Researched Writing: Choosing a Topic
Thomas Fox
And there is a really bad example of research papers out there, where somebody picks a topic that everybody's pretty tired of hearing about and that collects articles, and says something that nobody's surprised about hearing. And I would really counsel you away from doing that kind of paper, because it's boring to read, too. No matter how well you do it. That's why, that's why a lot of teachers really don't want you to do gun control or abortion, because, the opinions are all out there, it's not real research, you're not discovering new things, you're not making a new point. So what I do, when I teach research, is I first really try to work with student's interest, with your interest.

Kimberly Wise
I would prefer that they look within themselves and find something that they've always wanted to learn about… I have one student now whose little brother is autistic, and so she's doing a research paper on the signs of autism. And her research paper's gonna focus on how the family… most people who are autistic go undiagnosed or misdiagnosed, and focus on the signs of autistic children. I have another student who has been diagnosed as a manic-depressive, and so she's going to discuss the behavior patterns of a manic-depressive person. So I would say that most of my students usually choose topics that they have always wanted to explore and that's pretty much how I approach it.