Choosing a Research Topic

Choosing the right research topic is an important initial step in determining the outcome of the entire program.

While it is recommended to choose a topic that matches your competencies, it is essential that the research topic contributes to the existing knowledge/intelligence of an organisation. It should result in an outcome that is of strategic business importance to an organisation or an industry.

To choose the right research topic, you should first focus on identifying the business domain of your interest.

Once you understand the business domain in which you want to conduct research, you are off to a good start for brainstorming and ideating different research topics.

One way of deciding the right research topic is to evaluate every idea (that you are interested in) based on multiple factors, some of which are as follows:

Value 

• What value does the research topic add to the existing knowledge of the topic? 
• Does the research topic have any strategic business importance to an organisation (could be your own organisation or a potential client) or an industry? 
• Would it add value to your profile or career, or would it help you progress in your desired line of career?

Clarity

• How much work (preferably in hours/days) would this topic entail?
• What tasks would you need to carry out and which ones could you avoid while working on the research topic?
• What would be the minimum volume of data required to make a satisfactory/confident decision?
• Do you have the required competencies to conduct the research, or would you need to learn any specific skill for it?
• What probable external help would be required to work on the research topic?
• What are the specific data points, software tools and analysis methods that you would need to work on the research topic?
• What is the extent of the work performed on the research topic in the past by other researchers?

Feasibility

• Is the amount of work required for the research topic achievable in the time available?
• How easily accessible are the resources required for working on the research project?
• What data is to be used in the research project?
• Which respondents (if any) would generate data for your project?
• Which software/tools are required for the project?

A valuable tip is to find the relevant data sets for your research domain, and then, depending on the available ones, select an appropriate research topic. This can save time in achieving your research goal. 

After choosing an appropriate research topic, the next step is to define an objective for your research. However, before you frame the research objective, you need to understand the concept of research objectives and learn how they can be phrased. We will cover this in the next segment.