Associate Level Material
By: Ashley Hicks
Appendix D

Research Plan
As part of your research plan, you must first draft a research question for your research paper that will guide the rest of your writing. A research question, which is more specific and focused than a general topic, is the question that your research paper will be answering. For example, if your general area of interest is social security, a possible research question might ask “How can low-income families save more money if the United States had a reformed social security plan that includes personal retirement accounts?”
As you develop a research question, keep in mind that you will need to research sources to support your topic. Do not pick a one-sided question that will limit your research. Instead, develop a research question that lends itself to further exploration and debate—a question for which you genuinely want to know the answer. Try to pick a research question that is neither too broad, which covers too much, or too narrow, which covers too little. It should be broad enough to be discussed in a short research paper.
|What is your general topic or area of interest? |Animal is the topic of interest that I have chosen. |
|What is it about your general topic of interest that interests |The reason I chose animals as my topic of interest is because I |
|you? |have always been so passionate about animals. Even as a child I |
| |was. Like now I have a dog that I have had since a puppy that I |
| |rescued from a family who was beating him. |
| |I’m not just interested in just one