Choosing your own topic
Let's assume that your course instructor for a course on introductory recreation and leisure wants you to pick a particular recreation activity, or group of related activities, and then discuss how to effectively develop these for a particular community. Pick a topic that interests you, or that you have some knowledge of. Think about what you would need to have in place to be able to provide such activities. Draw on your own experiences, your readings, and just general knowledge.

For example:

Activity	How to develop
sport camps (e.g., basketball)	reading recreation literature for ideas copying other successful programs building on other similar existing camps proposing new programs to community groups

Stating your research questions
Try to be as open minded as possible at this early stage of inquiry. What you are attempting to do now is find background information on your general topic, so keep an open mind and explore your topic. Run with any ideas that come to you and see where they lead. For example, you might ask yourself the following:

• What needs do these camps satisfy in the community?
• How do other similar types of camps operate?
• What kinds of communities are likely to support such camps?
• Are their demographic or social factors that might influence community support of such camps (like social class, peer groups, income levels, learning from parents and/or siblings, etc.)?
• What motivators are involved?

Refining your topic
At this preliminary stage start thinking about how you will go about finding out background material for your topic. Think about keywords and concepts (like recreation programs, day camps, summer camps, community sports, etc.) that might be used to look for material.

Depending on your course and your assignment instructions the choice of topics will vary considerably. You may be asked to look at a historical perspective of a particular topic, or compare two or more different topics, or even discuss a research design for a particular topic. No matter what it is the method of going about obtaining background materials is similar.

The remaining tutorial modules and example pages in this series will help you with more specific search strategies and suggest library sources that you should be familiar with.