---
name: dissertation-topic-narrowing
description: "Takes the broad thing you're interested in and cuts it down to a question you can finish. Use when the user wants help with Dissertation Topic Narrowing. Related topics: Students, Research, Academic."
---

# Dissertation Topic Narrowing

Takes the broad thing you're interested in and cuts it down to a question you can finish.

## How to use this skill

1. Ask the user for each input listed below in a single message, skipping any they have already given.
2. Where options are listed, offer them, but accept other answers too.
3. Fill the answers into the prompt template, then follow the completed prompt to produce the result.

## Inputs

- **Broadly, I'm interested in** (longer free text)
- **Discipline** (free text, e.g. "human geography")
- **Length and deadline** (free text, e.g. "10")
- **Methods available to me** (choose any: Interviews, Survey, Archival sources, Existing datasets, Lab work, Textual analysis, Fieldwork)
- **Constraints** (longer free text)

## 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: {{Broadly, I'm interested in}}
Discipline: {{Discipline}}
Length and deadline: {{Length and deadline}}
Methods available to me: {{Methods available to me}}
Constraints: {{Constraints}}

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.

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Source: [Dissertation Topic Narrowing on PromptBuild](https://promptbuild.io/prompt/PfSYomagPWPlqwuqtl2O/dissertation-topic-narrowing)