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CA 500: Foundations of Graduate Study in Communication: Choosing a Topic

This guide was designed to support CA 500 at USA.

What is a Research Question?

A research question sets the topic and scope for what you will investigate. A research question is a declaration of what resources will and will not be appropriate for your research. It is what your research proposal should be designed to investigate or answer.

And example of a research question is:

How do different demographics respond to influencer marketing?
How does the authenticity of an influencer affect consumer trust and engagement?
How does the type of content (video, image, text) shared by influencers affect consumer engagement?

Research questions: 

  • Cannot be answered with "yes" or "no".
  • Can be answered with proof from your research
  • Specify what you are going to write about: 
    • What population/demographic? (age, race, gender...)
    • What type of communication? (social media, text, television...)
    • What kind of goal? (consumer trust, consumer engagement, spending, marketing)

You may need to adjust the scope of your research question. The scope of your research question is the boundary of what you will research and what you will not research.

For the example: How do different demographics respond to influencer marketing?

  • You can broaden the scope by changing influencer marketing to digital marketing.
  • You can narrow the scope by changing different demographics to African American teenagers.
  • You can also narrow the scope by adding new specifics to your question: How do different demographics respond to influencer marketing on Instagram?

As you research, please adjust the scope of your research question to fit what research is available and to keep your research paper at a reasonable size.

Structured Questions

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? 

Mind Map or Free Association

You can build a research topic through a mind map. You can use pieces or paper or textboxes to arrange your ideas.

  1. Place your initial idea in the center of your workspace. 
  2. Write out every related concept separately. 
  3. Put similar ideas together.
  4. Use the grouped ideas to create a question. 

In free association, you allow your thoughts to flow freely without interruption. You later review your thoughts and select what is useful/interesting.

  • Speaking and listening. Use a recording device like your phone. Talk freely about your topic to yourself or to another person. Later, review your recording and create a research question out of your chat.
  • Writing and reading. Write freely without any revisions or editing. Later, review your text and create a research question.