Dissertation Topic Narrowing
By Wei · Published · Updated
Takes the broad thing you're interested in and cuts it down to a question you can finish.
Tags: Students, Research, Academic
Prompt template
I need to turn a vague interest into a dissertation question that is actually doable in the time I have. Broadly, I'm interested in: [textarea: describe it however loosely] Discipline: [text: e.g. human geography] Length and deadline: [text: e.g. 10,000 words, submit in March] Methods available to me: [multi: Interviews, Survey, Archival sources, Existing datasets, Lab work, Textual analysis, Fieldwork] Constraints: [textarea: ethics approval timelines, no funding, limited access to participants, anything else] Propose four candidate research questions at different levels of ambition, from safe to risky. For each, say what the scope actually commits me to: how much data, from where, and the step most likely to take longer than I expect. Then tell me which one you'd pick given my deadline, and what I'd have to give up to attempt the most ambitious one instead. If any of them can't realistically clear ethics approval in my timeframe, say so now rather than in three months.