Research Paper-Topic Consideration

Exploring Your Research Topic

If you are feeling confident in your choice of a particular topic, you may only need to write about that topic. If you are unsure, explore two or three topics by responding to the following questions:
-Plastic Surgery

Part I: Exploration
1. Identify the issue or problem that you plan to focus on in your research project.
-What are the pros and cons of plastic surgery?
2. What is your personal connection to and interest in this topic?
-I had a friend who decided to go behind her parents and get plastic surgery done. Afterwards she suffered from severe problems from the surgery.
3. What opinions do you already hold about this topic?
-I find this topic to be very important for people to read about before going to have plastic surgery done to fix things that don’t need to be altered. There is true meaning behind plastic surgery and it is not to perfect your body.
4. What knowledge do you already have about this topic?
-I know a bit about the topic not to much, I would like to get more in depth with writing this research paper.
5. What are your main questions about this topic? What are you most curious about?
-Why do people still have plastic surgery even when knowing the dangers?
-What are the exact consequences of plastic surgery?
-What seems to drive people to have plastic surgery?
6. Within what scholarly discipline (such as history, biology, and psychology) do you expect to do most of your research? How does this discipline approach or study this topic?
-Well with the topic plastic surgery all the scholarly topics up above could apply to my topic. I could research the history behind plastic surgery and when it began and how. Biology would be very involved since it involves the human body. Psychology would play a major role with are patients mentally right or wrong about plastic surgery-to even the texts they perform before and after surgeries to make sure patients mind sets are adequate.
7. How could you research this topic outside the library (for example, through interviews?
-I don’t think I could do interviews but maybe the internet would have interviews posted about this topic. Plastic surgeons don’t like to sit down and talk negatively about the work they do and perform.
And/or observations)?
-Observations would be a key component because there is tons of an observation on the internet and in books about people who have had plastic surgery and who have not.

Part II: Focusing
Write an initial claim, or an open-ended question, to guide your research on this topic. Make it specific but exploratory. Remember that a good claim opens up an area of inquiry about a topic; a claim should invite evidence, support, and debate.

- Is plastic surgery really worth it in the end?