Scoping your Project

Learning Objectives

Recognize the appropriate scope for a research project

Unlike a science project where you test a hypothesis by performing an experiment yourself, college research papers generally ask you to round up the answers that have already been found and published by professional scholars. So, you can think of answering your question (or testing your hypotheses) as a process of collecting the answers that have already been published, and then finding out things like (a) which answers have more agreement (less disagreement) among researchers? or (b) which answers have more convincing evidence to support them?

The smallest Matroshka doll in a nested setWhether you are performing original research (such as experiments or surveys) or working with the research of others, it is important to think about the proper scope for your own research project.

In research, the word scope refers to the depth and breadth of the study. How wide a light does this research shine on the topic it’s investigating? For instance, if a research question wonders about the effects of video gaming on the brain, a project with a broad scope might look at a variety of physical and psychological effects across a wide range of ages, whereas a project with a narrower scope might look at effects on hand-eye coordination in 6- to 8-year-olds.

When writing a research paper, the main thing you need to worry about is that your scope isn’t too broad or too narrow. Let’s think about what that might mean.

Example: Finding the right Scope

Manuel is fascinated by Cuba, since his grandfather emigrated from Cuba to the U.S. in the 1930s. When Manuel is assigned a research paper for Composition class, he immediately knows what he wants to write about. “OK,” he thinks, “My research topic is Cuba. Let’s go.” As he tries to articulate a research question, however, he realizes that this isn’t going to work. “‘What is Cuba?’ That would work for Jeopardy, but I can’t write about it.” The scope of this topic is too broad for a research paper. He could write a book—or a series of books—about Cuba! Now Manuel decides he needs a narrower scope. He’s interested in the Cuban hip-hop band Orishas, so he comes up with a new research question: “What do the parents of hip-hop fans in Cuba think about their kids’ musical preferences?” When he looks for sources to answer this question, however, he discovers that there’s not a lot out there—at least not in English. The scope of this question is too narrow for the resources available to him. If he could do first-hand field research in Cuba, he could answer this question with a survey, but as it is he needs to rely on the research that others have done.

Thus, your job in a research paper is to explore the research that has been published already, and to see what answers you find to your questions. This body of knowledge will eventually become the support for your paper’s thesis, or the answer to your paper’s central question or hypothesis. (This is another reason why it’s so important to avoid deciding upon a thesis too early in the process – and this body of knowledge will generally determine that thesis for you.)

In a way, this might  feel limiting: you can really only test out your assumptions (answer your question) by finding what has already been studied. Does that mean you can’t do anything new? Does that mean you’re just repeating what other people have already said?

It can be helpful to view this kind of research writing as remixing. A remix takes existing things and creates something new and distinctive. There is no lack of originality or creativity. In fact, we can see all writing as a form of remixing – you are always building upon existing ideas, creating something new out of them, coming up with ways of seeing things that others have been missing; you are always remixing. And if we want to be very, very literal: Every piece of writing ever written in English – every book that fills the biggest library – is just a remix of only 26 letters. Do you have to invent a new letter in order to say something creative and original?

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