Week 6: Formulating Your Thesis
Your literature review likely strengthened your familiarity with your topic, helping you to identify a refined focus for your research. Now that you are aware of the issues, trends, and mysteries regarding your topic, you should have an idea about how to contribute answers, further questions, and observations of your own. Your research question will drive your entire project -- the information that you gather, explore, and write will all focus on this question.
Depending on your assignment, you will write a thesis statement or a problem statement to introduce your paper.
A good thesis statement is neither too broad nor too narrow, is interesting to you, and poses a unique question that you will answer through your research. Your professor or advisor can clarify, but typically a thesis statement includes your narrowed topic (your research focus) and the main idea of your paper (what you will show or prove about your topic).
A problem statement typically defines the problem, states a proposed solution, and describes the research that you will conduct in order to reach the solution or attempt to solve the problem. You should talk about the structure of your problem statement with your advisor, and below are a few good resources to help:
- Problem Statement - from the Mayfield Electronic Handbook of Technical & Scientific Writing
- SURF Workshop Resources: Problem Statements - from the Online Writing Lab at Purdue University
- Writing a Statement of the Problem - from Temple University - this one has templates.
PRE-FLIGHT CHECKLIST
Check your understanding of the concepts above by answering the questions below.
- Why does your research question need to be unique?
- Does your research question always need to be interesting to you? What if your class is boring and you just don't like the subject matter?