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Background: Building on Activity 1.6, it’s time to select a topic for your own research and begin to shape your research questions. So how to select a topic? In Activity 1.6, you started with your interests but also tried to be realistic about your resources. You needed to acknowledge that, as a student, your resources are pretty slim. The goal of an undergraduate or master’s-level thesis (even a dissertation) is to finish. Always remember that. What makes your project research is that you connect it to a purpose—theoretically and/or in application—and that you put in the hard work to plug in your small project to the bigger questions and paradigms of social science.

This activity will help you select a feasible research question, suitable for a senior-level undergraduate or master’s-level project, and identify potential merits of a research topic for other scholars (advancing the discipline) and for the public good (advancing societal benefit).