Nov 11, · Later you will be reading for research, but start with reading to get an overview or outline of your topic. Good places for this kind of reading might include the websites of advocacy organizations, articles or book chapters that give overviews of the topic, and for more advanced students, see the Annual Reviews series for your subject area Oct 25, · Reference materials are various sources that provide background information or quick facts on any given topic. While there are many different types of resources, here are a few: almanacs, atlases, bibliographies, biographical resources, dictionaries, encyclopedias (both general and by subject), handbooks, indexes, statistics, and citation guides Characteristics of a Well-formed Research Topic The first mark of a well-formed topic is that it clearly states the key concepts to be investigated. Sometimes, only one concept is named—those studies often turn out to be qualitative, but not always
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Most research topics start good research topic characteristics as a general and often vague idea that a researcher has an interest in investigating.
Inexperienced researchers, including most doctoral learners, frequently think of topics that are quite interesting, but not narrowly enough focused for a dissertation. This tutorial will guide you through a set of steps designed to help you come up with a topic, first of all, and secondly to focus it more tightly so that you can begin a meaningful and successful good research topic characteristics of the existing literature to discover whether your topic is actually researchable.
This tutorial's primary objective is to prepare you to create a successful research topic that may become the topic of your dissertation.
To do that, we'll work through the following issues:. Obviously, in Track 1 you are at the beginning of good research topic characteristics studies toward the doctorate, and perhaps your dissertation is far from your thoughts.
We are starting the process now, however, because our experience has been that when learners wait to start searching for their topics, it often creates a serious problem for them when they actually start the dissertation. That problem can take many forms, but the most common one is that they have not had sufficient time and training in exhaustively searching the relevant literature to discover whether the topic they are interested in is even viable—and without a good topic statement, a good literature search is impossible.
So let's begin. A research topic is an area of interest to a researcher that is first of all, researchable. It is focused narrowly enough that its key concepts are quite plain and well integrated. It is a topic or subject that can be found in the existing literature of the researcher's field, which shows that it is of some interest or importance to that field, and has some important characteristics.
The first mark of a well-formed topic is that it clearly states the key concepts to be investigated. Sometimes, only one concept is named—those studies often turn out to be qualitative, but not always.
More often, two or more key concepts are named. Next, it identifies the relationship or relationships among those concepts that the researcher intends to explore, good research topic characteristics. Obviously, if only one concept was named, there won't be a relationship, but in that case a word like "describes" or "experiences" will give a clue to the kind of information desired.
Third, a research topic specifies the population of interest to be investigated, good research topic characteristics. Finally, a research topic is just a phrase. That is, it is not a full sentence with a verb, good research topic characteristics. However, the well-formed topic statement will embed the actual topic in a complete sentence.
Good research topic characteristics look at some examples. You can see immediately that all six examples, taken from the four schools in Capella University, are phrases, not complete sentences. So far, so good. The first mark of a successful topic statement is that it identifies the key concepts to be investigated, good research topic characteristics, right? Let's see how the examples do that. In the first example, we seem to have two key concepts: "needs" and "family-based counseling services.
Probably not clearly enough: what is meant by "needs" and "family-based counseling services" is not immediately transparent. This topic will need some work, but most topics start out this way. Here, there seem to be two key concepts: "responses" and "encounters with law enforcement. The second mark of a successful topic is that it identifies any relationship to be investigated between or among the key concepts. Let's look at the third example to see about this.
This topic meets our criterion of being a phrase. It seems to state at least two concepts but with multiple levels : "death" and "socio-economic status of daughters. Well, it is captured in that word "impact.
An "impact" in research jargon good research topic characteristics the effect that one concept—death—has on another concept, in this case, the daughters. One can, in fact, replace the word impact with the word effect without changing the meaning at all.
So the topic is proposing a cause-and-effect kind of relationship. Let's look at another example: The relationship between assignment strategies to prevent burnout used by managers of first responders and the occurrence of burnout.
This seems complicated, but it really isn't, good research topic characteristics. First, let's check the key concepts: "Assignment strategies to prevent burnout" would seem to be one key concept, and "occurrence of burnout" would be the other. These are reasonably clear, good research topic characteristics, or probably would be to someone in the human resources or management worlds. No doubt they will be further clarified as the researcher works on the topic's wording.
But what about the relationship? It is in the word "relationship," obviously. And in research jargon, a "relationship" between A and B is a particular kind of relationship, called a correlation, good research topic characteristics.
The third sign of a successful topic is that it names the target population, the group of people or organizations or groups that the researcher is interested in. Let's evaluate some of our examples on this point. The population is managers of first responders. Or is it? The awkward wording of the topic makes this a bit hard to digest. The burnout occurs in the first responders, so maybe they are the population.
But the first responders' managers are the ones using the management strategies, so are they the population? Well, the two key concepts are management strategies used by managers and good research topic characteristics of burnout in first respondersso the researcher will have to get information from both groups of people, so both are the target population: first responders and their managers. A well-formed research topic will have these characteristics, but simply having them is not sufficient.
The elements also need to be well-focused and narrowed down to a point where the research becomes feasible. Let's take a look at a simple method for doing this. Take a look at this grid. You'll see that one of our topics has been broken out into the first column. The population is first—indigenous people—followed by two concepts: responses and law enforcement. Now look at the central column, labeled "Narrower term. Similarly, "law enforcement" has been narrowed to police there are many other types of law enforcement, such as FBI, Homeland Security, TSA, Customs and Immigration, sheriff's departments, and so on.
Similarly, there are many kinds of behaviors and experiences that could be considered "responses," but the researcher is most interested in emotional responses. Now move to the third column. Can you see how each term is being narrowed yet again? If we restated the topic now, after having narrowed it down a bit, it would look like this: Cherokee Indians' tolerance for stress when meeting traffic officers.
Let's work through another example, this time using the topic "Employees' productivity as a function of their managers' management styles. There are many good research topic characteristics you can ask yourself when you are narrowing your topic.
A good opener is "So what do I really want to know about the concept? Another quite good question is to ask about your real interest or passion is about the concept or the population. You can also find helpful terms by performing controlled good research topic characteristics searches in library databases. You can find a nice tutorial on that method of searching in good research topic characteristics Capella library at but whatever you good research topic characteristics yourself, keep your focus on what you truly most want to know and care about regarding the concept.
When the researcher asked herself what sort of employees and managers she was actually interested in, she realized it was service employees and managers. The more she pondered, and was helped by a quick check of the literature in her specialization, she realized that she was most interested in call center personnel. Then she tackled productivity. From her courses in management measurement, she knew that one way to think about productivity was days at work.
But that seemed too dependent on factors outside the manager-employee relationship, good research topic characteristics. She wanted a more fine-grained way to look at productivity, so she narrowed it to a specific measure, calls completed times minutes per call.
Then she took on management styl e. Knowing that there are many types, her first attempt at focusing this term was authoritarian style. That didn't satisfy her, and when she looked again at her topic, she realized that that word "function" was important.
It implied to her that she was really interested in knowing how different management styles related to different degrees of productivity. At first, she put together a list of known management styles, but that felt intimidating.
She decided to narrow it down to just two: authoritarian good research topic characteristics. flexible management style. After all this, her topic now looked like this: Productivity as measured by calls completed times minutes per call in call center employees supervised by authoritarian managers compared to productivity in call center employees supervised by flexible managers.
She knew the wording was clunky and would need to be crafted better, but she had a much more focused topic. So far, we've been looking at two things about good research topics: what they should contain concepts, relationships, and populationgood research topic characteristics, and how to narrow each element.
In these narrowing exercises, we've focused on the concepts and the population, good research topic characteristics. Now, let's turn our attention to the relationship. This is a very important element, because it offers an important clue about the nature of the study that might ensue.
Research asks all kinds of questions, and the relationship named in the research topic clues us into what kind of question the ensuing study will likely ask. Here are some questions you might ask in order to choose the right word to describe the relationship you're looking for. For each of these and there are other sorts of questions you can ask yourselfspecific words can specify the relationship.
Let's look at them. If your topic compares two or more things compared with or some similar phrase good research topic characteristics the relationship you want to know about, good research topic characteristics. For instance, student retention rates in large urban school districts compared with small rural districts. If your interest is about relationships between two or more concepts, try using words like relationship, in relation to, or other similar constructions.
Here's an example: the frequency of church attendance in relation to socioeconomic status.
Characteristics of a Good Research
, time: 4:36How to Write a Strong Thesis Statement | EasyBib
Try your hand at computer programming with Creative Coding! Learn how you can get access to hundreds of topic-specific coding projects. Already have an individual account with Creative Coding? Nov 16, · The statement need not be lengthy, but a good research problem should incorporate the following features: 1. Compelling Topic The problem chosen should be one that motivates you to address it but simple curiosity is not a good enough reason to pursue a research study because this does not indicate significance Sep 02, · Whether you’re writing an argumentative paper, an informative essay, or a compare/contrast statement, you need a thesis. Without a thesis, your argument falls flat and your information is unfocused. Since a thesis is so important, it’s probably a good idea to look at some tips on how to put together a strong one
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