How to: Choose a topic and craft a research question

First things first...

1. Develop a topic that will hold your interest. Determine what resources you have available—time, money, people—and choose a topic that isn’t too resource-intensive. You’ll be spending at least a year on a dissertation (or any large research project), so it has to be compelling enough to keep your attention.

2. Read everything you can on the subject. Go outside of your required class readings and you might just run across something that helps you develop the framework for your research.

3. Find a theoretical basis to support your topic. Do some research to find theories that fit your study perfectly.  

4. Look for a niche in which you can make a difference. Be sure you’re really offering something new to the field. You can’t change the world with one dissertation, so focus on the crux of what you want to explore and add something new to the field.

5. Let yourself shift gears. Frequently, the topic you start with deviates from your original plan as it evolves.

6. Fine-tune your topic based on input from others. Take every opportunity to seek constructive feedback and incorporate advice from experts.

7. Study your passion. Start with a subject you’re passionate about and then look into the existing research conducted to help determine the next logical step.

8. Find available data. Use a previously conducted study to capture comparative data and develop good working relationships with the people who are in charge of that data. You may also need a written legal agreement—so sort through those details first.

9. Build a good committee. Interview your committee members first to ensure they understand and are passionate about your goals. After all, it would be impossible to do the work alone. With the support of your committee, you’ll have a great team on your side.

10. Only ask questions that can be answered. Use your rich, powerful data to your full advantage, and stick within its confines. Also, determine early on if there are any biases in the data. Your goal is to create an airtight study.

11. Think about your work as part of an international dialogue. What else is published on your topic? Understand your data in a broader context and be actively engaged.

12. Take advantage of the resources available. Use the resources offered by your university to help with your decision making. This might include your research center or applicable seminars.

13. Tap into your peers. Meet with each of your cohorts and ask them to weigh in on your topic and plans for research.

14. Consult your mentor. A good and experienced mentor can be your best resource for providing straightforward advice and direction for moving forward.

• Aspect -- choose one lens through which to view the research problem, or look at just one facet of it [e.g., rather than studying the role of food in South Asian religious rituals, study the role of food in Hindu ceremonies, or, the role of one particular type of food among several religions].
• Components -- determine if your initial variable or unit of analysis can be broken into smaller parts, which can then be analyzed more precisely [e.g., a study of tobacco use among adolescents can focus on just chewing tobacco rather than all forms of usage or, rather than adolescents in general, focus on female adolescents in a certain age range who choose to use tobacco].
• Methodology -- the way in which you gather information can reduce the domain of interpretive analysis needed to address the research problem [e.g., a single case study can be designed to generate data that does not require as extensive an explanation as using multiple cases].
• Place -- generally, the smaller the geographic unit of analysis, the more narrow the focus [e.g., rather than study trade relations in West Africa, study trade relations between Niger and Cameroon as a case study that helps to explain economic problems in the region].
• Relationship -- ask yourself how do two or more different perspectives or variables relate to one another. Designing a study around the relationships between specific variables can help constrict the scope of analysis [e.g., cause/effect, compare/contrast, contemporary/historical, group/individual, child/adult, opinion/reason, problem/solution].
• Time -- the shorter the time period of the study, the more narrow the focus [e.g., study of trade relations between Niger and Cameroon during the period of 2010 - 2020].
• Type -- focus your topic in terms of a specific type or class of people, places, or phenomena [e.g., a study of developing safer traffic patterns near schools can focus on SUVs, or just student drivers, or just the timing of traffic signals in the area].
• Combination -- use two or more of the above strategies to focus your topic more narrowly.

NOTE: Apply one of the above strategies first in designing your study to determine if that gives you a manageable research problem to investigate.

You will know if the problem is manageable by reviewing the literature on this more specific problem and assessing whether prior research on the narrower topic is sufficient to move forward in your study [i.e., not too much, not too little].

Be careful, however, because combining multiple strategies risks creating the opposite problem--your problem becomes too narrowly defined and you can't locate enough research or data to support your study.

Image Source: https://studylib.net/doc/8873696/chapter-2-asking-and-answering-sociological-questions

Depending on the scope of your research, you may identify just one question or several. You may also have one primary research question and several secondary questions or sub-questions that relate to the same problem.

Most research questions can be answered with various types of research, but the way you frame your question should help drive your research design choices.

Source for this box: McCombes, S. (2022, May 7). Developing strong research questions: Criteria and examples. Scribbr. https://www.scribbr.com/research-process/research-questions/