Now that you've done some background research, it's time to narrow your topic. Remember: the shorter your final paper, the narrower your topic needs to be. Here are some suggestions for narrowing and defining your topic:

• Is there a specific subset of the topic you can focus on?
• Is there a cause and effect relationship you can explore?
• Is there an unanswered question on the subject?
• Can you focus on a specific time period or group of people?

Describe and develop your topic in some detail. Try filling in the blanks in the following sentence, as much as you can:

I want to research ____(what/who)____

and ____(what/who)____

in ____(where)____

during ____(when)____

because ____(why)____.

Another option for developing or exploring topics is to use Gale Opposing Viewpoint's Browse Issues option. The database provides almost 500 topic pages that explore a range of issues. You can find this option by going to Gale Opposing Viewpoints and scrolling down on the home page.

If you select one of the subjects, a larger list of topics are displayed. For example the image below shows part of the list of topics available within the Business and Economics subject

Once you select a topic the page shows an overview of the topic, which you can use to explore the topic. 

It then has different types of sources:

a. Featured Viewpoints: quick essays highlighting differing opinions within the topic, handpicked by Gale

b. Viewpoints: more opinions on the topic

c. References: Overviews of the topic

d. Statistics and Infographics: Graphs, charts and data to support your research

e. Multimedia: Pictures, videos, podcasts, and audio

f. News and Magazines: Recent coverage and in-depth analysis

g. Academic Journals: Scholarly articles written by scholars in the field, often peer-reviewed