Associate Level Material
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? |I want to look deeper into the percentage of teen pregnancy now |
| |versus back then. |
|What is it about your general topic of interest that interests |I have a lot of friends that are teen moms. Also personally I |
|you? |believed that the pregnancy rate had gone up but actually year of|
| |2010 it was at its lowest it’s been since the 90’s. |
|What questions do you have about the topic that you would like to|Ways to prevent teen pregnancy? What has changed? Who can