Choosing a Research Idea

Choosing a PhD topic

Assuming that most students choose a discipline they have significant familiarity with then a specific topic can be determined by:

i)           Building upon a thesis completed at undergraduate or masters level.

ii)      Investigating specific problems encountered in practice. Those that have worked as practitioners can draw upon their experiences and rich insights.

iii)        Reading research and practitioner journals and magazines and becoming particularly interested in and knowledgeable about a problem area or emerging opportunity.

iv)        Discussions with a number of academics. This is a common way of settling on a topic area. Even so, this approach may take considerable time to work through and academics may not have the time to discuss at great length the merits of a range of potential topics.

Prospective students must be prepared to be flexible. Even if they have identified what they believe to be a good topic for a doctorate, it will still evolve from the original idea as discussions are entered into with academic supervisors. The academic supervisor with research experience will be able to refine and improve upon the basic idea which may change the topic focus to some extent. The candidate needs to trust the potential supervisor in this process.

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Research Questions

Research questions

Every doctoral thesis needs to have research questions or at least one main research question. A key overarching research question sums up the purpose of the study. Without such a question the research will lack a focus. The main research question is usually broken down into several sub questions that explore various aspects of the research problem. There are different types of research questions:

What? – This is usually more descriptive in nature. For example, What types of management styles do managers use? What questions find out what is being done, what is being used, or what is the most important. Answering the ‘what’ question is an integral part of doing research since we usually have to find out information about the research domain before we can explore more complex issues. Generally ‘what’ questions do not tackle complexity and so they need to be supplemented by other questions that investigate the research problem in more depth. 

Where? When? Who?
Where, when and who questions are similar to ‘what’ type questions as they aim to find out facts. These questions may only obtain descriptive data but are still an important part of research (Whetton, 1989).

Why?
Why questions attempt to uncover the underlying reasons for events and problems. They are suitable for the focus of doctoral studies since the answers are explanatory and can make a contribution to research in a given area. For example, answering the question: “Why do projects fail?” will require a great deal of investigation and analysis. It may need other questions answering such as “What type of projects fail?” “When do they fail?” and “Where do they fail?” However, the most interesting and complex question is “why do they fail?”

How?
 How questions can make a significant contribution to research because they can be phrased in an active mode such as: “How can we prevent projects from failing?” This attempts to provide a contribution through recommendations either in the form of a model or framework for project success.

Visitors to this Blog

United Kingdom (GB) 724 United States (US) 680 Australia (AU) 350 Malaysia (MY) 264 India (IN) 260 Philippines (PH) 188 South Africa (ZA) 156 Kenya (KE) 126 Canada (CA) 107 Pakistan (PK) 93 People come from far and wide to visit this blog. I have posted the top ten countries over the past year or so in terms of visitors. I am surprised that Australia, my own country, is so low. The UK and USA is no real surprise but then all of the countries, maybe apart from Canada, are a bit of a surprise. It shows that these countries are becoming increasingly concerned with research.

How to Complete a PhD

Several years ago I wrote a book explaining how to complete a PhD. It provides the methods, techniques and approaches to successfully completing a PhD within a fixed time frame. The book has been very successful and has obtained excellent feedback from students. It has helped people obtain scholarships, deal with supervision difficulties, write their thesis, and make a decision on whether to take a doctorate. The book is available from my web site: www.CompletePhD.com