How to choose research topics, in 8 steps
The process of choosing a research topic, whether for a class project or to launch a more ambitious research whose results can be published in journals, is a headache for many people. When the question that is going to be answered is clear by means of qualitative or quantitative studies, at least there is already a guideline to follow, but if you do not have that, it is common for many to become blocked.
In that article we will see several tips that help when it comes to knowing how to choose research topics , especially in those areas of knowledge related to psychology, social sciences and other similar fields.
- Related article: "The 15 types of research (and features)"
How to choose research topics?
The problem of not having a research question is something similar to what happens in the writer's block: the discomfort, frustration and anxiety produced by not going through that phase can cause, if time passes, generate the effect of self-fulfilling prophecy. That is, the person feels less motivated, tends to avoid thinking about it again, or makes unsystematic searches without the hope of finding anything.
For this reason it is important not to let the problem get entangled and opt for do not chaotically perform this search for research topics , try to follow a method with its phases. The simple fact of noticing that even if you do not have a question from which the project starts, it goes through phases, it helps you not waste your time and at the same time it motivates you to keep progressing. Below you will find a proposal in this sense.
1. Search in research collectors
The findings of quality research are published periodically in many places on the Internet. Doing sweep of these web pages or Twitter profiles (where there are many researchers who are dedicated to disseminating their contents or those of their colleagues) is of great help for, in a short time, have clues from which the search may continue .
2. Select the most interesting topics
From the previous step, choose those for which you feel interest and arrange them according to the degree to which each of them motivates you .
3. Select the keywords
Each research topic contains a semantic keyword tree. For example, in psychology there are concepts of bias, cognitive or heuristic dissonance. All of them create a nebula of ideas from which a question can be posed. For example, you can enter them in search engines for scientific articles, such as Google Scholar.
4. Read the first sections of the papers
The vast majority of papers published in scientific journals have, in their first pages, a comment on the latest findings and a section in which the state in which a specific line of research is found is summarized, proposing hypotheses and explanatory explanatory models, and highlighting the evidence for and against each of the ideas
In this way you will get a more global idea of what the subject is about and with what kind of information you can count on to carry out an investigation in that sense.
5. Find the amount of information available
Some lines of research are more developed than others. Even if there is a topic that interests you a lot, it is possible that you do not have enough information to investigate with the media you have. Search meta-analysis on the subject, quality research on that starting question, etc.
6. Imagine interactions between variables
From what you know about a particular topic, imagine an original question that has not been addressed directly by other researchers. For example, you can see if a phenomenon studied by others is fulfilled in a region of the planet that no one has focused on before.
7. Ask a question
One of the fundamental aspects of knowing how to choose a research topic has to do with Transform the topic that interests you into a question . Only in this way will you establish in a concrete way what your research will be about: pointing out what is the knowledge gap that we will try to fill with new information. In this way there will be no ambiguities and confusion will not occur when developing the project.
Technically, you already have a research topic, but to finish choosing there is still one step left.
8. Decide if you have the necessary
Is it realistic to investigate about that? Some topics are relatively easy to deal with, since there is a lot of data available from other sources, but sometimes you have to pay for access to this information or they do not even exist and you have to collect original information yourself through hundreds of questionnaires or equally expensive methods. Decide if it makes up for it.
