How to choose research topics, in 8 steps

Whether for a class project or for more demanding research, these guidelines will help you.

The process of choosing a research topic, whether for a class project or to launch a more ambitious research project whose results can be published in journals, is a headache for many people. When you are clear about the question you are going to try to answer through qualitative or quantitative studies, at least you have a guideline to follow, but if you don't have that, it is common for many people to get stuck.

In this article we will see several tips that can help you to know how to choose research topicsespecially in those fields of knowledge related to psychology, social sciences and other similar fields.

How to choose research topics?

The problem of not having a research question is something similar to what happens in writer's block: the discomfort, frustration and anxiety produced by the fact of not going beyond that phase can lead, if time passes, to the self-fulfilling prophecy effect. That is, the person feels less motivated, tends to avoid thinking about it again, or carries out unsystematic searches without the hope of finding anything.

This is why it is important not to let the problem become entrenched and to choose not to not to carry out this search for research topics in a chaotic manner, to try to follow a method with a methodological approach.and try to follow a method with its phases. The simple fact of noticing that even if you do not yet have a question from which to start the project, you go through phases, helps you not to waste time and at the same time motivates you to continue progressing.

1. Search in research compilers

In many places on the Internet, the conclusions of quality research are periodically published. It is very helpful to make a sweep through these web pages or Twitter profiles (a place where many researchers are dedicated to disseminating their contents or those of their colleagues) in order to, in a short period of time, to have clues from which you can continue your search..

2. Select the most interesting topics

From the previous step, choose the ones you are interested in and order them according to the order them according to the degree to which each one of them motivates you..

3. Select keywords

Each research topic contains a semantic tree of keywords. For example, in psychology there are the concepts of bias, cognitive dissonance or heuristic. All of them create a nebula of ideas from which a question can be posed. For example, you can enter them in search engines for scientific articles, such as Google Scholar.

4. Read the first sections of the papers

The vast majority of papers published in scientific journals have, in their first pages, a commentary on the latest findings and a section summarizing the status of a particular line of research, presenting competing hypotheses and explanatory models, and highlighting the evidence for and against each of the ideas.

In this way you will get a more global idea of what the topic is about and what kind of information you can count on to conduct research in that direction.

5. Look for the amount of information available

Some lines of research are more developed than others. Even if there is a topic you are very interested in, there may not be enough information available to research it with the means you have. Look for meta-analyses on the topic, quality research on that starting question, etc. on that starting question, etc.

6. Imagine interactions between variables

From what you know about a particular topic, imagine an original question that has not been directly addressed by other researchers. For example, you can see if a phenomenon studied by others is true in a region of the planet that no one has focused on before.

7. Ask a question

One of the fundamental aspects of knowing how to choose a research topic has to do with transforming the topic you are interested in into a question.. Only in this way will you establish in a concrete way what your research will be about: pointing out what is the knowledge gap that we will try to fill with new information. This way there will be no ambiguities and no confusion when developing the project.

Technically, you already have a research topic, but there is still one more step to choose.

8. Decide if you have what it takes

Is it realistic to do research on it? Some topics are relatively easy to deal with, as there is a lot of data available from other sources, but sometimes you have to pay for access to this information, or it doesn't even exist and you have to collect original information yourself using hundreds of questionnaires or equally expensive methods. Decide if it pays off.