In this video I'm gonna show you how to
choose the best possible
research topic for your thesis or
dissertation, in the shortest amount of
time. Plus I'm going to tell you how
you can get free feedback and critique
on your research topic idea from the
Grad Coach team. Hey guys welcome to
another episode of Grad Coach TV. My name is Derek and today we're going to be
looking at how to find, how to
evaluate and ultimately how to choose a
research topic for your
dissertation or thesis. We're going to be
talking about a seven step process that
we've used successfully with hundreds, if
not thousands of students here at Grad Coach. If you follow this process
step-by-step I have no doubt that you're
gonna find a really really good research
topic to work with and that that
research topic is gonna be the smart
choice for your dissertation or thesis.
This video is based on an extract from
our dissertation eBook which you can
download absolutely free of charge. I'll
include the link below this video. 
You might also be interested in some of
the other dissertation and thesis
related videos - we've got videos on how
to write a research proposal, how to
write a literature review, and pretty
much everything that you'll need to get
through the dissertation and thesis
process. So we've got a playlist on that
you can just visit our YouTube channel.
I'll include the link below this video
again. So without any delays let's jump
right into it. Right so the very first
step of finding and choosing
a solid research topic is that you
need to familiarize yourself with the
basic research process. What I mean
by the basic research process is that
you need to understand things like
research problems, research questions, a
literature review, field work, methods
such as surveys and questionnaires and
focus groups, methodologies such as
qualitative quantitative and mixed
method methodologies. Now this might
sound like I'm putting the cart before
the horse somewhat but it is really
important that before you start running
down a path of inquiry looking at
potential research topics it's really important
that you understand the big picture of how research
works and the essential components
to pulling off credible research. If you
don't understand these things if you
pursue the idea before you understand
the research process what you're gonna
do ultimately is waste a lot of time
pursuing ideas that simply aren't viable,
pursuing ideas that have already been
extensively researched, pursuing ideas
that you want to execute in a certain
way, but it's just not practical it's
just not rigorous enough for for the
requirements of your school. So it is
really important to to first understand
the core concepts, the basic concepts of
research. Now you don't you definitely
don't need to have an in-depth
understanding but you do need to have a
basic understanding. So when we talk
about things like research problems and
research design and methodologies and so
forth that you understand what we're
talking about this. So step one is get
that under your belt have a basic
understanding of how research works. Your university should provide you with a
textbook or other resources to guide you
in that respect. Failing that there's
loads of information online. A little
little Google will provide a lot of
information. You can also check out the
Crad Coach blog - we've got a section
dedicated to to academic research which
I'll include the link to below this
video. So step one make sure that you
understand the basics of the research
process and then we can move on to step
two. So once you've got a basic
understanding of core research
principles and and the basics of the
research process, the next essential step
is to make sure that you really
understand what it is that your
university requires from you for your
specific research project. Now this might
sound pretty obvious but I can't tell
you the number of times I've seen
students run down a path, spend so many
hours days weeks months entertaining
some research idea only to find out
that for some reason that's not allowed
by the university. So it's really really
important to start with the core
requirements, understand what the
essentials are from your university and
understand what the deal-breakers might
be in terms of topics that are not allowed. At a
minimum you want to make sure that you
understand the following. Firstly the
originality requirements, in other words
how unique does your research topic need to be?
Now this will vary a lot depending on
your degree and and what sort of course
you're enrolled in but you need to get
clarity on what topic originality and
uniqueness requirements they have for
your specific research project. The
second thing you need to look at is
research topic restrictions. In other words what
areas are you allowed to research. Do
they need to link to certain modules or
do you pretty much have freedom in in
terms of what you can choose as long as
it's within the domain of your degree.
Another thing you need to understand is
the data requirements - specifically
does your university require that you
have primary research that you have
secondary research or do they require
both. Another really important thing that
you need to understand is what are the
research methodology requirements. In other words do they have specific requirements about
whether you need to do a quantitative
study whether you need to do a
qualitative study perhaps they have a
requirement or they encourage you to do
mixed methods. So it's really important
to understand what are the expectations.
The last really important thing
that you need to understand is ethical
requirements. All universities will
have some sort of ethical framework and
and some sort of ethical standards and
and guidelines which everyone needs to
adhere to and so you need to understand
what those are and what that means in
terms of limitations on your field work.
It might mean that you can only
interview certain people or that you can
only ask certain types of
questions and/or that you need clearance
for for certain types of work or areas
of research. So it's really important to
understand what are those ethical
requirements and what do they mean in
terms of restricting your research topic. As you can
see it's really important to understand
what does the university need from you
what what are the restrictions that they
put in place. Otherwise you can spend a
huge amount of time ultimately to land
up in a dead end. The lesson here is know
the rules of the game before you play
and with that we can move on to step
three. So now that you understand the
rules of the game,
you have license to start looking at
potential research areas. The approach
that we take to research topics is to start really  broad and then narrow that down
narrow that down until you get
to a set of research potential research
topics that we can then evaluate. 
We'll get to that later but the starting
point for now is to identify broad research areas that interest you. So what you're looking for
here is areas of your studies, the
modules that you've done, that interest
you. For example in an MBA context it
might be something like social media
marketing, it might be something like
leadership, it might be something like
innovation or innovative cultures.
Whatever broad research areas have
interested you as you've worked through
through your degree. Make a list of those
broad interest areas and they don't need
to be at all pointed or specific. As you
can see in the example that I just gave,
we're not asking any specific question
at this point in time. We're just saying
what are the areas of research/theory
that you've worked through through your
studies and you've said wow that I
really like that, that's really
interesting, I'd like to know more about
it. Now the caveat yeah is that the
interest areas need to be areas that are
intellectually appealing to you, that you
have a curiosity about, but not that you
have some sort of emotional charge or
some sort of attachment or some
preconceived notion about because
ultimately if you take something that
you really hold strong beliefs about and
you go and delve into researching that,
you're gonna bring all your biases with
you. You're gonna bring subjectivity to
your research which is really not
welcome in in an academic context. What
you're looking for is to go into an
area of research with an open mind and
to ask questions and and be comfortable
with whatever answers you get. So it's
really important to choose something
that interests you, choose something
that's going to keep you motivated
through this long process, but don't choose a research area that is emotionally charged.
While you're thinking about your broad
interest areas there's two things that
you might want to be thinking about at
the same time. The first thing is faculty
support. In other words, for whichever research topic areas that you're
identifying, are there full-time
faculty that would be interested, that
have a research interest in that area
that could potentially support you, could
potentially be your supervisor. Generally
it's smart to choose a topic or at least
choose a research area that your
university has good support for because
that person will be able to guide you
they'll build to give you feedback and
they'll be able to assess the quality of
your work as well a lot better. So you do
ideally want to be looking at how can you
line up your areas of interest with the
areas of interest and held by the
faculty. So that's one component. The
other thing that you want to think about
at this stage (and again this is it's
just an ask to have and something to
consider) is where you want to take your
career post graduation. The
dissertation or the thesis is a nice
opportunity to build some specialism in
terms of whatever direction you want to
go in your career. For example if you
are wanting to pursue, if you're studying
a marketing degree but you are wanting
to pursue something digitally oriented
or online marketing oriented, then your
dissertation is a nice opportunity to
go and to zoom into that little
niche so that you have a unique
perspective when you start going for
interviews and you can bring something
unique to the table by way of this
research that you've already done. So
those are just two things to consider
while you think about these broad areas
of interest. Don't don't stress too much
about this right now. As I say we'll just
start really broad and then we'll
narrow it down according to criteria. So
at this stage pen down a few of your
interest areas and then let's move on to
step four. Right now that you have a good
idea of your broad research interest areas it's
time to start narrowing that down, time
to start narrowing it down into a more
niche area or more niche set of areas.
The best way to do that the most
efficient way to do that is to have a
look at past dissertations by other
students at your university and ideally
within your same program, for example within an
MBA program or MSc program. 
So the first step is to head over to the
dissertation library or dissertation
database for for your University and use
your research areas your broad areas
that you just identified, use those as
keywords to search for dissertations in
the database. At this point just pile
all the dissertations that you can find
pile them into a folder and keep them
for review. The way that you're going
to review them is quite simple. Now
obviously you're not going to go and
read a bunch of dissertations from start
to end, what you're gonna do is you're
gonna do a skim of some important
sections to to get the information you
need. I'd recommend that you look at
the title because the title should be
quite descriptive if it's a good title.
Have a look at the executive summary or
the abstract because that gives you a
full idea of what the research is all
about and then have a look at the
introduction chapter because that gives
you a good idea of how they came to to
go from a broad research topic or a broad
research area and to justify that down
into a tighter topic. As you're looking
at these dissertations or theses you
need to ask yourself a few questions.
The first question you want to ask
yourself is what kind of research topics did
these dissertations cover and and how
did they turn these research topics into
research questions.You might want to look for each dissertation what
was the research topic and what were the research questions. Then importantly how broad or
how narrow were these research topics. What does this tell you about the the requirement
from the school in terms of how narrow
and how niche they want you to go. Also
importantly how original were the research topics. Were they're really groundbreaking or
was it just a sort of localized twist on
an established well-established theory.
Then importantly how well justified
with these research topics. In other words were
the topics really important for society
or at least for for the the area the
field or, were they're just nice to know
is because this gives you a good idea of
what your university expects in terms of
justification for a research topic. I can't
tell you how many dissertations you need
to review how many theses you need to
review, but I would say that you need to keep
going until you have narrowed your your
handful of research areas down into a
handful of more niche research areas. In other words until you've gone and taken
those four or five broad research areas and
narrowed them down into something more
specific. Or perhaps you decided to scrap
some of the the areas because you found
stuff that was more interesting. But you
want to at least walk away from this
process with five potential research areas that are more tightly focused. For example if your
broad interest area in the beginning was
something like social media marketing
then you might have narrowed that down
to Facebook marketing or YouTube
marketing. If your broad interest
area in the beginning was reputation
management you might have narrowed that down to consumer trust or consumer trust
building. In other words the important
thing is that you have gone and narrowed
down from this broad interest area to
something more specific something that
has a body of theory that you can go and
look at meaningfully, which is the next
step. Right now that you've narrowed your
thinking down from a broad area to a
more niche research area, the next step is to hit the literature in other words hit the
existing research the journal articles
perhaps the textbooks and and get a good
feel for the state of knowledge in the
interest areas that you have in these
more niche interest areas. The
objective here really is just to
understand where the current research is at, what what does the the the existing body
of knowledge have to say about these
research interest areas. Ultimately what
you're looking for is to find the gaps
is to find the the little areas of the
puzzle the pieces of the puzzle that
haven't been filled in yet because those
will be ideal research topics. So right now what you're looking for is to get into the
literature and understand what does the
literature say about my areas of
interest. So how do you do this? The
best starting point is to head back to
your modules head back to your
coursework and use that as a starting
point for finding relevant journal
articles. The way you do that is go
have a look at whichever parts of your
modules spoke about these more refined
interest areas that you have and see
which journal articles they referenced.
Go and pick those out. In addition to
this you can head over to Google Scholar
and you can use your keywords or your
refined interest areas you can use those
as keywords in Google Scholar. I'd
say pick out the top five most relevant
articles for whichever area you're
interested in for each area you
interested in and you should also have a
look for any sort of annual review, any
sort of recent combined literature
review-type articles when you're looking
on Google Scholar, because these
will provide you with a really big
picture view of the state of knowledge.
So now you've got a whole lot of
articles ideally five six seven high
quality articles for each of the
research interest areas that that you that you
narrowed down to in the previous step
and what you're gonna do with these is
you're just gonna skim read through them.
So what you're looking for again is the
executive summary or in a journal
context will be the abstract. Have a look
at the introduction and you can have a
look at the conclusion. That should
give you a good idea of what each
article is about and what are the key
issues that they're raising through
through each section. If you managed to
get your hands on literature review type
article that provides an overview of all
of the literature, then do you spend the
time actually reading through all of
that because that is going to give you a
really good view of the the full state
of knowledge, at least at the time of
print of that article. Another area that
you want to have a look at at the end of
each article is the reference list. So if
you find one article that is really
interesting and really relevant and
is covering an area of the theory
that that really interests you then
ideally what you want to look at is look
at that reference list and then pick out
a few more articles that that article is
reference and go and pull those out.
This is a process of snowballing
finding more articles through articles.
Ultimately what you want to land up
with is about 20 articles for each
research interest area that you have each niche interest area that you have, because this
number (it's hard to put a firm number to
it) but if you've got the top 20 most
relevant and recent articles, you'll have
a decent idea of what the theory has to
say about each research area. So spend the time in the literature review
and then once you've done that once you
have a good understanding of where
things are at, then you can move on to
the next step. Right now that you are
familiar with the literature for your
interest areas now that you understand
what the current state of the research
is in whatever areas you're interested
in you can finally get to the important
part of finding potential research
topics. In other words we're now finally
narrowing down from broad to niche to
actual research topic. But how do you do that? Well there's three techniques that I'm
going to show you that are really 
effective at finding suitable research topics.
So
the first technique for finding suitable
topics finding original research topics is to
utilize what we call the FRIN - that's an acronym for further
research is needed. What I mean by this
is that within most journal articles if
not all journal articles, towards the end
they'll generally have some discussion
about the need for further research on
that specific area. So if you're looking
at current articles in other words
fairly recent articles if you look at
that FRIN section if you if you assess
what they state as being needed in terms
of further research you're going to have
a source of really really useful
research topic ideas . The upside to this approach is that provided the
articles you're looking at are recent, the upside is is that this is going
to be a really really original research
in terms of the opportunity at hand. If a
recent article by a reputable researcher
is saying that there's a need for
research over here, then you can be pretty sure that that is
is genuinely an original and authentic
need (i.e. a strong potential research topic). So the upside is originality. The
downside is that these might not really
be areas that interest you. You might
find that the areas that they proposed
for further research or just not up your
alley or you might just have more
practical limitations that they require
some sort of methodology or they require
some sort of context that you just don't
have access to so there's pros and cons
to this approach.
but if originality is really important,
then the FRINis a fantastic starting
point. If you have a good bundle of
articles that are recent you're going to
have many many FRIN opportunities just
kind of sitting on a platter there. So
make sure you look at those. Right the
second technique that you can use to
find good research topics is to assess whether the existing research is relevant and
suitable within a specific context. So
what I mean by that is that you can take
a body of theory that has already been
pretty well researched or just
moderately researched and you can assess
whether that's relevant within a certain
context, such as a certain country or
within a certain industry or within a
certain demographic group, socio-demographic conditions. You can assess
whether or not the existing theory is is
relevant there and if there is any
question mark about whether it is
relevant there, then that is a research topic that
is potentially worth considering. For
example you might take a research topic like a
consumer trust (consumer trust is
something that's extensively researched)
but you might say well consumer trust
has been researched extensively but
largely in an American or a first-world
country context and for certain types of
products or for certain types of
services. So you might make an argument
that there is a need for for research
into consumer trust within a third world
or developing country context and for a
specific type of service or specific
industry. In other words you'll be
putting a unique spin you'll be putting
a different contextual lens onto
existing research. So this can be very
effective when you're interested in the
area where there is a good deal of
research already but just nothing that's
been done close to home close to to a
population that you have access to. An
important point to make with this is
that there needs to be a legitimate
reason as to why the existing research
might not be valid or might not be
relevant in a certain context. You
can't just say well it was it's been
done extensively but it hasn't been done
in this country. If this country is much
the same as the countries that it has
been done in then there isn't really an
argument that this is essential research
so you need to find a valid argument for
why the existing research might not be
valid it might be something like well
this cultural differences. It might be
that these socio-economic conditions are
very different and that impacts decision
making by the consumer and impacts trust.
It might be that there's just different
belief systems etc etc, might be this is
a different societal structure. Whatever
the case might be you need to have some
sort of argument as to why this unique
context might not hold the existing
research as valid. So that's a useful
approach that you can use. The third
approach that you can use is far less
structured and the third approach is
basically just brainstorming and mind
mapping potential research topics - just allowing yourself to
have a bit of uncensored free thinking
in terms of potential research topics.
What you
will often find is that once you've
you've immersed yourself in the
literature, once you've immersed yourself in in the
state or the current state of the
research, that can just stimulate a lot
of free thinking and so if the other two
methods haven't really brought anything
for you, what you can do is you can just
sit down and you can brainstorm research topic ideas. You
can mindmap a bunch of potential topic
directions that the theory might be able
to go in and what you do there is you
write down your your your your stack of
ideas from that session. Don't restrict
your thinking just put it down on paper
come up with a list of ideas and then
sit down with that list and go
to the research/literature and see whether that research topic has been covered.
So that's just a a
third technique that really isn't very
structural I can't give you much
direction on but I'm giving you license
to say well you can't just think freely
about this you don't need a specific
systematic approach to research topic ideation.
The only caveat is whatever ideas you
come up with there make sure you return
to the literature and see whether or not
those research topics have been covered. Very often
what you think is unique thinking on
your part has actually been covered
somewhere else already. So you've got to
go back and validate those research ideas.
Using one of these techniques or ideally
a combination of these techniques you
should be able to come up with a much
more refined list of specific research
topics - in other words we've gone from
broad area of interest to a niche area
of interest to a specific research topic and
hopefully you've got a nice list of them.
The next step is to take that list
take those research topics and to turn them into
specific research questions. The
purpose of turning them into research
questions is to again get really really
narrowed down to get specific about okay
so what are we actually asking so what
does that look like let me give you an
example. So let's say through the
techniques that we just discussed
you've come to one of your research topics being consumer trust in Robo advisors in
the UK, for example. So if consumer trust
in Robo advisors is your potential research topic,
then you want to refine this even
further to a set of specific research
questions, and these might be (1) what
are the key drivers of UK consumer trust
in Robo advisors and (2) how do these
drivers vary an impact between
demographic groups. so notice how we've
gone from even a research topic which is quite
narrow already (consumer trust in in Robo
advisors), with the research questions we
go even more specific we say well what
is what are the drivers of this trust
and to how does that vary between
demographic groups so it's getting
really really specific about this is the
topic and these are the specific
research questions so you want to go
through this process for whichever
topics you've identified list out the
topic and then list out perhaps two or
three research questions that you're
getting really really clear about what
it is that you are going to be
potentially focusing on. Then once you've
got a good list of potential research topics and and their associated
research questions, you are ready to move
on to the final step which is evaluating
the research topic ideas. So you finally got a good (hopefully a good) list of potential
research topics and the associated research questions and now it's time to sit down
and to evaluate these in a systematic
fashion so that you can pick the most
suitable topic. The key is to do this
systematically, not to go and and just
run with whichever one you are most
drawn to because there are very
important considerations that we haven't
looked at just yet to assess which is
the best potential topic. So let's have a
look at that. For each research topic that you've
got you're gonna evaluate them against
the following criteria and I'd suggest
that you create a little Excel
spreadsheet and you assess a score for
each of these metrics or for each for
each research topic give a score to each of the
following points. So the first one is
originality so in other words is this
topic sufficiently original at least
according to to your University's
requirements. Are you going to meet their
criteria? This is why it's really
important right in the beginning the
first or second step was to understand
the university's criteria and also the
other dissertations that you looked at
should give you an idea of originality
requirements. The second thing you want
to look at is importance. In other words
is this research topic of real significance. So is
it just a nice to know is it gonna make
a difference in whichever industry its
involved in? Is it significant or is it
really just an intellectual curiosity?
Again the requirement from the
university side will vary and that's why
it's really important to understand what
what they require in terms of the
importance of any given research topic. The next criteria to assess against is the
availability of literature - in other
words is there enough literature to base
your investigation on but not too much
that it's it's overdone what you're
looking for here is a sweet spot. You
don't want something that is so
radically new that there isn't really
enough literature to base a literature
review on, which will be a requirement in
your dissertation or thesis. So you want
something that isn't too new but also
that isn't overdone and if it if it is
overdone you're gonna need a really good
justification in terms of why your
specific context makes it more
worthwhile doing again.
The next thing to evaluate on is data
access in other words are you gonna have
access to the data that you need to
answer your key questions? Are you going
to be able to get the information that
you need? Very often this is overlooked
and then you run down a path and end up
really really stuck in the middle of
your dissertation with with a data
access issue. The next thing to consider
is resource access. Do you have a need
for things like lab equipment or do you
have a need for additional resources as
perhaps even a cash budget? Will you have
access to that think about what other
resources you might need in order to to
really pull off the specific piece of
research another consideration is your
data collection capabilities? What I
mean by this is if you're gonna do
interviews, do you have the necessary
people skills do you have a desire to
certain interview people is that
something is you comfortable with
similarly if you're going to collect
quantitative data do you do you have a
way to do this to you I have the means
to actually collect the information and
the data that you need link directly to
this is your analysis capabilities. Do
you have the skills necessary to analyze
the data whether that's qualitative or
quantitative data and if not, will you
get these skills or do you do you have
the the desire to go and learn how to
how to run the numbers for statistical
analysis? Do you have the desire to learn
software for a qualitative analysis?
Think about these these capability
restrictions
that there are in place. Then
importantly just personal attraction - so
how excited are you by any given research topic - and will well addressing it add some
value to your life to have solid add
value to your career? If you're gonna use
this as as part of a career move will it
help you build a skill that you've
previously wanted, or an area of
knowledge that you wanted? So consider
just the personal attraction that's
essentially an overall component. So once
you've scored all of your research topic
ideas according to those criteria, tally
them up and very quickly you'll be able
to see what your top three potential research topics are.
So you
want to refine it down to top three - you
might want to just do a little logic
check on that see if your top three are
actually research topics that you
quite like and take your top three and
the next step is to develop what what we
call an elevator pitch. In other words a
really quick summary of what it is that
each research topic is about with the idea of selling someone on it. In other words
think about selling a potential
supervisor on approving your research. So
you want to develop for each of these
top three research topics, develop an
elevator pitch. An elevator pitch is
essentially just one paragraph covering
a few important points which I'll
discuss now. The first thing is what will
the study be about? That just needs to be
one sentence. The second point is why
is this original? Again just one sentence. The third is why is this important? Again
just one sentence. And the fourth is how
you plan to answer this question - in
other words what's your research design
in one or two sentences -  qualitative
quantitative, rough idea of how you'll be
collecting and analyzing the data.
Once you've done that you're gonna have
a paragraph for each research topic idea
and that paragraph is really
concisely going to convey the what,
the why, and the how of each topic. Now
what do you do with these little
paragraphs that you create? Two things I
would recommend the first thing is take
that little paragraph and shoot it off
to as many people as you can.
Perhaps some friends and family perhaps
some fellow cohort members and some
fellow students and it gets some
feedback regarding which research topic do they
like the most, why do they like that, why
is it appealing to them and and do they
potentially see any problems in terms of
the execution on that research. So that's
gonna give you just a good layman's
perspective on the research topic. Its
going to give you some
perspectives from people who are not
specialists in the space. The second
thing you can do (and a bit of a reward
for having watched this far into the
video) is you can take your elevator
pitch and you can slap that straight
into the comments below this video and
we'll get one of our PhD qualified
research specialists from Grad Coach to
give you feedback on that idea. That's
something we normally charge for, but
we'll give you that absolutely free. Just
drop it in the comments below.
Importantly please it must be an
elevator pitch it must be covering the
things we've discussed - please don't put
just half-baked research ideas in the comments.
So do those two things and you
should have some really good feedback
that you can use to to to inform your
thinking. Once you've got that
feedback give some thought to what it
all means to you and then make a
decision. If you you've got your top
three and your top three have made it
through all those criteria that we've
already gone through if you've been
honest with yourself and if you've done
the work chances are all three of them
are pretty good research topic ideas. So pick the one that appeals to you most and stick with
it. You don't need to doubt it, you don't
need to second-guess it. If you've
followed all the steps then you
should have really solid
research topics - so pick it and then get
on to your research proposal. So there
you have it a seven step process - the
seven step process that we've used with
hundreds of students at Grad Coach
covering how to find and choose a really
solid research topic for your
dissertation or thesis. To recap on the
seven steps: Step one is get a basic
understanding of research understand
what the research process is about
understand the terminology
used in research. Step two is to
get a really solid understanding of your
University's requirements. What do they
require in terms of originality in terms
of importance in terms of of
restrictions ethics etc. Once you've got
that, step three is to identify your
broad interests. So this is just really
starting at the top starting with a
broad not not at all specific area of
interest and the important thing to
remember there is that it's something
that you must have an intellectual
curiosity about but not something that's
emotionally charged for you. Once you've
got those broad research interest areas
identified you've got to move on to
reviewing the past dissertations and
then use those to understand how other
people have narrowed these down into
niche areas. So you're gonna go and
narrow things down from broad to more
niche. Once you've got your niche areas
identified step 5 is to go and review
the literature have a look at the
literature in those areas, familiarize
yourself with the current state of the
research understand what is going on
understand what the key arguments are
understand what's agreed on what's
disagreed on and then once you've done
that you can go on and start identifying
specific clear narrowed research topics
and and research questions using the
three techniques that we discussed. 
Once you've got your research topics
identified you're gonna go and
systematically evaluate them using the
criteria that we discussed earlier and
cut those down to your top three research topics.
Get  your feedback from your friends, get your feedback by by dropping your elevator
pitch into the comments here and then
make a decision about which one you're
gonna go with. If you follow these seven
steps and put in the time and effort to
do them right there's no doubt in my
mind that you will come out with a
rock-solid research topic and then you
can get on to writing your dissertation
or thesis proposal. By the way we have
covered how to write a thesis or
dissertation proposal in another video
so I'll link to that below this video.
There you have it - how to find a good
basket of research topics and then
ultimately how to choose a research topics in seven pretty straightforward steps.
As I've said feel free to leave any comments below the video,
any questions below the video and most
importantly if you've gone through the
process and you have developed your
rock-solid elevator pitches, then drop
them in the comments and we'll give you
free feedback on that. You can also book
a free consultation with any one of our
PhD qualified research specialists. That
is very easy to do on the Grad Coach
website and I'll include a link to that
below this video. If you enjoyed the
video please do give us a thumbs up, show
us some love and if you would like you
can subscribe to our YouTube channel
Grad Coach TV. We do have loads of
dissertation and thesis related content there,
Same for the Grad Coach blog - I'll
include the link below this video. So for
today this is Grad Coach signing out.
