Focusing on a specific issue pertinent to your topic will enable you to narrow your research topic. Restrict your topic by focusing on a certain type, a specific style or a category. For example, if your question is "How do films reflect history?," you can narrow the topic by focusing on a specific category, such as horror films, historical dramas or war films.
A helpful way to narrow your topic is to focus on the subject of the research question, such as a specific age, gender or race. For example, if your topic is "How did people's lives change during the First World War?," you could focus on women's experiences or the role of young people in society.
Narrowing the time and place you cover can ensure that you're not overwhelmed with the scope of your topic. Assigned research papers often have a required length. If you are assigned to write 1,500 words, it will be difficult to cover a broad period and geographical region. To make it manageable, you could focus on a specific time, such as the first year of World War I or movies from the 1990s, and a specific geographical region, for instance in America or France.
The approach that you use to collect and interpret data is a key factor for narrowing your topic. For example, if you are researching the effects of World War I, you could choose a qualitative approach, which focuses on why and how, or a quantitative approach, which uses mathematical models and theories. You could also use a tool such as network analysis, which looks at relations between actors, or a sociological approach, focusing on experience and how it affects actors and their actions.