Determine the scope of your paper and your thesis. If your paper is meant to have a broad focus, that will determine the extent to which you must refine your research topic. If the paper is meant to have a very narrow focus, this will require a great deal more refinement throughout the writing process. Most research topics need significant refinement regardless of how broad or narrow they are, but the scope of the paper determines how much refinement should actually take place.
Select a topic that is broad in scope to begin with. Even if you are expected to write a paper that is narrow in scope, starting with a broad-based topic will provide you with more opportunities to find information relevant to the paper.
Gather resources related to your paper topic and conduct preliminary research. Sometimes you begin a paper with the idea of pursuing a particular topic only to find that the preliminary research leads you down a different path or significantly modifies the conclusion you believed you would reach when you chose the topic. Preliminary research can begin with fairly broad-based sources such as encyclopedias and websites. More narrowly construed journal articles and scholarly works can be used later as you further refine your paper topic.
Develop a list of questions related to your topic. These questions should be focused on defining your topic more thoroughly. For instance, if you were writing a paper on the controversial abortion issue, you would need to ask questions that are relevant to the ongoing debate over abortion. Questions on this topic could include: Should abortion be legal or illegal? Is the issue of abortion a moral issue? What are the psychological repercussions of having an abortion? Does abortion have a negative physical impact on the mother? These types of questions should emerge from your initial research.
Choose one of the broad questions that emerge from your preliminary research and make it the focus of your paper. If needed, ask even more narrow questions about your initial question and choose one of these to narrow and refine your topic. Research papers should be as narrowly construed as possible and should answer one or two primary questions about a topic.