Surround your central idea with related concepts. I wrote all the kinds of kitchens I could think of. I could have also chosen to list appliances or design themes instead.
4. 
5. Out of the kitchen-types, I was most drawn to "Hospital Kitchens". I then added concepts around "Hospital Kitchens". These concepts can be moved to also combined with other ideas.
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7. I also thought more about "Home Kitchens". I combined, "Kitchen Safety", "Consumer Preferences", and "Advertisements."
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9. My final version of my mind map example is very small. Don't worry if you have many more ideas and need more time rearranging your cards and planning.

I have identified two different starting research questions by combining my concepts:

1. How could hospital managers design hospital kitchens to be safer for employees?
2. How do kitchen appliance manufacturers advertise the safety of their products to consumers?

Your scope is how you limit your topic and research.

Giving a speech over WWII entirely would be impossible.

You can add a scope to your topic to limit it to something more possible. You don't have to limit your scope in all these ways. These are just filters you can apply to your scope like you apply filters to your online shopping results.

There are 2 major ways to change the scope of your topic.

1. You ask yourself the Structured Questions again. Pay attention to what specifics you want to focus on.
2. You use the scoping table. Add major nouns to the scoping table. 

Example: Women in WWII European front. (This is too large to cover in a short speech.)

You can always do some of your research, see what resources are out there, then shift your scope to fit the resources available. Sometimes, you can limit your scope too narrowly, and you find out that no one has done that research yet!