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COE 265 | Sexuality & Desire

Professor Amy Hoffman

Refine

Be prepared to be flexible with your research question or thesis.

If you find too much information, your topic/thesis may be too broad.  You will need to narrow or focus it.

If you are finding very little information, your topic/thesis may be too specific, narrow, specialized or current.  With a topic that's too narrow, it may be difficult to find enough information to write your paper.  

Narrow

Narrow Your Topic
Time

 

Modern time period vs. historical perspective

 

 

Location

 

Town, city, state, nation, country

 

Population

 

 Age, race, gender, nationality, ethnic group, occupation 
Event or Aspect

 

Focus on an event within your topic: sexual discrimination prevention.  Or consider a particular aspect: historical, sociological, psychological

 

Person or Group

 

Related to your topic:  military, adolescents, poor, whites, Latinos, African Americans

Broaden

Broaden Your Topic
Generalize    

 

Generalize your topic, or explore related topics or issues.  If your topic is the sexual orientation discrimination of military personnel in Lebanon county, PA, consider expanding that slightly to explore the sexual orientation discrimination of military personnel.

 

 

Currency  

 

 

If your topic has just occurred, there won't be books or journal articles available just yet.  Choose an alternative topic that is not so recent.

 

 

Database Choice 

 

Use other databases in your subject area, or consider checking databases in a related subject area (which might cover the topic from a different perspective, for example, education, psychology, criminal justice).
Synonyms

 

Use a thesaurus to find synonyms for your topic. When reading background information, note how your topic is expressed in these materials. When you find citations in an article database, note the terms being used by experts in the field.

 

 

Related

 

Explore related issues--what are some solutions to sexual orientation discrimination?

 

Expand    Remove

 

Expand or remove: location, time period, aspect, event, population, person/group.