The document provides guidelines for choosing a good research topic, including focusing on topics that interest you, have available information to research, and are timely and relevant. It suggests avoiding controversial, highly technical, hard to investigate, too broad or narrow topics. Specifically, topics should have sufficient available sources to research thoroughly and provide an in-depth analysis of a focused subject within the scope of course requirements and your personal resources.

2. Guidelines in Choosing
a Research Topic
1. Interest in the Subject
Matter
Your interest in the
subject matter may be
caused by your rich
background knowledge
about it and by its
novelty; meaning- its
familiarity to you.

3. Being curious about a subject, like a
conundrum or a puzzle, makes you
determine to unravel the mystery or
intriguing thing behind it.
Your real interest in a subject pushes
you to research, investigate or inquire
about it with full motivation,
enthusiasm and energy.

4. 2. Availability of Information
Collecting a lot of information as an
evidence to support your claims about
your subject matter from varied forms
of literature like books, journals, and
newspapers, among others, is a part
and parcel of any research work.
Hence, in choosing a topic, visit
your library to check the availability of
reading materials on your chosen
topic.

5. Included in your investigation of
the availability of reading
materials are questions on how
updated and authoritative the
materials are. Let these
questions linger as you tour the
library: What are the copy right
dates of the materials? How old
or new are they? How expert or
qualified the writers are in
coming out with such kind of
reading materials about your
topic?

6. 3. Timeliness and Relevance of the
Topic
The topic is relevant if it yields
results that are instrumental in societal
improvement. It is timely if it is related
to the present. For instance, unless it
is pure or historical research, a
research on the ins and outs of
people’s revolutionary acts will
prosper more if it tackles the
contemporary revolutionary actions
rather than those in ancient time.

7. 4. Limitations on the Subject
This makes you link your choosing with
course requirements. For example, to
make you complete the requirements,
your teacher instructs you to submit a
paper that will apply the key principles
you learned in business, psychology,
education and so on. In this case, you
have no freedom to choose your topic
based on your interest, but it has to
decide on one topic to finish your
course.

8. 5. Personal Resources
Before sticking fully to your final choice,
assess your research abilities in terms of
your financial standing, health condition,
mental capacity, needed facilities, and
time allotment to enable you to complete
your research. Imagine yourself pouring
much time and effort into its initial stage,
only to find out later that you are unable
to complete it because of your failure to
raise the amount needed for
questionnaire printing and interview trips.
(Barbour, 2014)

9. Research
Topics to be
Avoided

10. 1. Controversial Topics
These topics that
depend greatly on the
writer’s opinion, which
may tend to be biased
or prejudicial. Facts
cannot support topics
like these.

11. Controversial Topics
 Shoe collection of Imelda Marcos
 LGBTQ+ kind of love
 Personal lives of teachers
 Salary comparison of employees
 Religion
 How to raise smart kids

12. 2. Highly Technical
Subjects
For a beginner,
researching on topics
that require an advanced
study, technical
knowledge, and vast
experience is a very

13. Highly Technical
 Robotics
 Trans-generative Grammar
 The Vatican
 Neuroscience
 AI

14. 3. Hard –to - investigate
Subjects
A subject is hard to
investigate if there is no
available reading materials
about it and if such
materials are not up-to-date.

15. Hard to Investigate
 Parochial Schools
 Labor Unions
 Lifestyles of Laymen

16. 4. Too Broad Subjects
Topics that are too broad will
prevent you from giving a
concentrated or in-depth
analysis of the subject matter
of the paper. The remedy to
this is to narrow or limit the
topic to a smaller one.

17. Too Broad (Vast scope)
 History
 Anthropology
 Belief Systems
 Culture

18. 5. Too Narrow Subjects
These subjects are so
limited or specific that an
extensive or thorough
searching or reading for
information about these
is necessary.

19. Too Narrow
 Jordans
 Quiboloy Issue (not even relevant!)
 Climate change
 Numismatics

20. 6. Vague Subjects
Choosing topics like these will
prevent you from having a clear
focus on your paper. For instance,
titles beginning with indefinite
adjectives such as several, many,
some etc, as in “Some Remarkable
Traits of a Filipino” or “Several
People’s Comments on the RH Law,”
are vague enough to decrease the
reader’s interests and curiosity.

21. The following research topics may
be considered controversial, vague,
narrow, highly technical, broad or
Hard-to-investigate:
Filipinos’ Admiration to
President
Rodrigo Duterte

22. Some Excessively Priced
Imported Vehicles
The Rise and Fall of All Kings
and Queens
Labor Unions Before the Coming
of Jesus Christ

23. Pluses and Minuses of All
English 2 Textbooks
Definition of Research
The Extent of Filipinos’ Faith
in God

24. The Structure of a Nuclear
Weapon
Comma as a Punctuation
Mark
Spaceship Building