Why would it be beneficial to do some brief topic hunting during the brainstorming phase of a research paper?
a: to skip the prewriting stage and go directly to drafting
b: to make sure you and your friend don"t have the same topic
c: to get ideas and to see if there is enough information
d: to complete the core of your research for the paper

I would say C because any research paper I am doing I always get ideas by looking up the topic and seeing if there is enough information to even write a 5 paragraph essay.
But try putting the question into google and see what it comes up with too and also think about the question and try to answer it yourself, see what you came up with and compare it to others that answered the question