An overwhelming topic selection task can be pursued smoothly considering some particular steps...
The topic that you are choosing to question your research ought to tie various tortuous ideas wandering in your mind. The task of finding out an insightful, all-encompassing topic is overwhelming; Luse et al. (2012)stated that, “When setting out to develop a research project, many students begin by jumping straight to a solution to a problem before they have given the problem adequate thought or sometimes before they even have a well-defined problem at all” which regards research topic. Accordingly, the novice authors should be mentally ready to involve in the complexity of research development.
For initiating the task, in case of possessing authority on choosing the topic area, single it out based on your interests and motivation to acquire more concerning the field; otherwise, you have to have a lengthy reading with the preselected field. With regard to the first condition, you can get start with a general topic in which you would like to have investigation since during wandering around the subject, you can find your specific research area to manage upon.
Once you identified the exact field of study, and you have ended up the background reading, take into account the most important concept, terms, and keywords setting the scene for your study during the process of further reading and going on with the research. You can refine, narrow down or edit your topic in order to make it more appropriate to the content you are going to provide in the article.
Furthermore, it is recommended to analyze your topic through critical lenses through asking yourself analytic, and interpretive questions and even you can compare your topic with the other articles’ topics possessing the same nature.
In a nutshell, based on Michigan-Flint university, for the purpose of selecting the best topic for your writing,
Brainstorm for ideas: Brainstorming strategy was popularized by Alex Osborn in 1938. In his point of view, the strategy encompasses four factors including: going for quantity, withholding criticism, welcoming wild ideas, and combining and improving ideas (Wikipedia). Brainstorming means the use of brain to the active problem solving and the brainstorming session aims to develop creative solutions to problems (Jarwan, 2005). Mostly, the ideas are examined by various groups before making the final decision but in rare cases, brainstorming can be carried out individually through setting negative self- talk and self- criticism that in both cases, the result would be fruitful and instrumental.
Choose a topic that will enable you to read and understand the literature: Having a broad reading on the field contributes to grasp an overview related to narrower, broader and similar studies.
Ensure that the topic is manageable and that material is available: Based on the reports by Walden university, a manageable topic encompasses 2 or three concepts, topics having concepts more than the mentioned number are considered as narrow topics and the opposite condition is related to the scope of broad topics.
Make a list of keywords: Providing a list of the index terms demonstrating the essence of writing will result in retrieving better results with regard to topic selection.
Be flexible: It is common to modify your topic during the research process. You can never be sure of what you may find. You may find too much and need to narrow your focus, or too little and need to broaden your focus. This is a normal part of the research process. When researching, you may not wish to change your topic, but you may decide that some other aspects of the topic are more interesting or manageable (Michigan-Flint university report).
Define your topic as a focused research question: As the first stage, ideas are provided through which broad topics can be extracted which lately might be narrowed down to a focused and specific research topic.
Research and read more about your topic: The gathered keywords can be helpful in finding the related research areas to consider for writing to get a better understanding concerning the researches which were carried out and the research which is under the process by the author.
Formulate a thesis statement: Through writing a clear thesis statement with regard to the research questions in mind, the author can go through the meaning, and purpose of the study to choose the topic which best matches the research content.
Overall, in spite of being a challenging and time- consuming task, once the first step is taken, a concrete goal will be determined to focus on.
