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Scholarly Writing in Nursing

This guide assists students and faculty in Nursing

Narrow your topic:

Topic too big?  Below are some hints for narrowing your topic:

  • Population group: Narrow by age, race, sex, occupation, etc.  
  • Geography: Narrow by geographical location.  
  • Time period: Narrow by time period.  
  • Discipline: Narrow by looking through a specific discipline, for example: How does insomnia affect memory? (Psychology) OR What prescription drugs can assist patients with insomnia and how do they work? (Pharmacology)

Broaden your topic:

Topic too narrow?  Not finding research resources?  Try the following:

  • Your topic may be too specific.  For example if your topic is first year female college students and stress, broaden to college students and stress.
  • Think of similar or parallel topics
  • Keywords - go back and brainstorm more keywords for searching.  You may just need to find the specific terms that refer to your topic.  
  • Rethink your topic - Sometimes your topic may be too new and there may be very little scholarly research published on your topic yet.