Refining the research topic
Finding a topic
While we might come into a research degree with a general idea about what our topic is, it is likely that this will require refining in the first few months (and then revisiting it every six months or so). The topic is important because it defines the area of investigation and is what drives the critical review of literature. For example, it will help us to make decisions about which literature to read, the priority it should have in the writing, and how to structure the literature review.
Ideas for research topics are often gained from:
- Previous research (our own as well as that conducted by others)
- Topical issues
- The application of theory to practice
- Our intellectual interests
Note that:
- A topic is different to the title, although they are usually closely related in the early stages of the research
- The aim is to be as specific as possible (the focus will often keep developing until the research questions are clear)
- Some Schools/Institutes have a specific format for defining the topic, so it might be worth finding this out as soon as possible.
Components of a topic
Topics generally have three components:
- the subject
- the context or properties of the subject
- the variable or the perceived effect of variables (in this sense, the word variable is taken to mean the aspect of the research that is unpredictable or changeable)
In the following examples different styles have been used to indicate the Subject, Context, and Variable
- The factors that influence remand in custody
- The construction of pain within a surgical ward
- The organisation of allied health professionals in Australian general hospitals
- Decision making processes used by teachers in cases of child abuse
Some topics have a more complex structure, for example a split variable (1) or two contexts (2):
- Differences in lactic acid production by the skeletal muscle of males and females during exercise
- A fundamental investigation leading to optimisation of solid and liquid properties for electrowetting
Sometimes, the differences between the components are not always evident from a sentence written about a topic. For example the topic:
The influence of stakeholder perceptions of reputational value on corporate citizenship.
could have either ‘reputational value’ or ‘corporate citizenship’ as the subject or the context, with the ‘influence of stakeholder perceptions’ being the variable. It will depend on which body of knowledge the researcher perceives to be the one they wish to contribute to. That is:
- Does the researcher primarily want to say something about corporate citizenship, with reputational value being a particular area of interest within that body of knowledge? This would make corporate citizenship the subject and reputational value the context, or
- Does the researcher primarily want to say something about reputational value, with corporate citizenship being a particular interest area? This would make reputational value the subject and corporate citizenship the context.
Focusing questions
The following questions might be useful to think about when developing a working title:
- What is the research basically about? This will be the subject.
- What is the particular aspect or properties relating to that subject which interests us? This will be the context.
- What specific aspect of our subject in that context do we wish to
investigate? This will be the variable.
Another way of looking at this relationship is as a funnel, with the subject being the broader area of knowledge to which we wish to make a contribution; the context is the specific area within the subject that interests us; the variable is the focus for this particular research.
Link to Literature
Once the topic is refined and the components clearly identified we can begin the literature review. The subject of our topic will be the broad area of literature to which we wish to make a contribution to knowledge. It is therefore important that we have a good overview of the main theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches taken. Within that literature we will need to focus on anything that relates to the context of our topic as this is the specific area in which we will want to demonstrate our knowledge. We would then look for literature that links in with our variable. If this is available then this is the area that we would want to develop expert knowledge about. Sometimes this literature is limited or even non-existent, in which case we would need to know enough about the literature relating to the variable to define which aspects of it we will be using in the research.
In the example of:
The construction of pain within a surgical ward
we would begin with the literature on ‘pain’ to get a sense of the broad area within which the research is located. Within that literature we would look for anything that related to ‘pain within a surgical ward’ and analyse it more thoroughly. We would then look specifically for literature that discussed the variable – ‘construction’ – in relation to the subject and context. If we couldn’t find any literature that related all three components we might then look more generally at the ‘construction of pain’, and if there was still limited literature to draw upon we would need to read even more generally about ‘construction’ (a theoretical and methodological approach) in order to identify which aspects of it we would use in the research.
This approach to refining the topic can therefore help to make the literature review much easier to plan and conduct. Without knowing how the components relate to one another we risk treating them all equally, in which case our literature review would require us to find all of the literature on ‘pain’, all of the literature on ‘surgical wards’ and all of the literature on ‘construction’. This would considerably increase the volume of reading and note-taking that we would need to do.
Next steps
Once you have refined your topic and identified the components, it is time to start searching for the literature. The library has online tutorials to help with this process. In addition, it is worth contacting the academic library services team for your division or research concentration who can provide further guidance on appropriate resources.