1.3 Define your topic

Defining your topic is very important, because it gives direction to your research. It also prevents you from straying away from what you actually want to research while searching for information.

Defining your topic

• What are the boundaries of your topic, what will you and what won't you explore further?
• Who are the important parties involved, target group(s) or stakeholders within your research topic?
• In which places is your topic relevant?
• Is there a specific (time) period that is relevant to your research topic?
• In which languages has your topic been written about?
• What does your teacher think about the topic?

Once you have sufficiently defined your topic, you can formulate a main research question. In the next section, you will learn how to formulate good main and sub-research questions.

Defining your topic: example

In this example, we show you how to define a research topic:

• Subject (what, where and when):

Obesity in the Netherlands in the 21st century.

• This research topic is still too broad. Choose a subtopic and make the time period more specific:

The influence of food availability on obesity over the past 10 years.

• It can be even more specific in terms of topic and location:

The influence of food availability in Dutch school canteens on obesity over the past 10 years.

• A final specification of the research topic ultimately yields the following question:

What is the influence of food availability in Dutch school canteens on obesity among university of applied sciences students over the past 10 years?