CRJ/SOC/WGST 476/576: Inside-Out Prison Exchange

A strong research topic/question covers a well-defined and well-studied area of research and is:

• focused
• clear and simple
• manageable
• consistent with assignment requirements
• of interest to you

Step 1: Choose an issue or problem that interests you

Step 2: Do some exploratory research to:

• identify the broader patterns and issues of the problem
• identify the impacts of this problem and why they're important

Step 3: Use the information from your exploratory research to:

• Identify a specific problem and build your arguments for why it's important
• build a policy that's a potential solution to this problem

Step 4: Do more in-depth research to build your proposed policy and build your arguments for why this problem is important and impactful

Write about what interests you: Professors want students to write about issues that they care about. If you're interested in the issues you've selected, it will be more fun for you to write your Inequality Paper, and probably more fun for Dr. Draus to read it, too.

Ask Dr. Draus for feedback on your problem and proposed legal reform

Once you've picked a research topic for your paper, it isn't set in stone. It's just an idea that you will test and develop through exploratory research. This exploratory research may guide you into modifying your original idea for a research topic. Watch this video for more info: