Research Paper Topic Ideas

Many high school teachers, especially those in the humanities, require their students to write a research paper.  It’s pretty good practice too, since the research paper is a common element in most college classes.  Educators like the research paper since it forces students to demonstrate their research and organizational abilities while also showing that they can right a comprehensive, understandable essay.  Though many teachers or professors will recommend topics for research papers or at least limit the area of study the research paper must be based in, often teachers who are teaching their students to do a research paper for the first time will allow their students to write the research paper on a topic of the students’ choosing. 

Leaving the field completely open can make it really hard for some students to come up with research paper topic ideas.  Due to the difficulty for students to come up with topics out of thin air, some teachers and professors will offer up a few research paper topic ideas while still allowing students to write the paper on a topic of their choosing.  So, if you want to write a research paper and get a good grade while not completely dreading writing your paper, what should you write about?

Though research paper topic ideas vary quite a bit from student to student, one of the best rules of thumb is to write about a topic you’re interested in.  Writing the essay will be more arduous and more difficult if you can’t stand the topic you choose (especially since it may be arduous and difficult even if you do like the topic).  Educators are usually pretty lenient in this respect, and if they’re leaving the topic completely open they’ll be just as satisfied with a good essay on the best baseball pitching style as they would be with a good essay about cold fusion.  So, pick a topic you like, or at least a topic you would enjoy learning about, and it will make the process much more interesting.

Good research paper topic ideas should not only be interesting, they should also be relatively easy to research.  If you’re wondering how easy a topic will be to research, do a Google Scholar search (Google Scholar, www.google.com/scholar, is a Google search which only searches scholarly articles, indispensable for a research project) for your topic.  If no scholarly articles have been written on the topic it’s going to be tough, since articles published in scholarly journals are some of your best sources.  As a general rule of thumb, the more information out there about your topic, especially if it’s scholarly research, the better.