Stating a Topic for Your Seminar Paper: Some Tips

• Don't be too broad. (Are there hundreds of articles readily available for your topic? Could someone write a book on this topic?)
• Don't be too narrow. (Does PsycLit come up with too few articles, even when you try various search strategies? Are there so few articles available that you would need to get articles from remote libraries?)
• Don't be too old-fashioned. (Are most of the articles on this topic published many years ago?)
• Don't ignore everything you learned before. (Are the articles so remote from your previous course work that you can’t understand them?)
• Don't be afraid to be creative. (Can you only report what you’ve read, without doing any critical thinking about it?)
• Do follow your own energies. (Are you excited by reading lots and lots about this topic? Do you have questions that you hope you’ll learn to answer?)
• Do be open to new approaches to the topic. (Would you be willing to read articles in journals outside of your field, if they are relevant?)
• Do consider what your knowledge about this topic will do for you after this course. (Will this topic be relevant to your future career or graduate studies?)
• Do expect to change the focus or scope of your paper as your literature review progresses. (If, as often happens, there is more information than you expected on one subtopic within your paper, which subtopic would you most like to expand? Why not start with that one?)
• Do see this topic as an opportunity to critically comment on the field as it exists today. (You do want to engage the material and not simply report it; right?)