It is important to recognize if your topic is appropriate in it's scope. If it is too broad, you will not be able to write a good paper because the information you are finding is enough to fill a book. If the topic is too narrow, you will struggle to find anything that is relevant. Both of these situations can be very stressful, so doing enough background research to determine if your topic is off to a good start will help!
Example that is too broad: North American Tree Squirrels.
Example that is too narrow: Squirrel response to student presence on the community college campus in North America.
Example that is just right: Different responses to human presence among rural and urban squirrels.
There is a tendency for people to type general questions into a database and hope for the best. While this barely works for Google, it definitely doesn't work well with the databases. By identifying the more narrow parts of your initial question you will get more meaningful results. Here is an example of how you can break down a general question into it's narrower concepts.
I am not a bee expert, so there are multiple places I can look for answers. If I choose AccessScience (because bees are related to a science) and type in bees disappearing, I find this article titled "Colony Collapse Disorder"
From this article, I can answer some questions I didn't even know I had.
| General Term | What I didn't know before | Better Choice |
|---|---|---|
| bees | What kind of bees? | adult honeybees |
| disappearing | Is there a term scientists use for this? | "Colony Collapse Disorder" |
| why | What explanations exist? | pesticides |
From here I can adjust my original question about why bees are disappearing (the result) to identify a cause and use more narrow language.
