Research Plan

University of Phoenix Material

Research Plan

As part of your research plan, you must first draft a research question for your research paper that will guide the rest of your writing.

A research question, which is more specific and focused than a general topic, is the question that your research paper will be answering. For example, if your general area of interest is Social Security, a possible research question might ask “How could low-income families save more money if the United States had a reformed Social Security plan that included personal retirement accounts?”

As you develop a research question, keep in mind that you will need to research sources to support your topic. Do not pick a one-sided question that will limit your research. Instead, develop a research question that lends itself to further exploration and debate—a question you genuinely want to know the answer to. Try to pick a research question that is not too broad (covering too much) or too narrow (covering too little). It should be broad enough to be discussed in a short research paper.

|What is your general topic or area of interest? |My topic of interest is war. |

|What is it about your general topic of interest that interests |The topic of war interests me because I like to study history. It|

|you? |also interesting to see how humanity perceives war in opposing |

| |sides of the conflicts. Finally it interests me because it is a |

| |broad subject that can be broken down into specific wars, or |

| |battles within a war. |

|What questions do you have about the topic that you would like to|What was the turning point in WWII?...