Sometimes the research topic or question you originally come up with needs to be changed a bit to be researchable. Take a look at this list and consider if any of these might be an issue with your topic or research question.

This is the most common problem students have. They are interested in big issues like climate change, the impact of technology on people's lives, racism, mental illness, or homelessness. But those topics are way too large for a college-level research assignment, so you need to focus on a more specific aspect of it.

Maybe you want to look at the issue of affordable housing in your specific neighborhood in Portland, but there might not be enough information out there to support it. You often don't need to entirely give up your topic, just zoom out your focus a bit.

Good research topics are ones where there isn't just a simple answer. For example, maybe you want to research whether children need love. The answer to that is obviously YES, THEY DO and you're not going to find any source that suggests children don't need love. Also, love is not something you can easily measure. You might be able to tweak your search to perhaps focus on the impact of secure (or insecure) childhood attachment on mental health.

You might be interested in a very new issue or a topic that people simply aren't studying and writing about yet. If you need to find sources for your project, you can't choose something that no one is writing about.

Test your current topic in Google News and/or Google Scholar. Try searching for your topic in one or both of the search engines. Look at the first page or two of results. Do they look relevant to what you're looking for?

If not, or if very few look relevant, I'll share some strategies on the next page that will help you make your topic more researchable.

Below you'll see two examples of searches on the topic do children need love? As you can see, the results are not very relevant.

Maybe I won't find much of use on the question of whether children need love, because obviously YES THEY DO. But that doesn't mean I have to totally change my topic. I can think of a focus that people might be researching and writing about. I could think about some measurable aspects or results of love like affection, expressions of appreciation and gratitude, or attachment.  I could focus on the impact of secure childhood attachment on mental health or the impact of insecure childhood attachment on mental health.