developing a working thesis
Now that you've narrowed down your topic, you are ready to develop your thesis and focus your topic for research. The easiest way to go about this is to first phrase your topic as a question. Some questions you may want to ask are:
- Who is involved?
- Are there any comparisons to be made?
- What are the pro's and con's surrounding the issue at hand?
Think back to your purpose. Is there anything in particular that you need to accomplish? Do you need to think about the information you will be retrieving in a specific way? Are you looking to make comments, evaluate, compare and contrast, discuss, explain, outline, review, summarize, or illustrate? Asking these kinds of questions will give you grounds on which you can evaluate the information you find, and accept or reject it based on whether it satisfies your information need.
Also, try to keep your question specific. If your question is too broad, you may find that you become tempted to stash away material that you believe may be useful, but are not entirely sure of how. A question like "What is attention?" is way too broad, and will likely leave you extremely frustrated as you try to figure out what to, and what not to include. Once you have established what information you need, you should then consider what kind of information you need, as well as where to find it.
