The first thing you need to do is make sure that the idea you have is in agreement with the assignment you have been given. You must consider what question, idea, or topic you are researching.  Next, consider the following questions:

What type of information do you need to answer your research question?
Where can you find that information?
Is the argument you are trying to support a logic and relevant answer to your question?
How are you planning to organize and support your argument?
Are the data you gather sufficient to support the argument you are trying to make?

Preparing your research question and design carefully in advance will save a lot of time and agony when it is time to do the actual research and writing. It is a mistake to choose too general a topic. Keep your focus tight on one or two manageable questions, or you will need a book rather than a paper to adequately deal with it. If you prepare a good research design, your research and writing will be greatly enhanced and much easier to execute.

A common problem with choosing a topic for a paper is that it becomes too wide – often far too wide.  For example, no one can be expected to be able to say anything in depth about “European nation state building” in 15 pages.  That would have to be reduced to a summary of what you can find and read; which is not what we want you to do.  Early in the process of writing a paper, you should concentrate on reducing your topic to something that can actually be accomplished in 15 pages (or 2 or 5 or whatever the assignment requires).  Half the effort of writing a good paper is choosing a good topic and defining it well.  You need to cut down on your ambition to include “everything” and write about something in depth and in a way that allows you to actually conclude something. Ways to cut a topic down can be:

- Geography: "Why write about 'Europe', when the border between Spain and Morocco will provide ample material for your argument?"
- Time: "Why write about the whole long history of a topic or place, when 'the postcolonial period' would be an ample subject for a paper?"
- Topical: "Why write everything about Spanish-Moroccan relations if you can reduce that to conflicts about fishing rights along the coast of Morocco?"

There are of course many ways to reduce a topic; these are only suggestions.  The point is that you should reduce the topic of your paper to something that can reasonably be discussed, illustrated, and concluded in the amount of time and pages you have.  It is not only the amount of information presented or the quality of your writing that is being graded.  It is the quality of the argument you are building, your ability to support this argument with relevant data, and your ability to reach a conclusion. A paper that raises a specific, limited question and solves it will always be regarded (and graded) better than a paper that just sketches a huge issue. It is better to choose too small a problem and make your argument detailed, than to choose too large an issue and be unable to bring it to a focused point.

The assignments you are asked to write in the anthropology program are analytical. That means that we are not interested in, or evaluating, your ability to write a "story," even if we do emphasize the quality of your narrative. You need to demonstrate your knowledge of anthropological concepts and your ability to employ them in an analysis of cultural practices within a consistent structural framework.

Once you have crafted an appropriate research design, you will conduct your research.  Be thorough, but do not be tempted to stray outside your plan unless some modification is necessary (or you are just interested).  This is a common mistake.  Many writers tend to take a “shotgun” approach to their research and writing, incorporating irrelevant details and inconsequential asides.  Stay with your point and follow it up in detail.

While maintaining your focus, be alert for data and information that you may not have thought of or known about in advance and that is important to your research.  Check your sources' sources for clues to important work or material you have missed.  Do not ignore journal articles.  (If you have difficulty using the available printed and online indexes to topics and articles, ask a librarian for help.)  In fact, journal articles can often save you time since they are frequently a distillation of a longer work.  You should also be alert to primary sources, original historical documents and other archival materials, foreign language newspapers and documents, government documents, personal interviews, and statistics.  Used in the right way, such material can greatly support your argument.

Scholarly sources are not only articles and books that directly relate to the particular topic of your research and paper.  More often than not, some of the most useful scholarly sources will discuss a different topic but provide concepts or ideas that you can employ in reference to your chosen topic.  For instance, if you wrote about “globalization” in your paper, it might be a good idea to include references that explain how you understand this concept.  By including concepts and references in our writings, we encourage and support scholarly discussion and synthesis.

If you conduct your own fieldwork, the procedure remains the same.  However, there will almost certainly be modifications made in your research plan as you proceed, and great care must be taken in the design to ensure that the data you are gathering is useful in answering your research question in a logical fashion.