Research paper topics: 220 ideas for argumentative papers, by field

A good argumentative research paper topic is a question that informed people answer differently, narrow enough to cover in the pages you have, with enough published research to answer it. The 220 research paper topics below are written as questions in eleven fields, sized for a paper of roughly 8 to 15 pages; most get sharper still when you tie them to one place, group or period your sources cover. Pick one, test it against the sources, and the answer you find becomes your thesis.

Topics that touch on politics or policy are phrased as open questions on purpose. Your research decides the answer, and either side can carry a strong paper if the evidence supports it. Below the index is one topic turned into a working thesis; after the lists come the full method for narrowing a topic, a quick check that sources exist, and the kinds of topics to avoid.

From topic to working thesis

To choose, pick two or three questions from one field, run the thirty-minute source check on each, and keep the one with the most evidence behind it. Then narrow it until you can name the evidence you need. Here is topic 46 taken from the list to a working thesis:

Science and health research topics

Health topics need recent peer-reviewed studies, so check the dates of what you find. Argue from the evidence, not from personal experience.

1. Do school vision screenings catch enough problems in children under ten to justify what they cost?
2. How have LED streetlights changed the behavior of birds and insects at night in cities?
3. Should elementary schools be required to give daily recess, based on what research shows about attention?
4. How accurately do consumer fitness trackers measure sleep compared with a sleep lab?
5. Has the arrival of plant-based meat changed how much meat American households buy?
6. Are later high school start times linked to fewer car crashes among teenage drivers?
7. How well do sugar taxes change what people buy, judging by the cities and countries that have tried them?
8. What explains the return of measles in one country that had eliminated it, and which communities did the outbreaks reach?
9. Do patients use published hospital infection rates when they choose where to have surgery?
10. How does noise on hospital wards affect patients' sleep and recovery?
11. Do standing desks change how much office workers move during the day?
12. How has telehealth changed access to mental health care in rural areas since 2020?
13. Should sales of energy drinks to minors be restricted, as some governments have proposed?
14. How accurate are online symptom checkers compared with a nurse advice line?
15. How have citizen scientists helped track the spread of invasive insects such as the spotted lanternfly?
16. Do community gardens change the diets of the families who use them?
17. Does the switch to daylight saving time affect heart attack rates in the week that follows?
18. Has the 2022 decision to allow over-the-counter hearing aids in the US made them more affordable for older adults?
19. How do pharmacies and hospitals decide who gets scarce medicines during a drug shortage?
20. Which works better in public health campaigns, fear or humor, judging by anti-smoking ads?

Technology and AI research topics

Technology changes faster than the research on it. Prefer questions where at least a few years of studies, court cases or official data exist.

21. How accurately do AI chatbots summarize scientific papers compared with the papers' own abstracts?
22. Should AI-generated images in political ads have to carry a label?
23. How well do voice assistants understand regional accents, and whose speech do they miss most often?
24. Has two-step sign-in reduced account takeovers, or pushed attackers toward phishing and SIM swapping?
25. Should phone makers be required to provide software updates for a minimum number of years?
26. How do ride-hailing apps set surge prices, and do riders understand them?
27. What happened to bank tellers' jobs after ATMs spread, and what does it suggest about automation now?
28. How consistently does one large platform enforce its own rules on one kind of content, judging by its transparency reports?
29. Do e-readers change how much people read, or only where and when?
30. How comparable are the safety figures that self-driving car companies publish?
31. Should high schools require a computer science course to graduate?
32. How has the right-to-repair movement changed the repair policies of major electronics makers?
33. What makes a password policy effective: length, complexity or how often it changes?
34. Do the viewing figures in Netflix's twice-yearly engagement reports explain which series it renews?
35. Do smart thermostats and other smart home devices reduce household energy use in practice?
36. How have different countries regulated loot boxes in video games, and with what effect?
37. Did the shift to video meetings change who speaks up in meetings?
38. How are public libraries coping with e-book licenses that expire after a set time or number of loans?
39. Should facial recognition be allowed in public places such as stadiums and airports?
40. How do streaming recommendation algorithms affect which new musicians find an audience?

Environmental research topics

Environmental questions are easier to research when they name one policy, one place or one species instead of “the planet”.

41. Do plastic bag fees reduce plastic waste, or shift shoppers to thicker bags they throw away?
42. How well do urban tree-planting programs cool the neighborhoods that need shade most?
43. Should cities charge households for trash by weight or volume?
44. What happened to air quality in towns near coal power plants after the plants closed?
45. How much water do data centers use, and should water supply decide where they are built?
46. Are electric buses cheaper than diesel buses over their working life, once battery replacement is counted?
47. Can the reintroduction of beavers in Britain coexist with farming nearby?
48. How do wildfire smoke days affect school attendance?
49. Should flood insurance in high-risk coastal zones be subsidized?
50. How do deposit-return systems for bottles and cans compare with curbside recycling?
51. What drives the decline of insects on farmland: pesticides, habitat loss or climate?
52. How much do green roofs reduce stormwater runoff in dense cities?
53. Should national parks limit visitors with timed-entry reservations?
54. How has fast fashion changed the amount of clothing sent to landfills?
55. Do carbon offsets reduce emissions, or mainly move them elsewhere?
56. How does artificial light affect sea turtle hatchlings, and which lighting rules work?
57. How do heat waves affect productivity and safety in outdoor jobs such as construction and farming?
58. Should dry western cities restrict decorative grass lawns?
59. Have community solar programs reached renters and low-income households?
60. What is the environmental cost of next-day delivery compared with standard shipping?

Education research topics

Education research is plentiful but uneven. Look for studies that compare schools or districts, not only surveys of opinion.

61. Do four-day school weeks affect student achievement in rural districts?
62. Should high schools require a personal finance course to graduate?
63. How do later school start times affect attendance and grades?
64. Are smaller class sizes worth their cost compared with other uses of the same money?
65. How does grade inflation change the way colleges and employers read transcripts?
66. Should colleges give academic credit for work experience, and how should they measure it?
67. Should high schools keep foreign-language requirements now that translation apps are free?
68. How effective are summer reading programs at preventing learning loss over the break?
69. Should schools replace letter grades with standards-based grading?
70. How does offering free school meals to every student affect participation compared with means-tested meals?
71. How have test-optional policies changed who applies to selective colleges?
72. Who benefits more from peer tutoring: the tutor or the student being tutored?
73. Do applicants use the College Scorecard's program-level debt and earnings figures when they choose a program?
74. How has the switch to digital textbooks changed what students pay for course materials?
75. Do school uniforms affect behavior and attendance?
76. How much does early-childhood education narrow achievement gaps by third grade?
77. Should coding bootcamps be eligible for federal student aid?
78. What happens to attention and grades in schools that ban phones during the school day?
79. How do school libraries without a librarian differ in what students read?
80. How do gap years affect students' college outcomes?

Psychology research topics

Psychology has a large experimental literature, and some famous findings have failed to replicate. A paper that weighs the original study against later attempts can be especially strong.

81. Does the bystander effect hold in real emergencies caught on camera, or mainly in laboratory studies?
82. How do streaks and badges in habit apps affect long-term motivation?
83. Does practice testing beat rereading for students outside the laboratory?
84. How does comparing oneself to others on image-based platforms relate to body image in young adults?
85. Do fact-check labels on social media posts reduce how often people share false claims?
86. How does sleep loss affect decision-making in medical residents?
87. Do personality tests used in hiring predict job performance?
88. Why do studies of birth order and personality disagree?
89. How much time in nature does it take to lower stress, and how is that measured?
90. How do people decide whom to trust when buying from strangers online?
91. Does multitasking reduce the quality of studying, and do students notice?
92. How reliable is eyewitness memory, and how should courts treat it?
93. How do placebos reduce pain, even when patients know they are taking one?
94. How does loneliness differ between older adults living alone and those in care homes?
95. Is procrastination better explained by poor time management or by trouble managing moods?
96. Do growth mindset programs improve grades when schools use them at scale?
97. Does background music help or hurt concentration while reading?
98. How does having too many options affect decisions in online shopping?
99. At what age do children learn to tell fantasy from reality, and how is it tested?
100. How do first impressions in job interviews affect hiring decisions?

Sociology research topics

Sociology questions ask how groups behave and why. Census data, surveys and interviews are the usual evidence; pick a question where at least one of them exists.

101. How has remote work changed who lives in small towns?
102. What happens to a neighborhood when its last grocery store closes?
103. How do online communities enforce their norms without paid moderators?
104. How has gig work changed what workers expect from employers?
105. Did the decline in civic group membership that Robert Putnam described in Bowling Alone (2000) continue after 2000?
106. How do multigenerational households divide care work?
107. How do dating apps shape whom people meet and marry?
108. What does the growth of one-person households mean for housing design?
109. What happens to a city's sense of identity when its professional sports team leaves?
110. Who benefits most when cities fund public restrooms?
111. How has the meaning of retirement changed for workers over sixty?
112. How do immigrant families keep a heritage language across generations?
113. What role do public libraries play for people experiencing homelessness?
114. How has the move to cashless payments affected people without bank accounts?
115. What makes a neighborhood walkable, and who can afford to live in walkable neighborhoods?
116. Do people trust local news outlets more than national ones, and does that trust change what they read?
117. Is cost the main reason couples choose small weddings, judging by survey data since 2020?
118. How do rural and urban teenagers differ in their plans after high school?
119. How have four-day workweek trials worked in the companies that ran them?
120. What happens to friendships when people move for work?

Business and economics research topics

Economic questions reward numbers. Choose one market, one policy or one industry so that the data you need actually exists. Topics 130 and 139 need local evidence, such as interviews with owners or a town's own records, so check that you can get it.

121. Does tipping improve service, or mainly move labor costs onto customers?
122. Do loyalty programs change shopping habits more than discounts do?
123. Why do some cities' congestion charges win public support while others are voted down?
124. How has buy-now-pay-later changed spending among young adults?
125. How do minimum wage increases affect the hours restaurant workers get?
126. How do subscription services set prices, and why do so many offer annual discounts?
127. What happened to independent bookstores after the rise of online retail, and why have some recovered?
128. Should employers be required to post salary ranges in job listings?
129. How does surge pricing affect drivers' earnings and riders' choices?
130. What makes a franchise succeed or fail in a small town?
131. Do new sports stadiums help local economies enough to justify public money?
132. How did the inflation of 2021 to 2023 change what households buy at the grocery store?
133. Do four-day workweeks change productivity in service businesses?
134. How do credit scores affect young renters' access to housing?
135. Why do companies shrink package sizes instead of raising prices, and do shoppers notice?
136. How have hybrid work schedules affected restaurants and shops downtown?
137. Now that colleges may share revenue directly with athletes, should they be allowed to cut sports that earn none to pay for it?
138. How do microloans affect small businesses in developing economies?
139. What decides whether small businesses survive a major road construction project on their street?
140. How does gig work affect workers' retirement savings?

History research topics

Every topic here needs primary sources you can reach: letters, newspapers, records, speeches. Many are digitized, but check before you commit (the guide to primary and secondary sources explains the difference and lists free collections to search).

141. How did printed pamphlets change religious debate in Germany in the 1520s?
142. Why did American railroads adopt standard time zones in 1883, decades before federal law?
143. How did the Marshall Plan shape cooperation among European governments after World War II?
144. What caused the Dust Bowl, and how did farming practices change afterward?
145. How did women's factory work during World War II change women's employment after the war?
146. How did the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 change building rules in American cities?
147. What role did newspapers play in the run-up to the Spanish-American War of 1898?
148. How did American cities' responses to the 1918 influenza pandemic differ, and what came of them?
149. Did papermaking reach Samarkand through prisoners taken at the Battle of Talas in 751, as the traditional story says?
150. Why did the Erie Canal make New York City the country's leading port?
151. How did enslaved people use reading and writing as resistance before the Civil War?
152. What does the Domesday Book reveal about England after the Norman Conquest?
153. How did refrigerated railroad cars change the American diet?
154. How did the Black Death change wages in England after 1348, and did the Statute of Labourers of 1351 hold them down?
155. How did the Apollo program affect public support for science spending?
156. What do historians disagree about in the decline of the Library of Alexandria?
157. How did the Hanseatic League's London base, the Steelyard, keep its trading privileges for so long?
158. How did organizers keep Montgomery's residents moving during the 381-day bus boycott?
159. What did the Works Progress Administration leave behind in American towns?
160. How did the telegraph change the way newspapers reported distant events?

Arts and literature research topics

Literature papers argue from the text, which is your primary source, with criticism as support. A question about how a book works usually beats a question about what it means in general.

161. How do Jane Austen's novels use letters to change the course of the plot?
162. Why does the creature in Frankenstein speak more persuasively than his maker?
163. How did publishing in monthly parts shape the structure of Dickens's novels?
164. Why have unreliable narrators become so common in contemporary thrillers?
165. How did white-owned publishers such as Alfred A. Knopf shape which Harlem Renaissance writers reached print?
166. How do picture books for young children handle grief?
167. How has the growth of audiobooks changed the way novels are written and edited?
168. Why do film adaptations change the endings of novels, judging by three adaptations from one decade?
169. How much control did the Medici have over the art they paid for in fifteenth-century Florence?
170. How did photography change portrait painting in the nineteenth century?
171. How does one story-driven video game use player choices to do the work a novel gives its narrator?
172. How did cheap paperbacks in the 1930s and 1940s change who read serious books?
173. How do translations change a poem's meaning, comparing three English versions of one haiku?
174. Why do so many Gothic novels use found documents and frame stories?
175. How did the obscenity trials over Ulysses and Lady Chatterley's Lover shape modern literature?
176. Whose work is missing from one art museum's collection, judging by the collection data it publishes?
177. How did street art move from vandalism to commissioned public art?
178. How do Victorian novelists use setting to show social class?
179. Should publishers revise classic books to remove offensive language?
180. How did jazz recordings carry American music abroad in the 1920s?

Media and communication research topics

Media questions often have both academic studies and industry data. Use both, and note who paid for the industry figures. Topics 183, 187 and 196 need evidence you would gather yourself, such as interviews, a survey or a sample of posts, so they suit courses that allow original research.

181. How does the loss of a local newspaper affect turnout in local elections?
182. What does the Upworthy Research Archive, a public set of thousands of headline tests, show about which headlines win?
183. What makes a podcast interview feel like a conversation, and how much of that is editing?
184. How do newsrooms correct mistakes, and do corrections reach the readers who saw the error?
185. How do influencers disclose sponsorships, and do followers notice the disclosures?
186. How have paid newsletters changed the business of independent journalism?
187. How do emoji change the tone of workplace messages?
188. What do the public political ad libraries that large platforms keep show about how one campaign targeted voters?
189. Does a license fee make a public broadcaster more independent than direct government funding, comparing two countries?
190. What happens to local coverage when a daily newspaper cuts back to a few print days a week?
191. Does the length of a video affect how much viewers remember?
192. How often do news reports overstate the results of early scientific studies?
193. Which response, an apology, a denial or silence, best protected brands' reputations in three recent social media crises?
194. How have subtitles changed the way audiences watch foreign-language series?
195. How do fact-checking organizations choose which claims to check?
196. Who made the most-shared political memes in one recent election campaign, and how did they spread?
197. How did Franklin Roosevelt's fireside chats use radio to speak to the nation, and how did listeners respond?
198. What makes a public apology by a company or public figure believable?
199. How do paywalls affect who reads quality journalism?
200. How do comment sections affect readers' trust in news articles?

Law and ethics research topics

Legal and ethical questions need a jurisdiction and a case or statute to anchor them. “Is privacy important?” is a debate; how two privacy laws differ is a paper.

201. Should juries be instructed about the limits of eyewitness identification?
202. How do privacy laws in the European Union and the United States differ in what companies may collect?
203. Should police be allowed to use facial recognition to identify suspects?
204. How has Europe's “right to be forgotten” affected what search engines show?
205. Is it ethical to use consumer DNA databases to solve cold cases?
206. Should employers be liable when their hiring software discriminates?
207. How long should copyright last, and who benefits from the current terms?
208. Should voting be compulsory, as it is in Australia?
209. How do plea bargains affect the fairness of criminal trials?
210. Should cities require shops and restaurants to accept cash?
211. Should gig workers be classified as employees, contractors or something in between?
212. Should the testing of cosmetics on animals be banned, as the European Union has done?
213. How far should schools be able to discipline students for what they post online outside school hours?
214. Is it fair to use risk-assessment algorithms in bail decisions?
215. Should organ donation be opt-out, as it is in several countries?
216. How do noncompete agreements affect workers' wages and job mobility?
217. Should landlords be allowed to screen tenants by credit score?
218. Who owns the data a connected car collects about its driver?
219. Who should set the rules for delivery drones over residential neighborhoods?
220. How should museums handle objects acquired under colonial rule?

How to narrow a research topic

Most of the topics above are already narrow, but a good paper usually narrows once more, to a place, a group, a period or a single case your sources cover. Here is one topic taken from a subject to a question in five steps.

1. Start with a subject you noticed

   Food waste. Too big for a book, never mind a paper, but a real interest is a good place to start.

2. Pick one setting

   Food waste in school cafeterias. A setting gives you a place where waste can be measured and someone is responsible for it.

3. Pick one group or period

   Food thrown away by elementary students at lunch. Narrowing the age group points you to a specific set of studies and school policies.

4. Turn it into a question

   Does scheduling recess before lunch reduce how much food elementary students throw away? Now there is something to find out, and informed people could expect different answers.

5. Write a working thesis

   “Scheduling recess before lunch reduces plate waste in elementary schools, because children who have already played come to the table hungrier and stay longer.” This is a guess until the sources confirm or correct it. The thesis statement examples show what the final version should look like, and the research question examples cover the step before it in more detail.

The same moves work on any question in the lists, as the topic 46 example near the top shows. Once the question holds up, the research paper outline template helps you plan the sections before you write them.

Check that sources exist first

A common way for a research paper to go badly is a topic with too little research behind it, discovered a week before the deadline. A thirty-minute check before you commit usually catches it:

• Search your library's databases, not just the open web. Use two or three keyword combinations from your question. Google Scholar is a useful second check.
• Look for about five solid sources. For most class papers that means peer-reviewed articles, books from academic presses or official data, ideally including some from the last ten years.
• Find one review article or book chapter that surveys the debate. Its reference list is a ready-made reading list, and it tells you where the disagreement is.
• If the topic rests on primary evidence, find it now. Confirm that the letters, newspapers, records or data you need are digitized or in a library you can visit, and that you can run any survey or interviews the question depends on.
• Ask a librarian. Ten minutes with a subject librarian can save a day of searching, and it is part of what they are there for.
• Ask for leads. You can also ask the Strokes Assistant whether there is recent research on your narrowed question; it browses the web and answers beside your notes. Confirm every source it names in your library's databases before you rely on it.

Topics to avoid

Some topics look promising and fail on the page. The pattern is usually one of these:

Overused topics are not banned, but they raise the bar. If a topic appears on every list (including this one), a paper on it needs a narrower angle than the usual one, such as one state's law, one study's replication, one decade's data. Empirical papers that report your own study follow a different structure, IMRaD; the research paper example walks through both kinds.