How to Choose a Topic for a Dissertation

Dissertation topics are notoriously difficult to figure out, since the possibilities seem endless. Follow these steps to nail things down.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Things You’ll Need:

• Electronic Personal Organizers
• Floppy Disks
• Personal Organizers
• Computers
• Word-processing Software

1. Make a habit, as early as possible in your graduate career, of jotting down ideas for research while sitting in class and doing your reading. Particular findings can point to new and interesting questions.
2. Weed out ideas as the time to choose draws nearer. Consider such issues as level of interest (how excited do you get when you think about it?), practicality (too broad? too narrow?), and how significant a contribution it will make to your discipline.
3. Consult with fellow graduate students as well: they'll offer not only great ideas, but sympathy.
4. Ask your advisor and other professors what they know about work that's already been done on the topics that remain after your weeding-out process.
5. Find this work, and see how similar or different it is from your own ideas. If it's too similar, you've just eliminated another possibility.
6. Choose whichever of the remaining topics interests you the most.
7. Keep in mind that your topic is a work in progress, and allow yourself to be flexible. It's inevitable that some aspects of your topic will change as you progress in your research and writing.

Tips & Warnings

• Try to walk the line between an overly broad and an overly narrow topic. Broad topics can lead you astray and lack focus; narrow topics can be of limited interest and might not furnish enough material for an entire dissertation.
• Keep your topic ideas in a central location, preferably a computer file that you can easily back up.
• Consider setting yourself a deadline for finding a topic. Without one, grad school has the tendency to drift on and on.
• Be sure you've searched the literature thoroughly for related research. It would be awful to work for months and months only to find you've duplicated someone else's work.

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