Developing a research topic

When developing a research topic some of the following questions are useful to identify the right subject to investigate further when writing a thesis:

Does the topic motivate you to research? How might the research inform a reader, what will they learn? How might the inquiry connect with previous established research?

It is also important to consider why your research is relevant to the field of study and how it informs an audience.

The research should also demonstrate the following

Enquiry: engagement in practice informed by comprehensive analysis and evaluation of diverse complex practices, concepts and theories 

Knowledge: critical analysis and synthesis of a range of practical, conceptual and technical knowledge(s) 

Process: experiment and critically evaluate methods, results and their implications in a range of complex and emergent situations

Communication: articulation of criticality, clarity and depth. Communicating a diverse range of intentions, contexts, sources and arguments appropriate to your audiences

Realisation: advancing the personal, professional and academic standards of production 

Proposal Structure:

First establish that components of the Thesis structure:

Title page

Abstract

Acknowledgements

Contents page(s)

Introduction

Literature review (critique of materials/sources and methods)

Methodology (all approaches, and methods applied to develop findings)

Themed topic chapters

Results (necessary, depending on research methods)

Discussion or findings

Conclusions

References

Appendices

Proposal objectives:

It should be demonstrated how and why their research is relevant to their field. it should also demonstrate that the work is necessary to filling a gap in the existing body of research on their subject; underscoring existing research on their subject, and/or adding new, original knowledge to the academic community’s existing understanding of their subject.

establish the following: Audience and purpose (ask questions and write them down they could be used as titles for themed topics, can you answer them?)

the proposal should include:

The research methodology you plan to use. How will you approach the study and reach supported findings. The tools and procedures you will use to collect, analyse, and interpret the data you collect. An explanation of how your research fits the budget and other constraints that come with conducting it through your institution, department, or academic program.

The thesis proposal structure

introduction: (better to write it once you have done everything) achieves several goals – introduces the topic, states your problem statement and the questions your research aims to answer and provides context for your research.

background significance : why, what motivates you?, define the existing problems, provide the reader with the information they need. Suggest what you not covering, how you conduct the research as well as clearly define the existing problems your research will address. By doing this, you’re explaining why your work is necessary—in other words, this is where you answer the reader’s “so what?” 

literature review: introduce all the sources you plan to use in your research. This includes landmark studies and their data, books, and scholarly articles. It includes a collection of sources you chose and explains how you’re using them in your research. 

research design, methods and schedule: discuss your research plans. It follows the literature review and includes the type of research you will do (qualitative or quantitative, are you collecting original data or working with data collected by other researchers?, is it an experimental, correlational or descriptive research, the data you are working with, the tools you will use to collect data; are you collecting original data or working with data collected by other researchers?). It should also include the tools you’ll use to collect data.

It can be seen as a system to use to bring everything together to inform the reader of what is your objective is.

supposition and implication: even if you don’t know your findings, this should be the part where you write what you hope to achieve and want to reveal to the reader. have a clear idea of how your work will contribute to your field other than how will your work will create the foundation for future research and the problems your work can potentially help to fix.

it does not state the specific results you expect rather states how your findings will be valuable.

This section is perhaps the most critical to your research proposal’s argument because it expresses exactly why your research is necessary. 

conclusion: bringing back to the readier what research objective is, summarises the research proposal and reinforces your research’s states purpose.

Your conclusion briefly summarises the research proposal and reinforces your research’s stated purpose. This will be more considerably significant in the final thesis having completed the investigation.

bibliography : list of sources and their authors, include a filmography, telegraphy being analysed or referenced.

Key steps:

specific of what is is that you are doing,

Establish a theme or topic. This may develop and refine as you research but will be important to establish precisely before completing all necessary research and establishing the final structure. 

•Introduction, statement on the Issue, topic to be investigated and purpose of report 

•Methodology; describe the methods that you used for your research. You will also need to demonstrate why you chose to use them and how you applied them.

•Critical Review of literature informing the research and how you used your sources to investigate the topic and achieve objectives or answer the question

•Investigation of options based on evidence. Main discussion and findings with citations. Sub-headings are recommended

•Conclusions or recommendations to the audience based on findings 

“Conducting a Literature Review” by Dr Jennifer Rowley notes:

• A literature review is a summary of a subject field that supports the identification of specific research questions.

• Creating the literature review involves the stages of: scanning, making notes, structuring the literature review, writing the literature review, and building a bibliography.

• The objective of the literature review is to summarise the state of the art in that subject field.

• The concluding paragraphs of the literature review should lead seamlessly to research propositions and methodologies.

• Articles in scholarly and research journals should form the core of the literature review. Most such articles will be written by researchers. They will include a literature review, a discussion of the research methodology, an analysis of results, and focused statements of conclusions and recommendations. Scholarly and research journals may also include review articles that provide a review of all of the recent work in an area. They will include a bibliography that may be an invaluable source of reference to other work in the area, even if the review does not match a proposed research topic precisely.

• Concept mapping is a useful way of identifying key concepts in a collection of documents or a research area (understand theory, concepts and the relationships between them). Their purpose is to assist the researcher to develop their understanding.

• There are five steps in the creation of a literature review: scanning documents, making notes, and structuring the literature review, writing the literature review, and building the bibliography

• The literature review should integrate in a coherent account three different types of material:

• a distillation and understanding of key concepts

• quotations, in the words of the original writer.

• a distillation of positions, research findings or theories from other authors, but written in your words.

Bibliography

Rowley, J. and Slack, F. (2004), ‘Conducting a Literature Review’, Management Research News 27(4), pp. 31-39