Topic iteration

Type				Team Size
Me, Myself and I	Group Collaboration	The Academic System	Software	1	2-10	11-30	30+

   

Finding and finalizing the topic of your thesis is the first big step regarding its content. This step can already feel huge and overwhelming and take longer than expected. In the following you will get tips on how to start researching literature on a topic as well as what is important when deciding on a topic, so you will hopefully get through this step smoothly and choose a topic you can work on well for the next weeks and months.

From the idea to the topic

This phase in your thesis is the time when you use the broader topical aim that you have, and try to make it concrete. Now, you should contact your supervisor and also intensify iterating your topic with your peers. Finding your topic is a long process that may start with a vague idea, may be heftily trimmed into place by a potential supervisor or someone else experienced in the topic, and may ultimately require a lot of iterations.

Framing - research - question

Framing a research question is exactly how the wording already prescribes: You surround, just as a you frame a painting with some parts of wood that allow you to basically differentiate a picture from its surrounding. You ask a question, and this question is about research. These are the three parameters, frame, research, question. Now let us break these three components down point by point and let us see how we can frame our research question best.

Reading before you can frame

A suitable topic should be built on scientific literature, maybe not to the really precise inner core, but at least in terms of previous studies going into a similar direction. If a topic is flooded in literature, finding a niche or research gap can become difficult and the topic might not be very emerging but rather dead chewed topics where your contribution may not add anything new anyway. However, it can be equally difficult if no literature exists about a specific topic. How do you approach the topic, which theory or conceptual approach can you build upon? All this makes it very hard to engage with something totally new, no matter how appealing it may be.

We all stand on the shoulders of giants. Any given research question is based on previous research. No research is an island. Whatever we do as researchers, we have to start with what was done before. Reading is the most essential skill of any person new to research. Balance is key to this end. If you read everything there is on a specific topic, then you are in for a long ride. However, if you miss something important that has been published before, you basically reinvent the wheel, which is a waste of your time and the time of your readers. Hence make sure that you get the main approaches that have been attempted before, and the main knowledge that has been gained. You will eventually have to make a cut at some point, otherwise you would basically read everything there is, since almost everything is connected. People often get dragged down by all the details they read in the literature. This is why it is so important to decide on what you think would work in your specific case. This decision could be best taken by someone with experience, but remember that failure is an important part of science. Failure is not the opposite of success, but a steppingstone! Pragmatism is also important, since it is very easy to start a thesis, but remarkably difficult to end. Do not get dragged down on what could potentially work in your thesis, but instead try to focus on what will most likely work, and is also feasible.

What about reading strategies? Reading is a failure-prone process that is often completed reluctantly or leads to inadequate results. Sometimes a perceived “reading problem” may indicate that it is better to put a text aside (e.g., high density, but little worth knowing). In other cases we simply need a suitable reading strategy to decode the meaning of a text, to understand and classify the knowledge it contains. Scientific reading is always active and pursues a goal. Each reading strategy pursues its own reading goals and fulfills a reading process. Therefore you should identify goals in advance to approach the text with specific expectations.

During the literature search, it can therefore help to clarify exactly what information you want to look for. The structure of the Bachelor's thesis provides a good starting point and the following questions can help you to focus on the relevant information. Introduction: Why is the topic relevant? Who has already written about it? What are important definitions, theories and concepts? Methods: Orientation with other studies that have used the same or similar methods. Discussion: What other perspectives are there on my topic? How do my results fit with the results of other studies?

Topic triangulation

Try to focus on what is specific for your topic and for the area you focus on, thereby gaining some insights about the respective context. Context knowledge matters to this end, because only if you know the context of the specific topic allows you to aim with the right ratio of focus and distance. Why both? If you look too close, your knowledge is too singular, too specific, or just beyond the point, or any point at all. If it is too broad, it may be generic, trivial, and thus again beyond any point whatsoever once more. Ideally, you work in a specific system. This may be a group of people, and institution, or any other constructed entity. This allows you to add specificity to your research topic. You aim at creating knowledge about this system, people or entity. Hence your framing can be about a specific topic, an entity or institution, but also about a theory. What matters to this end is to have the right angle. Did you every try to look at a painting from the side? Basically, this does not work, because the framing will block the view, and you do not see the picture. In framing your research, this is basically the same. You need to have the same angle, not from the side, but up front. Within research, we often look at a topic or problem through a certain theory or a method. Try to fill a triangle with with ideas on a) topic areas, b) connected theories and c) potential methods. Especially the topic exercise is important: break abstract topics down to smaller parts and definitions. If the topic in your head is "Climate Change", you have to leave the abstract word and think about what it actually means, what specific aspects could be "researcheable" etc. While testing theory is restricted to deductive research, regarding a research question our framing and viewpoint is more open minded. It is thus not restricted to the yes/no categories of a hypothesis, but instead allows us to ask a broader question that allow us to create contextual and novel knowledge. From this trilogy of science - topic, theory and method - ideally two are rather clear and the third is then in the focus. If you want to work on a specific topic that is vague, the conceptual basis and the methodological approach should be rather clear. Working on methods empirically demands a well understood topic and a good command of the conceptual foundation. Researchers often tend to hopefully become more innovative over time, which could lead them to combine a rather new method with a vague topic, but this can create problems at such an early stage of your career.

The question

Our research question may start with a “How”, thereby examining explanations of dynamics or patterns ("in how far" is also possible here). “Where" questions will typically try to spatially locate phenomena, while “when” questions examine dimensions of temporality. “Why” questions often try to go deeper into reasonings and examine patterns that may in one extreme be pretty foundational, yet can in other extreme cases be borderline trivial. “What” question are one last example of research questions that can either be rather procedural or again end up being vague. Some research question may avoid such question formats altogether, which is for instance true for much of the realms of descriptive research. Yet another example is critical research, which may not be occupied with questions at all, but instead offer a critical reflection or specific viewpoint. What should be however clear is that research questions can be at least partly answered, or we may conclude that based on the current design and data the research question cannot be answered. This is perfectly ok, and a part of scientific research. However, research is often biased towards positive or even potentially exciting research, while researchers rarely report that they could not find out anything at all, and the their initial research question remains unanswered.

Research framing in general

Testability and rejection is actually a key criteria that should differentiate knowledge gained through science from mere opinions, because we all can have all sorts of opinions, but scientific empirical knowledge can be tested and can also be falsified, refined or changed if it turns out to be wrong. Hence wrong facts can be debunked, while it is really hard to debunk a conspiracy theory that is based on mere opinions. In addition to the process of testing or examining within the framework of research is it possible and indeed perfectly normal that our knowledge evolves, this is actually what science is all about. Consequently, the question we try to examine should represent a scientific process that can be handled by us. We cannot come up with a research question that is perfect in terms of everything but the fact that it is impossible to conduct it.Our research question does not need to be a breakthrough that changes the whole world, but more often than not is a stepping stone in the bigger picture that our united research is working to unravel. Our framing is a piece of what we call reality, and building on a respective theory or theoretical foundation may help us to focus our research and create knowledge that is specific and not generic. Equally can a contextual focus or specification help within a research question to understand what we work about, or where our sample entity is located or rooted in. All this is part of our framing. Naturally, the framing also needs to be clear. If your wording or different parts of the frame are too many, then other researchers will not be able to follow. Hence we need to make sure to use fewer words instead of too many, and each word should be chosen carefully. Taken together, we may ask indeed questions in our research questions, but these should be specifically frames, state the respective context, root deeply in previous research and knowledge, be neither generic nor hyper-specific, need to be feasible and allow for a scientific conduct that can be documented, reproduced, or both. Specific theories allow for refined viewpoints, and empirical research may benefit from stating where it is conducted. The most difficult challenge in framing a research question is then to decide what to include and what to exclude. Researchers make choices and need to focus. Creating a research question demands to keep the most important information and omit all that is not central to the initial question. It takes practice to get good at framing research questions. Be patient, and keep going.

Links & Further reading

Tools

• Scopus: This database can be used for a detailed literature research via variable search options. For example you can search for a specific kind of literature (article, chapter of a book, paper) or a „source title“ (specific journal). If you search for sustainability science, Scopus will look for „sustainability“ AND „science“. Instead you need to use quotation marks („sustainability science“), if you want to find something about the research field of Sustainability Science. The authors are always linked and further publications can be found on their profiles. The profiles contain information about their institute they are affiliated to. There you can also find further publications that might be useful for your literature search.

Papers

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The author of this entry is Henrik von Wehrden.