It all begins with your topic.

• State your TOPIC in terms of you would like to find out about: "I would like to explore ..."
  • For example: I would like to explore attitudes toward corporal punishment in various countries.
•  State that you are exploring this because you want to discover who, what, where, or why.
  • For example: I am exploring this because I want to know if there are different attitudes toward corporal punishment in Japan and the United States.
  • (More focused yet: I would like find out if attitudes toward corporal punishment in the schools are different Japan and the United States.)

By Ted Eytan from Washington, DC, USA (Ferguson Protest DC 49917) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons