Theses and dissertations

Overview

This overview describes the stages of a research project and is the same for many methodologies.

 
Details

Topic

1. Find a topic / Review the literature.
2. Refine the topic.
3. Express the topic as a problem to be solved and define it.
4. Express the topic as a question and revise it until it is accurate.
5. Say why it is significant.

Write a research plan

1. State your purpose and/or objectives.
2. State your expected outcomes.
3. Give the background to the problem.
4. Describe context (e.g. demographic, cultural, organizational, etc.).
5. Give theoretical assumptions (theoretical framework).
6. Identify any necessary permits.
7. Select the research design and write a plan:
1. Define the population.
2. Methodology
1. Select a research type (qualitative, quantitative, etc.).
2. Decide on methodology and data collection method(s).
3. Define what you want the tools to achieve.
4. Decide on a method for sampling respondents.
5. Define when to stop collecting data (e.g. data saturation).
3. Plan how you will store data:
1. Plan how you will organize data and label it consistently for easy retrieval.
2. Plan how you will maintain confidentiality.
3. Plan eventual destruction or deletion of data.
4. Plan a schedule.
5. Write a budget.
6. Estimate length of final report.
8. As you go:
1. Evaluate feasibility.
2. Check alignment.
3. Give reasons for your decisions; explain why you why you did.

Literature review

1. Annotated bibliography.
2. Literature review.

Write tools

1. Write tools to collect data*.
2. Get feedback on tools and revise as needed.
3. Field-test tools with sample population.
1. Revise tools as needed.
2. Check whether your method of recruiting and selecting respondents will get enough of the kind of people you need.
3. Check whether your method of analyzing data will work.

* Tools may be needed for the ethical approval.

Get approvals

1. Get project or academic approvals, e.g.
1. Short proposal (called a Prospectus).
2. Long proposal (forerunner versions of introduction, literature review, and methodology chapters).
2. Get ethical approval.
3. Apply for any permissions.
4. Apply for and get funds (if applicable).

* Some approvals may be required for other approvals. For example, if you plan to do research in a school, the school's approval is necessary for academic and ethical approvals.

Carry out the research plan

1. Do some pre-research to catch any issues in the field not found during the literature review.
2. Recruit respondents and get informed consent.
3. Collect data. (Qualitative data might need multiple iterations.).
4. As you go:
1. Give reasons for your decisions: Explain why you did it the way you did.
2. Identify any new items needing definitions.
3. Identify any new assumptions.
4. Give reasons for any adjustments to the plan.
5. Enter data into software.
6. Clean data (e.g. duplicates, correcting any spelling errors that would affect computer processing, non-usable).
7. Analyze data.

Writing it up

1. Report your findings.
2. Decide how you will use tables and graphs.
3. Discussion: Relate implications of your findings to existing theory.
4. Draw conclusions and make recommendations.
5. Update literature review.
6. Write the conclusion chapter.
7. Finalize the introduction chapter. (Include any assumptions and defintions that arose during writing.)

Collate it all and edit

1. Edit flow, structure, and logic.
2. Edit language style to be simple, direct, and concise.
3. Proofread spelling, grammar, punctuation, and layout.
4. Proofread for compliance with the style guide.
5. Final check: Polish the final document ready for submission or assessment.

Notes

1. Context may need one or more separate chapters if it is very long (country, culture, organization).
2. Qualitative research is iterative.
3. Mixed methods is done in two stages.
4. Trianguation requires multiple methods.
5. Pre-research is recommended but not usually required.
6. Some kinds of data do not need to be cleaned.
7. Many steps do not apply when the method is literature analysis. For example, no data is collected from respondents, and ethical approval is very simple.
8. Some activities are cyclical, e.g. reading and choosing a topic.
9. Dissertation students need their supervisor's approval for smaller steps.

Questions

1. Which parts could be done in a different order?
2. For each item:
1. Could it be omitted? If so, under what circumstances?
2. How long might it take to do?
3. What could go wrong doing it? How could you prevent or correct it?
4. As a number of words, how much writing might it require?
5. What is different between a dissertation and a journal article?

Your personal approach

Here’s the conundrum:

• You need to do lots of reading to be able to choose a topic.
• You need to choose a topic to be able to know what to read.

Which approach works best for you?

Some people see it as a holistic process. They read widely and make notes, and let their thoughts crystallize while they keep reading. Then they express their thoughts and their notes as a literature review.

Other people see it as a strict step-by-step process:
1. Read widely and make notes on your area(s) of interest.
2. Choose a specific topic.
3. Read more on your specific topic and make more notes.
4. Turn your notes into a literature review.

The reading stage

The first stage is to read in your area of research interest. Start with two or three significant works, and then read more widely when you're ready. These may be:
• significant books,
• keywords for specific websearches,
• names of major researchers,
• key publishers,
• key journals, or
• important websites.

During this stage, it is good practice to read a few dissertations from the same department that you are studying in. This will give you a good idea of its particular expectations, which might vary a little from other institutions. If you can't get dissertations from your department (for example, because your progam or department is very new), try to read dissertations from elsewhere on similar topics.

With thanks to Richard G. Berlach. 2010. Supervising a Research Thesis: A practical guide. Fremantle: Notre Dame University. P. 9.

Finding topics

Finding a research problem or a challenge for a project is primarily your responsibility, because developing a topic is one of the major skills to be learned. Your supervisor, however, will work with you to refine it if necessary.

When to start

The simple answer is, as early as possible. Some research degree programs won't even admit applicants without a clear idea of their particular research interests. Often, however, students go through several different topics before they find one that excites them and meets the criteria of a good topic.

You can start planning on a topic or specific interest during the coursework stages in your degree program, and use the assignments to explore topics. Choose your dissertation topic as early as possible. After that, write every coursework paper on it whenever you are permitted to choose the topic. Patterson advises, Pick a topic, and as you work throughout your classes, do assignments on the same topic so you can grow your library. Always keep a detailed spreadsheet of articles you use and key words so you can reference later. That will help you tremendously when it's time for your dissertation. I encourage all of the doctoral students to do that who I chair and they have said it was very helpful advice. (T.L. Patterson, 2018.) If you use your dissertation topic for assignments in those classes, you will also get feedback from different faculty members. In this way, you can do much of your research and literature review for your dissertation, as well as get feedback on it from each of your professors. This could also help you find dissertation supervisors interested in your topic.

If you take it one step further and recycle your own writing word-for word, you should check your institution's rules. Some institutions won't allow it at all, while others might require that you give references to avoid self-plagiarizing. On the other hand, some institutions actively encourage students to use their other doctoral work in their dissertations.

A research gap

A research gap is a specific topic or problem that has not been researched before. Research gaps come in different kinds, but most of these are ways of extending existing research:

1. It has never been studied before because it is a very new concept.
2. It has been studied but the research results so far have been contradictory or inconsistent.
3. It has been researched but the methodology is wrong or the results are invalid.
4. It has been researched but not yet studied:
1. for a certain period of time.
2. in a certain context.
3. in a particular population.
4. in a particular country or region.
5. with different assumptions.
6. in certain types of institutions.
7. with a certain methodology.

A research gap is suitable for new research if allows for new discoveries. For example, if research has been done in one population, research in a very different population may yield new findings. The research gap topic must also be significant. (Not all research gaps are significant.)

Some research gaps are not suitable for new research; they are almost the same as repeating research that has already been done, making it difficult to get new findings. For example, if research has been done in a population, research done in a population that is almost the same is unlikely to get new findings.

You can find research gaps in several ways. First, read widely in topics of your interest. Second talk to people. Third, research often creates new research topics. See the conclusion of research papers (journal article, dissertation, etc.); authors usually list new research topics resulting from the research in their paper.

How to start

The first and most obvious thing to do is to talk to people, especially subject matter experts and researchers. Some will give you good ideas, or spark good ideas in you. Even if their suggestions don't quite suit your interests or needs, they might lead to a suitable topic.

An early stage in almost all research projects is to do your reading. Read widely, starting with an internet search. Read with the purpose of getting lots of ideas on topics and the general state of the literature. Keep a set of useful notes on what you read, and list your sources so you can go back to them if needed. It is also a good idea to keep notes of your personal reflections and insights, because you might need them later on.

Your reading might follow a cycle for each a theme or potential topic: choose relevant aspects, read up on it, sharpen your focus, read more narrowly, decide whether to continue with it or explore another theme or topic.

You can also look for gaps in the literature, that is, topics where nothing has yet been written and are ripe opportunities for further research. If you find a gap, examine its meaning and significance. (Not all gaps are significant. Some are significant but do not have the potential for a dissertation; they require only a shorter work, such as a journal article.)

Make a list of as many ideas for topics as you can, and learn enough about them to decide whether to short-list them. Look for the best topics, and problems that are significant enough to act as the focus of the project. Getting ideas isn't always easy. You probably need some help, so here are some suggestions:

1. Look through the current literature in your field of interest. Look for contradicting evidence and studies of similar topics that have very different results. They indicate a topic that needs more research.
2. What really interests you? You need a topic that will sustain your enthusiasm and commitment over the long term. This will help help you when it feels really hard.
3. What sort of things do you most need to know?
4. Look for gaps in the research literature; these are topics that have not been written on yet. However, as As Dανid Tγlεr notes, a lack of research on a topic does not necessarily indicate that it is suitable.
5. Observe, and ask why. If you're careful, you might notice questions that need answering.
6. Follow up weak ideas. They might lead to much better ideas.

💡 Tip 1. Find a topic that tests the limits of the known.

Philips and Pugh advise testing the limits of known generalizations.* You can make a new contribution by extending an existing topic, so you don't need to look for a completely new topic. This kind of research gives you a good chance of success; you have a good opportunity to make an original finding, while using an existing conceptual system as its basis. It is not so difficult to define the research problem and the literature is available.

Find recent dissertations and journal articles in your area of interest. Look only in very recent documents (less than two or three years old), because research can progress very fast. Look at the end of each one, where writers often suggest topics for further research or mention gaps in the research literature. These suggestions are usually the results of the research in the paper, because a question answered usually opens up more new questions. If the article or dissertation is very recent, the suggestions for further research are also new.

1. The background and bibliography of the problem will give you a head start if you use or adapt one of those topics.
2. Many articles list their limitations, suggesting that you could explore beyond those limitations.
3. Some researches result in counter-intuitive results, that is, results that don't follow common sense. They might indicate good topics for future research.
4. You don't have to accept a suggested topic exactly as it is stated. It might inspire you to formulate a better topic.
5. Many articles mention specific contexts or populations, and it is an easy gap in the literature to identify. They imply (and often state) that you could conduct similar research in different contexts or populations, or with larger samples. Several traps:
• The topic might lack significance if it has already been researched in similar populations. For a journal article, the differences might be relatively minor, but to justify a study the size of a PhD dissertation, the differences need to be more major.
• You get a head start with methodology. However, if you only copy a methodology without modifying it, you probably won't satisfy your supervisors that you have the skills to create tools and implement an original methodology.

💡 Tip 2. Avoid original exploratory work. In this kind of work, one attempts to create a new theory of something where no conceptual framework already exists. This kind of research is the Nobel prize attempt; Philips and Pugh do not recommend it for the PhD because it has such a high risk of failure. It might even be very difficult just to frame a research question.*

*Pp. 45-47. Estelle M. Philips and Derek S. Pugh. 1987. How to get a PhD: A Handbook for Students and their Supervisors (Milton Keynes & Philadelphia: Open University Press).

💡 Tip 3. Consider a local study addressing a general problem.

If you find a general theoretical problem, you could do a local study relevant to that problem. Do not try to give the final word on the whole problem, but your work could provide firm evidence on a particular aspect and contribute to a solution. (Other researchers can then do more studies on the problem.)

💡 Tip 4. If you're busy, choose what will actually get done

If you're busy, you're probably wondering how this will work. Ask What will actually get done? The best topic is the one you are doing anyway. So why not add the extra rigor and make it your research topic? You should be enthusiastic about what you do, and you might be able to shrink-wrap your research around it.
Example 1. You might love to be out there meeting people doing some ethnography, but if you're teaching in an innovative program, then a teaching topic might work better.
Example 2. You might love to be in a research library figuring out how an important idea works, but you're on the front line doing grass roots stuff with people. An ethnographic topic might be a better option for you.
Example 3. You might have assigned time for study leave on a campus with a research library. So a library-based topic might work best. You're there anyway.

💡 Tip 4. What do you really need to do?

The next best kind of topic is the one you really need to do, whether you like it or not. It's really important and a deserving use of your energy. You can allocate time for a necessary topic, and if you need permission to use the time, it's easy to justify. After all it's necessary. And you could get enthusiastic about what's important.

After that is the topic you'd really love to do if you had the opportunity. But will you really get around to it? Fantasizing about ideal topics often doesn't help unless you have the time. As it's not really necessary, you might need to look above. Then again, it might just work if your enthusiasm will carry you through and you really can fit it in.

💡 Other tips

1. Please don't steal topics. If someone else suggests a topic and wants to write on it, then you may not write on that topic. However, it might stimulate you to write on another separate but closely associated topic.
2. Keep notes. When you discuss your ideas with others, it can be difficult to tell what was someone else's thought (that you conveniently pirated) and your own ideas that arose through their stimulation and questions.
3. Just because something is urgently needed doesn't mean that it is a good research topic. For example, theory might no longer be helpful, and the need could be for implementation studies. (Or vice versa.)
4. Your research might explore implementation issues.
5. You might be able to solve a problem in the real world if you can establish a theoretical basis.*
6. Avoid topics that speculate about what might happen in the future, unless you have specific knowlege of relevant methodologies.
7. Try to avoid describing problems without any view to what to do about them. It's like holding funerals rather than driving ambulances. This happens in some fields where lots of good research doesn't translate into benefits in practice. In these cases, you might be able to treat the problem as a given and evaluate proposed solutions.
8. Look at the theoretical models behind practice. However, theoretical studies don't always result in any conclusions about what works or doesn't work. (And what do you mean by works?) In highly interpersonal professions, personal factors can cause success and the theoretical models don't always make much difference.
9. Some topics might not be in the research literature but could be resolved in ten minutes by phoning a practicing professional. However, some rule of thumb assumptions might make good good research topics; you might be able to test them to find out whether or not they are true.
10. You can still take on controversial topics as long as you are fair and honest, not pushing a political agenda. The topic also needs longer-term relevance to a body of theory.
11. Avoid exploratory work. This involves attemptig to create a new theory of something where no conceptual framework already exists. This kind of research is the Nobel prize attempt; Philips and Pugh do not recommend it for the PhD because it has such a high risk of failure. It might even be very difficult just to frame a research question.*

*Pp. 45-47. Estelle M. Philips and Derek S. Pugh. 1987. How to get a PhD: A Handbook for Students and their Supervisors (Milton Keynes & Philadelphia: Open University Press).

Try these questions

These questions were designed to help find a viable research topic. If you can answer these questions with your topic in mind, then it is probably viable. If not, you might be better off moving to something else.

1. What is your main sub-discipline? (Sub-discipline is more helpful than discipline. For example, education is too broad to be helpul, but curriculum design, language teaching,and special education are specific enough to be helpful.)
2. What are the main phenomena of current interest in your sub-discipline? What are the main research questions concerning them?
3. Which of them interests you most?
4. Can you express it as a research question?
5. Can you express it as a research problem?
1. What is the problem?
2. Whose problem is it?
6. Is the topic within the boundaries of your main discipline? (This does not rule out interdisciplinary studies, as long as you have enough background. For example, a study in K-12 education might include developmental psychology.)
7. Are there different schools of thought in your your field of study? What are they? What are the main differences between them?
8. Are there competing paradigms in your field? What are they? Do you think that different paradigms in your field are incompatible?
9. What would happen if your research does not resolve the problem? (Significance)
10. What would happen if your research does resolve the problem? (Implications)
11. If it is a broad problem:
1. Could you narrow it down to a particular key aspect?
2. Could you select a particular polulation as research subjects?
3. Could you select several different polulations as research subjects that you could compare and draw wider generalizations?
12. Use your coursework to sift your various topics and interests. By the time you have finished with your coursework, you might know your dissertation topic and have worked out all issues.

Based on Snjν Kumαr Sααb and Gιna Crαft.

Developing your ideas

Develop your list of ideas on topics. You may want to delete some for which you see less potential, and add more that are more interesting or suitable. Then improve the weak ideas and eliminate those that lack potential or don't meet the requirements.

When you have some possible topics

Start keeping notes of your thoughts and observations as they arise. There will be too many of them to trust to memory, and some of these these notes will be extremely valuable later on when you write your dissertation.

The way to get a head start is to read widely in your area of interest before you even start the whole thesis or dissertation. As soon as you have a prospective topic, start keeping written notes so that you will be able to find resources that turn out to be important later on. You will also minimize the risk of unconscious plagiarism.

Find six or seven dissertations on topics similar to yours. Look through the literature review chapters to locate the major recurring themes. Look at the way they grouped items based on major themes, included the minor themes, and arranged everything in a readable order.

While you're looking through dissertations, look though the bibliographies for references to recent publications that are relevant to your topic, and look at the methodology chapters for ideas for your methodology.

Is it real research?

For a PhD, does the topic give you a good opportunity to make an original contribution to knowledge?

Your topic must be real research, that is, the problem must require some kind of theoretical inquiry. This means that many topics are not feasible as research.

• It's not research if … you only need to collect and report information. A researcher needs to think about (analyze) the information to achieve a purpose. It's not research if somebody else has done the research, and your job is simply to locate it in a library and compile it. Fieldwork is not necessarily research either if you're just collecting and collating information.
• It's not research if … you can look up the answer in a book. You are not doing research if your topic only requires you to restate what is already written. However, it is possible to use existing literature and put it together very differently or apply ideas in an innovative way.
• It's not research if … you could adequately solve the problem just by getting the advice of a practicing professional. It's not really research if experts already know the solution although they didn't write it down.
• It's not research if … you are just putting together some steps or writing a practical handbook. For this reason, most purely practical problems are not good research topics. (However, if you want to figure out how to do something, model-building is a valid means of research, and might be right for you.)

Is it one problem?

The problem must be unitary, although it may comprise several related smaller problems. Avoid pushing several separate problems together in one paper. You will be frustrated when your paper looks like two separate researches that are simply put together under one title. (Besides, your supervisor will probably identify the problem early and disallow it.)

Is it significant?

Show that the problem is really significant. This sounds obvious, but why put lots of effort into something unimportant? Is it important just to you personally or is it important to other people too? Is there some kind of benefit from doing such a study? Does it answer the question: “So what?” Why would others want to (or need to) read it? It is one of the main differences between a good dissertation and a merely adequate dissertation. Another current term for significant is high impact. This means that if something is published as a journal article, it will be read and quoted by other researchers.

There doesn't seem to be a general definition of significant, but look for these characteristics:

• It contributes to a wider purpose.
• It challenges a significant current view.
• It has wider implications, either theoretical or practical.

Significance is not the same as simply allowing original research. In some schools, supervisors approve all PhD topics that are suitable for original research, but the research is so insignificant that nobody wants to read those dissertations afterwards. Try to avoid topics that are no more than a gap in the literature, are of only local or short-term value, or are relevant only to certain interest groups.

If you are going for an academic career, consider topics that will improve your long-term career prospects.

1. Would the topic benefit your teaching area?
2. Would it create opportunities for further research and to publish research papers?
3. Would the institution value the topic highly? Would the topic benefit your career and make you more attractive to an employer?
4. What long term use will the topic have? (Some research topics have very short life spans and are irrelevant after one or two years when research moves on.)
5. Would your topic have long-term benefits? These might be:
1. wider theoretical implications,
2. wider practical implications, or
3. direct practical benefit.
6. If possible, consider interdisciplinary topics. It's like “Buy one get one free.” It will give you options in multiple fields, and is like getting two degrees for the work of one. For example, Joseph Bloggs wrote on the history of African-American education. When he graduated, he had a degree in history, education, and African-American culture. That's three in one.

What results?

Check that your research topic could have more than one possible result. (If only one result is possible, why do it?)

Personal considerations

1. Are you enthusiastic enough about the topic to maintain you if you get discouraged?
2. Will that kind of research work in your family situation? (The doctoral journey puts significant stress on a family, so this factor is especially relevant if you are married, and even more so if you have children or other dependents.)
3. If you are a part-time student, how well will a possible topic integrate with your job? With your family?

Is it feasible?

Many topics are simply not feasible, and the reasons can vary greatly:

• Require more research assistants than are available
• Require extra funds or equipment that are not available
• Require extensive travel
• Outside the research scope of the institution
• Outside the research scope of prospective supervisors
• Requires permits that are unlikely to be granted
• Requires library items will not be available
• Etc.

Feasibility: Is your institution paying for your study or giving you extra time?

1. What is their attitude: supportive, indifferent, or antagonistic?
2. Will they give you time? For how long? Or will they simply increase your teaching load anyway?
3. Is there any formal commitment in writing?
4. Would they push you along to finish more quickly?

Feasibility: Access and permissions

1. Will you need permission for what you propose? From whom?
2. Getting permission to do research in an organization can be very difficult, because people are afraid you will hang out their dirty washing, get access to confidential information, or waste their time. You will learn much more than you think about the organization by finding the entry channels and dealing with its people to gain admission. You are figuring out who the doorkeepers are and what the passwords are. It can be very frustrating at the time, because you are often working with inadequate information and might not know the doorkeepers. Be encouraged, and keep good notes. You will probably learn so much but don't quite know what it is that you're learning at the time, and then by the time you're in, it starts to feel so familiar that you no longer see the need to make notes. Like many cultural learning experiences, it will make much more sense in hindsight.
3. You might find that access is limited (perhaps for good reasons), but you can modify your topic according to the extent of access you have. Besides, when you're in and trusted, they might provide greater access.

Feasibility: Methodology

Although it is not usually best practice for the choice of methodology to drive the selection of the topic, you should consider whether the methodology is feasible as early as possible.

1. Will you use a qualitative or quantitative methodology? What kinds of methodology will you use? Do you need more than one?
2. If you would depend on recruiting subjects (e.g. interviewees), what is the feasibility that you will get them? Consider the risk of delay if you cannot recruit enough of them quite quickly.

Choosing and narrowing a topic

Narrowing your topic is an essential aspect of choosing a topic because it must be it is specific enough to be feasible and make real progress. A too-broad topic is no topic at all.

Avoid thinking This is my big chance, so I need to choose the biggest and most important topic possible. If its's research, you can't research everything possible in enough depth to draw defensible conclusions. You will do better if you are carefully focussed and can successfuly demonstrate your conclusions. Write down exactly what is in your topic and what isn't and how you tell the difference. State your reasons for choosing the aspect that you did. Most likely, your reasons will be in some way relate to being the best or most feasible way to achieve your purposes.

Of the many ways to narrow your topic, here are some of the most popular.

Narrow your topic by choosing a specific time period. (You will, however, need to say why you chose those points as beginning and end, and any transition effects.) For example, you could use defining elements such as:

• Since the end of World War II ...
• From the arrival of the first Europeans to the declaration of independence ...
• From the establishment of the branch office at Bongo to the first graduation of the Tinga College.
• From the first Council to the third General Assembly.

You can also narrow your topic by choosing a particular organization or group of organizations. For example:

• The General Association of Western Watugede
• The Tingo branch of HMF International
• The Society for Poverty Relief

Narrow your topic by defining the population more carefully. For example, instead of adults of voting age, you might consider adults of socio-ecomic group X.

Narrow your topic by choosing a particular geographical region, as long as it has some significance and is not an arbitrary delimitation. For example:

• The northern highlands
• The coastal regions
• The village of Wanago
• The western desert

If the geographical region is a village (whether rural or urban), it is probably quite integrated as a unit and the significance is probably obvious. Explain why you selected that particular village. In practice, you might find that the two main factors are access and the extent to which it might be normal and representative of other villages.

If the region is wider than a local community, it will probably coincide with other defining features, for example, transportation, ethnicity, industry, religion, historical background, or sets of cultural values. As a result, you will need to specify the defining features of the region and explain why you chose it as a way of narrowing your topic.

Narrow your topic by choosing a specific aspect. Aspect is a broadly inclusive term that means other ways in which a topic can be narrowed down to manageable proportions. For example, you could use defining aspects such as:

• conception of worldview
• social structures, such as extended family or village
• the teachings of a particular person or group.

These factors also relate significantly to the definition of the population. (q.v.)

A body of theory

You also need to relate your research to an existing body of theory, for at least two reasons:
• You need to work within the assumptions of a particular body of theory, even if you challenge or modify them.
• As original research, you must show that you contribute to a body of theory.

Different institutions handle this differently. For example, it might be called theoretical assumptions or conceptual framework. It might also be clear but implicit in other sections of the introductory material. Either way, you may not do a purely practical project that is not related to theory.

Research question and purpose

For many students, a title or topic statement is not yet clearly focussed enough for a research thesis or dissertation. They don't know exactly what their topic is, even if they can discuss it. Then they can say it, but still can’t write it down accurately.

You face the complicated art of simplification. It’s a matter of getting clearer and clearer. Write down your best versions, then think, edit and clarify. Think. Edit and clarify. Think. (You get the idea.) If it's longer than about fifteen words (or, even better, ten words), keep trying. Keep notes of ideas that you think are bad, because they might turn out to be good later on.

Research question

Then write your topic as one, clear, simple, focussed research question that has not been answered, that is, the question you are trying to answer through the proposed research. For quantitative research, you can write it as an hypothesis that is plausible but not yet known to be either true nor false. (An hypothesis is almost the same as a question because it can be expressed as a question: Is it true that [hypothesis]?)

Purpose statement: Broad problem and local research

You also need to to clarify the purpose of your research and express it in one, clear, simple sentence.

This whole problem and theoretical issue is normally broader than your narrowly-defined purpose. For example:

• You have identified a problem. The literature indicates that high school students across the country tend to have a specific kind of difficulty adjusting to university studies, even though the universities normally offer assistance. The evidence so far indicates that it has serious consequences during undergraduate studies and increases the risk that students will drop out. You also wonder if students in other countries face the same kind of problem.
• You realize that you cannot study all students across the country entering university.
• The purpose of your particular research is to evaluate universities' strategies to assist first year students in three different departments in three universities in Yourplaceville relating to that specific kind of difficulty.

Other examples:

1. Jeff found a particular problem in implementing a new national curriculum in his country. His research purpose and population was local, including only schools in his local school district.
2. Sarah found a suitable research problem in early adolescent psychology. She recruited respondents from her own city.
3. Ron found reason to believe that faculty members in universities across the country of Omniland had poor research skills. It was a national problem with cultural overtones. He restricted his purpose to one particlare kind of skill and restricted his sample to a selection of of faculty members from six local universities in his city.

That is, even though the problem is national or international, your research purpose and population can be local.

Adding detail

Revise your question and purpose until they are clear both to you and to others. (You could test then on some people to see if they mean to same to them as they do to you.)

When you have defined your main research question is one clear question, you can then add a list of sub-questions. In a bigger research project, this can help flesh out the supporting details of what you are trying to do. (If you have a hypothesis rather than a question, you can also add any sub-hypotheses.) In the same way, you can add sub-objectives to your purpose statement.

These are more specific aspects of the main question and purpose. Getting answers to them will help you to answer the big question and they are easier to research because they are more specific. In fact, these details can also help you to develop a strategy to conduct research and might be very helpful or even necessary for gaining approval.

Estimate length and complexity

Sometime during the planning stage, you need to estimate the length and complexity of the final work. For example, if it is a journal article, you will probably be restricted to 5,000 to 8,000 words. On the other hand, PhD dissertations in some fields are normally at least 80,000 words.

There is no simple formula for predicting the length of a research work, and researchers normally base their estimates on experience of previous research. Other than that, here are a couple of tips:

1. Plan an outline and discuss it with your supervisor.
2. The complexity of the topic will determine the complexity of the methodology. For example, a mixed methods approach or multiple hypotheses might be too complex to fit into a journal article, but might be feasible in a dissertation.
3. The literature review in a PhD dissertation must be comprehensive. As a rule of thumb in many disciplines, you might plan for 30-50 pages. However, in a journal article, space probably allows only the top ten most relevant articles for review. (You might be able to put anything else in comments such as cf. and See also.)
4. Make sure that the topic is feasible within the bounds of your degree program. As is frequently said, this is not the place to try for a Nobel prize.

Why some topics are rejected

1. The question has already been answered.
2. The proposed research won’t solve the problem.
3. The student's main premise is already known to be wrong and he/she has not suggested a realistic way to challenge it.
4. It would be too easy to solve the problem. If the topic were approved, the dissertation would not meet the standard to pass the degree.
5. The topic is not significant. It does not meet the criteria: So what?, Who cares?
6. The research would not contribute to the theory of its field. The usual reason is that problem is only practical and has little or no theory involvement. (Cf. “too easy.”)
7. The proposed topic is in essence two separate topics.
8. The student wants to collect information and believes that a big pile of data is enough. (He/she doesn't understand the nature of research.)
9. The student believes the main challenge is to explain something that is already known. (He/she doesn't understand the nature of research.)
10. The problem, purpose, and methodology are inconsistent. (Poor alignment)
11. The student wants to use the dissertation to learn a new field where he/she has very little academic or professional background.
12. The proposed research is very similar to a previous study done by someone else. This is most likely when students want to extend existing research to a different context or population.
13. The student proposes a major project that requires a team over a longer period.

Defining variables

A variable is anything that can vary or fluctuate between different sets of circumstances.

Variables are more important in quantitative positivistic research, in which two or more sets of circumstances are compared. In these circumstances, variables are tightly defined at the planning stage and accurately measured during execution. Irrelevant factors are neutralized by making the control and the experiment equivalent. This may be done by making them the same. In education and many health studies, it is done by randomly assigning members of the population to either the control or the experiment group.

In some kinds of qualitative studies, the purpose of the study might be to discover the variables and how they fluctuate between various naturally-occuring circumstances.