3.5: Refine Your Topic with 5 Q's

Asking Questions: 5 Q’s

At this point, you've explored your interests through brainstorming, Venn diagrams, and quick scanning in Google Scholar. Now, let's take the next step by asking some clarifying questions. This will help you see how your terms relate to each other, and to reflect on what you mean by them.

A simple way to do this is by asking five guiding questions: Who, What, Where, When, and Why. You might find some questions spark immediate answers, while others might not be relevant or interesting to you. That's perfectly fine. You don't need complete answers yet - we'll keep refining your topic over the next several sections.

You don't need all the answers yet!

Put it into practice:

Let's put that into practice.

Example: 5 Q's \(\PageIndex{1}\)

The table below provides clarifying questions to work through these paths and also showcases the types of questions I might generate when working through our treatment of trauma topic.

5 Q's table

5 Q's Table

	Clarifying Questions	Example - Potential concepts based on my grad students + research
Who?	Consider who is the subject of your literature review? Are you interested in specific demographics (age, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, language, socioeconomic background)? If you're interested in a system of different groups of people, who is the main subject? Meaning, if you're interested in schools, are you focused on the students, parents, teachers, or administrators?	Discipline-specific Doctoral students BIPOC students Returning adults with children
What?	Think here about concepts/sub-concepts	Libraries Emotions/affect Cognitive Identity
Where?	Country (US, international) matters particularly if laws or policies are involved Consider rural/urban/suburban If you're looking at hospitals, in-patient or out-patient? If schools, private or public?	US and Canada
When?	Are you focused on the here & now or past experiences? Immediate vs long-term impact?	Start of graduate school During dissertation After graduation
Why?	Why does this matter to your field of study?	How can librarians support graduate students? Teaching strategies

Notice that I'm not locking myself into a specific direction, but starting to consider different paths.

Activity: 5 Q's \(\PageIndex{1}\)

Now, your turn. Ask yourself the basic Who, What, Where, When, Why questions on your topic.

For now, just see what comes to mind - no need for full answers or definite decisions yet.

5 Q's table

Blank table for you to use

5 Q's Table

	My Topic
Who?
What?
Where?
When?
Why?

Build supports: Brainstorm with others

This is a great time to talk through your ideas with someone else because their reactions and questions might spark new ideas and connections for you.

You might:

• Chat with a friend or family member - Classmates can help, but people outside your field often asks clarifying questions you wouldn't hear within your field. Rather than jumping to answer, sit with their questions - they can help you refine your thinking.
• Meet with a librarian - Let them know that you're not necessarily looking for articles yet - you just want to consider where your topic can go.
• Try a generative AI tool (like ChatGPT) - Treat it like a conversation partner, not a source of facts.

A note on AI:

• How it works: AI tools predict word patterns; they're not actually thinking.
• Strengths: They're great at generating questions, rephrasing ideas, or surfacing perspectives you might not have considered
• Limitations: Responses can be incomplete, biased, or generic. They often require very specific prompts and many back-and forth to be useful.
• Ethical considerations:
  • Copyright: Training data used authors' works without permission and without citing it
  • Environmental impact: Running AI requires a vast quantity of water & energy
  • Learning: Overuse of AI can result in you thinking or learning less
• Selecting tools: For brainstorming, ChatGPT tends to be the most effective, although others (like Claude) also work well.
  • It depends on what you want to use it for
  • In my experience, for brainstorming topics, ChatGPT is the best tool, although others have success with Claude as well.

Example: Brainstorming with ChatGPT \(\PageIndex{1}\)

Here's what a short conversation with AI can look like, using my example interest of graduate students, affect (emotions), libraries, and research:

Me: I'm interested in developing a research topic on graduate students, emotions, libraries, and research. Can you suggest some possible angles to explore?

ChatGPT: Sure! Here are a few directions:

• How graduate students manage research anxiety in the library setting
• The role of libraries in supporting students’ emotional well-being during research
• Connections between confidence in research skills and library use
• Stress or burnout related to information overload in library databases

Me: I like the idea of research anxiety. What kinds of emotions besides anxiety might come up in this context?

ChatGPT:

Other emotions might include:

• Frustration (difficulty finding sources)
• Confidence (when research goes well)
• Overwhelm (too many resources to sort through)
• Curiosity or excitement (discovering new ideas)

Me: I'm curious about confidence. How could I narrow that further?

ChatGPT:

You might look at:

• Differences in confidence between new and advanced graduate students
• The impact of research instruction on students’ confidence
• How confidence interacts with students’ identity (e.g., first-generation, international, BIPOC)

Takeaway: Notice that ChatGPT started broad, and after I kept asking questions, it helped generate more nuanced ideas. Use it as a springboard, not an endpoint.