Paper Topic Ideas

Tour de France: So Many Questions!

Let Curiosity Lead the Way

One thing I really love about this topic ideas blog is how all the posts demonstrate that you truly can brainstorm your way from *anything* into a highly-researchable topic! It all starts with curiosity - and, if your assignment allows - beginning with your own interests.

An interest of mine this summer has been the Tour de France. If you're not familiar, this is a 21 day bike race that takes place every summer, mostly in France (although the race course sometimes veers into neighboring countries). I'm not a cyclist myself, but love almost all things physical-fitness-movement related, including watching elite athletes compete. And I don't think I'm alone - have you noticed how many sports documentaries and docu-series have been show up on streaming services lately? Netflix even has one about the Tour de France called Unchained.

Tadej Pogacar and his team in front of the peloton during Simacourbe climb of Tour de France 2024 stage 13 by Hugo LUC
is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

Most evenings for the three weeks the race was running this year, I was watching replays and commentary on each day's stage. And I always had a million questions. Here are just a few:

• Why is the Tour only for men? Is there a women's Tour de France?
• Why are many sports segregated by gender? And what about non-binary and transgender athletes?
• Why does France have so many high mountain roads? Does this get in the way of hiking and backpacking and just getting away from civilization in general?
• Why does France appear to be so deforested? 
• Why is cycling so popular in Europe? Why is cycling not as popular in the US?
• The Tour de France is a big money event: big sponsors, lots of staffing and high tech support, and highly-paid athletes. Why is there so much money in sports? What does that mean for athletes? Fans? Our culture? The environment?
• How can these cyclists be so darn good? What's the science that goes into their nutrition, training, mental health?
• Is doping still a thing in cycling, or is the testing to effective and regulated now that there isn't a way for athletes to use performance enhancing drugs?
• Are extreme athletic endeavors (like ultra-marathons or cycling 100+ miles at top speeds for day and days in a row) healthy for humans? Are there any lasting adverse effects?
• Does watching elite athletes compete inspire people to become more active, or have other positive impacts?

As you can see, being curious about whatever you're interested in can lead down many possible research roads! While not all of these questions are going to work for an entire research paper, being curious is a great place to begin when formulating a research paper topic. 

Do Some Preliminary Searching 

Once I have some questions, I can do some quick preliminary browsing online to see which of these questions seem viable as a research topic. Meaning: have people been researching this topic or something related to it, and is there enough writing about it to support a research paper?

So how do we do preliminary research? I really appreciated my colleague Rachel's advice in her blog post about animal minds: set a timer. Spend maybe 10 minutes exploring your topic idea to get a sense of what is being said / written related to that idea. That should be enough time to give you a sense of the viability of the idea as a research topic, and/or might give you other related ideas that would be better. Good places to do preliminary research include a general web search about your question (using a search engine like Duck Duck Go or Google), a Wikipedia search related to your question, or you might do a quick search on the Articles tab from the library website.

I followed my own advice, and spent a few minutes poking around online to see what people where saying and writing about a few of the questions I generated. For example, here's a preliminary web search about the effects of big money in sports. This is a broader topic than looking at money in cycling or the Tour de France specifically, but I wanted to start bigger to get some ideas. Just this search alone helped me to see that this might be a very researchable topic, and also that I can likely limit it to one sport, and/or one kind of impact (impact on athletes, for example). 

Be Flexible

At this point, it's key to that I don't make up a specific research topic with a specific thesis *before* I see what's actually been studied and written about the topic. This is a common pitfall students can fall into - deciding in advance on a thesis before they've actually done any researching. Let the preliminary research you do help you narrow and hone your topic. 

For example, I might take a stance that watching elite athletes compete inspires viewers to exercise and become more active. But when I go to find sources that support my thesis, I actually find that the research is mixed: some people are inspired, but others are discouraged by their own lack of skills or motivation, or lack the resources (time, money, knowledge) to become physically active themselves. This is why being flexible while focusing your research paper topic is important.

Preliminary searching is where I also might find that some of my initial questions aren't accurate. With a quick online pre-search I found out that France's rate of deforestation is actually lower than many other countries, including the U.S. Perhaps because the Tour de France routes use roads in historically settled areas (where there has long been agriculture and car travel), I just wasn't seeing the forested and preserved areas of the country while watching the Tour. So, preliminary searching helped me to answer (and weed out as potential research paper topics!) some of my initial questions,

Mountains seen from Refuge de Guzettou by Tornasol7 is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Take a Deeper Dive

Once I've followed my own natural curiosity about something that interests me, and then done some preliminary research to see which of my questions might actually be supported by news stories, research, or other types of writing, I'm ready to focus on a research topic and search for sources. And I still want to stay flexible enough with my thesis that I can adjust or tweak it based on what I find and read about the topic.

If you are newer to research and want some tips on how to get started, there are some awesome quick videos here on researching, using the PCC Library, and evaluating the sources you find. And you can always get help from a PCC Librarian via chat, email, or by making a research help appointment.