Selecting a good research question is hard for many. Yet most research methods books dont provide practical insight into this subject and they focus more or theory. This places many students into confusion
A research topic is what you want to study in your research thesis or private research. It provides the research question that you need to formulate in terms of testable hypothesis. Before we explain research topic attributes, let us highlight sources of research and may include but not limited to
Magazines and newspapers
Future recommendation of past research papers
Everyday events faced by society whether social, scientific or history
Well a good research topic has the following attributes
- Research topic should be specific.
What this means is that research topic should not be broad or general. Broad topics lead to failure due to increased time, cost, and complexity. For example a broad research question is “Effect of social media on student scores”. This topic is broad as we dont know which social media (Facebook, Twitter, Telegram) the research intends to study. Student scores is also broad (high school, college, university). A good and specific research topic would be “Study of the effect of Facebook on high school students scores”
2. Research topic should be possible to study
What this means is that a research topic should make sense with current settings. For example, if your research topic is “Assessment of dependency between IQ and sleeping for people who dont use smartphone”. Clearly this topic is hard to study as there is not people who dont use smartphone in the current setting (in the current world or environment)
3. Research topic should have rich availability of literature review
What this means is that a research topic should be able to get literature review of past research papers that relate to your research topic. In that case you will avoid plagiarism by obtaining gaps not answered by that past research papers. You could be get further information from the literature review study such as research methodology used the past paper, findings obtained and conclusions reached
4. Research topic should have research signficance
It should answer or solve or add on existing problems that is significance to society or your organization
5. Research question generated from the research topic should have external validity
What this means the findings of the research should be applicable at the population level. It should have general application and easily expandable by future research interests
An example of research topic along with research question and how to test the research hypothesis is given in the table below
| Research topic | Research question | Statistical analysis |
| “Assessment on the effect of Facebook on exam grades of form four Students” | Does the use of Facebook has an Effect on exam score of form four Students? | Independent samples t-test |
| “Study on correlation between University reputation and number of enrolled students” | Is there positive correlation Between university reputation and Number of enrolled students? | Spearman rank correlation |
| “Study on association between income and education level” | Do earning different income scale independent on education level? | Chi-square |
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