In the process of writing a paper, it is the first and most important step to determine the research topic. It can be said that with a good topic, your paper is half successful. The key question is: which research topic is best for you? We suggest that when you consider this issue, you should fully combine the academic value of the research topic itself with your own research interest and research ability. Of course, for the academic value of the research topic itself, your tutor or your other teachers will give you some reference, such as topics that they think are of deep research significance or cutting-edge topics that they observe. But in a few cases, others, including your tutor, may feel that a research topic you choose has no research value. At this time, we must fully consider our own choices. Because, from the history of academic development, perhaps some research topics or fields are considered worthless by most people at the beginning, but they have been proved to be extremely valuable by time. These studies have also played an important role in the development of this field. First, think about your research interests. Interest is the best teacher. So when considering the topic, please think about your research interests. Some research topics that others think are extremely boring are very attractive to you. Carrying out an academic research is often time-consuming and laborious, and it can only be completed if there is a lasting interest in the research topic. Before you start choosing a topic, you can recall what you learned in class. Which courses are you most looking forward to, and which courses do you want to sleep as soon as you start? You can read through the class notes and think about what you find interesting in class or in lectures. At the same time, you can browse the important academic journals in your discipline, such as the catalogue of each issue in the last two years to see if there are any topics you are interested in. Maybe many topics are of interest to you, but you just don't realize it. Like many daily necessities, you won't realize that you need this or that until you go to the supermarket, but you won't know until you see it. So when you decide to choose, please recall more relevant contents, browse more relevant articles and think more about related issues. One more thing is very important. Write down every topic that you think you are interested in and that you can, are willing or may study; And always record what you think is valuable. Because often the spark of thought is instantaneous, after the past, you want to recall but can't remember. I believe you should have a deep understanding of this. You can compare all the topics you have recorded, and compare which topic is more attractive, which topic is more feasible and which topic has more academic value. Through comprehensive comparison, initially choose one or several research topics that you think should be engaged in. Second, starting from my own research ability, consider what kind of research I am more suitable for to engage in social science research. There are three main purposes: exploration, description and explanation, which to some extent determines the difficulty of engaging in a certain research. L exploration is a relatively difficult but extremely valuable research work. Exploration is more suitable for a new research field or theme, but it does not mean that exploration has no research foundation. Any research, even if it is considered subversive, is based on the research of predecessors or peers. For example, you may be interested in how to develop creative industries in Beijing, and try to formulate relevant strategies or make constructive suggestions, which can be said to be a challenging exploratory research work. Because there is no ready-made answer, you can only put in a lot of research to make your own suggestions. However, in the process of research, we can refer to the development experience of other cities, such as the development strategies of creative industries in cities such as London or new york. The main purpose of describing many sociological studies is to describe situations and events. For example, you may be particularly interested in the publishing process of early academic journals, so you want to make a complete and systematic review of the publishing history of academic journals before19th century. The basic purpose of many qualitative studies is to describe, for example, ethnography of anthropology is to describe in detail some special cultures of pre-civilized society. But generally speaking, research activities are often not limited to description, and researchers usually explore the reasons for the existence of things and their implied meanings. L Explain that if the description solves the question of "what", then the explanation solves the question of "why". For example, you may be interested in the phenomenon of media entertainment and try to analyze and explain why this phenomenon occurs. At this time, you are engaged in the study of interpretation, and you may analyze it from the macro and micro levels, from politics, economy, culture and many other aspects. When explaining a phenomenon, we often need to consider some important variables, such as gender, education level, political orientation and so on. Of course, from the perspective of practical research, the above three aspects are not diametrically opposed, and they are often combined. But for a relatively independent research project, we can always judge whether it is exploratory research, descriptive research or explanatory method. You can choose to engage in research work for different purposes according to your own abilities and specialties. Third, measuring the feasibility of a research topic depends not only on your research interest and your research ability, but also on the research topic itself and other objective conditions in many cases. Regarding the research topic itself, we suggest that no matter which field or topic we choose, the research object must be "small". For example, for the study of publishing history, you should try to narrow the scope and time of the study. For example, some students once decided to write A Study on the Publishing History of China. However, for individuals, this topic is obviously not feasible. For historical research, it can be limited from two angles: region and time. For example, you can narrow down the topic to "Research on Shanghai Publishing Industry during the Republic of China", which will greatly narrow the scope of the topic. Of course, you can continue to narrow down the topics, such as "Research on the Publication of Shanghai Women's Magazine during the Republic of China". This is the process of defining the research object. Because writing a dissertation is different from writing a monograph or a textbook, it needs a clear research object and problem, and the thesis always focuses on this problem, rather than covering everything in the form of a textbook. Of course, in addition to the research difficulty of the theme itself, there are also limitations of research conditions and research foundation. For example, for empirical research, a questionnaire survey may be needed. As an ordinary student, you may not be able to conduct a large-scale questionnaire survey in terms of manpower, material resources and financial resources, but a small sample questionnaire survey can not fully support the topic you want to study. At the same time, the questionnaire survey will take a long time, but do you have enough facts to deal with this survey? If you don't have enough time, then at this time, you must reconsider whether the research topics you have determined should be changed or reduced. Keep in touch with others, especially your mentor. In the process of determining the topic, it is very important to keep in touch with others, especially your tutor. From all aspects, the tutor will give you a lot of advice. Sometimes, you will feel that your tutor can't give you constructive guidance. For example, if you want to engage in text analysis of Rriends, your tutor's research field focuses on online publishing. In this case, you may feel that it is unnecessary to communicate with your tutor. Then you are wrong, all wet! Because, although your tutor may be really not good at the specific topic you are studying, or he doesn't understand it, he will also give you criticism, suggestions and help based on his own research experience, including the defects in methods, how to obtain relevant documents and materials, and so on. In short, in the early stage of the design process, we should exchange views with the tutor, meet with the tutor regularly, and contact the tutor at any time once we have a new method. Please note that many times, you need to take the initiative. As long as you take the initiative to contact the tutor, the tutor has no reason to refuse you; But if you don't take the initiative to contact your tutor, your tutor has no obligation to contact you. In addition, besides the tutor, you can keep in touch with other people who know something about the research topic, including your classmates. You should know that everyone's perspective on the problem is always different in one way or another, and others' views on the problem may be what you need most in this study.