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For students about to start a research paper, such as an extended essay or a project report

How to find a research paper topic using current research

A good topic is current, interests you and can be answered with studies. Many students start with a topic that is too broad and realise late that there is hardly any suitable research on it. This guide shows how to get from an idea, via current studies, to a clear research question.

Updated on 28 October 2026

The question

How do I find a topic for my research paper that is current and can be researched with scientific studies?

In short

Start with an area that interests you and see which current studies exist on it. Choose a question on which you can find several studies you understand, and narrow it down: who, what, compared with what? Agree on the question with your supervising teacher early on.

Step by step

  1. Step 1

    Collect your interests

    Write down three to five areas you would like to know more about, for example from your everyday life, a school subject or the news. A topic that really interests you will carry you through weeks of work.

    In Theoria: In Theoria you can browse new papers by category and see what researchers are working on right now.

  2. Step 2

    Look at current research in each area

    Search for recent studies in each area, in English as well. Note which questions researchers are asking right now and where they disagree. Open questions and contradictions often make the best topics.

    In Theoria: The Research Agent answers a research question based on several studies and links the sources. Then count for yourself how many of the linked studies really fit your question.

  3. Step 3

    Check whether there is enough material

    Can you find at least three to five studies that you can read and understand? Is the abstract or the full text freely accessible? If there is only a single study, or everything only makes sense with advanced statistics, keep looking.

  4. Step 4

    Narrow the topic down to a research question

    "Phones at school", for example, becomes: "Are phone rules at schools linked to young people's wellbeing?" A good research question states who is studied, what is measured and what it is compared with.

    In Theoria: The Student Research Toolkit generates research prompts, critical analysis questions and method explanations for your school project.

  5. Step 5

    Agree on the question and write it down

    Discuss the question with your supervising teacher early on. Note which studies you have already found and where you searched. That helps with your proposal and later with your discussion of sources.

Worked example

Phone rules at schools: from topic to question

Many countries have introduced rules that restrict phone use at schools. Whether that helps is an open question, which makes it a good research paper topic. Here is a study you can start with.

The study
Victoria Goodyear and colleagues studied 1,227 young people aged 12 to 15 at 30 secondary schools in England. 20 schools did not allow personal phone use, 10 did. The study was published in 2025 in The Lancet Regional Health - Europe.
What was measured
Mainly mental wellbeing, measured with a questionnaire (the Warwick-Edinburgh scale), as well as time spent on smartphones and on social media.
The result
For wellbeing, the study found no evidence of a difference between the schools. At schools with a ban, young people spent less time on their phones and on social media during school hours. For total usage time on weekdays and at weekends, it found no evidence of a difference.
What the study does not show
It is a cross-sectional study: it compares schools at one point in time and cannot show what effect a ban has. It comes from England and looks at the rules as they were at the time.
Possible research questions
What do studies say about phone rules at schools and young people's wellbeing, and why is the question so hard to answer? Or, more narrowly: which phone rules apply at schools in your region, and what does research know about their effect?

A current study is a good starting point, but it is not yet a topic. The topic grows out of a question you can answer with several studies.

Where AI reaches its limits

  • AI can suggest topics, but it does not know the requirements of your school and your subject. Discuss every suggestion with your supervising teacher.
  • AI can invent studies or describe them wrongly. When choosing your topic, only consider studies you have opened yourself.
  • Just because an AI says a lot about a topic does not mean there is a lot of research on it. Count the studies you actually find.
  • Your school decides whether and how AI may be used for graded work. Clarify this with your supervising teacher before you start.

Find your topic

Browse new papers in Theoria or ask a first research question and see which studies come up. With a free account you can open papers, ask Theoria and save analyses in your library.

With your own learning path you can work through real papers on your topic step by step and build an evidence-based answer of your own.

Start for freeSources for a research paper

Sources

  1. Goodyear, V. A., Randhawa, A., Adab, P., Al-Janabi, H., Fenton, S., Jones, K., Michail, M., Morrison, B., Patterson, P., Quinlan, J., Sitch, A., Twardochleb, R., Wade, M., & Pallan, M. (2025). School phone policies and their association with mental wellbeing, phone use, and social media use (SMART Schools): a cross-sectional observational study. The Lancet Regional Health - Europe, 51, 101211. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lanepe.2025.101211Open access. Basis of the worked example.

Publication details checked against Crossref and arXiv on 27 October 2026.

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