SELECTING A RESEARCH TOPIC

Selecting a Research Topic

Difficulties that novice researchers face in selecting a research topic?
Novice researchers experience great difficulty selecting a topic to investigate due to:
1- their limited or zero experience.
2- the topic may consist of many aspects that can be individually investigated.
3- the problem may create some confusion for them.
4- selecting topics on the basis of self-decision is difficult for them.


Disadvantages of providing students with ready-made topics?
1- it deprives students from gaining real experience in selecting research topics and developing self-techniques to solve problems that usually appear in this stage.
2- it does not give them real freedom to select their own topics which, in turn, may affect the final production of the research.

Note
One of the techniques that can be used to help novice researchers successfully select research topics for themselves is to exploit accessible libraries and to do a first reading exercise. It is called (first reading) because the researcher will definitely need to do a second and a third reading –perhaps more- for his review of literature.