Remember in the previous module, we mentioned that the research process consists of steps scientists follow to achieve the desired outcome. A good way to phrase this is that it puts you on the right track.
One of the most genuinely important pieces of advice in research is that when starting a study, especially as a beginner researcher, you should select a topic that you find genuinely interesting, as you will be spending a significant amount of time on it. You will be "fully invested" in your research. It’s normal that over the course of your research (regardless of the type of study, article, or product you’re working on), you may feel exhausted or tired of the topic. Therefore, choosing something you truly enjoy is very important to help you persist.
The process of identifying a research topic can actually be quite challenging. According to literature, much of the work on conducting research "fails to examine the preliminary stages of the interactive and self-reflective process of identifying a research topic" (Wintersberger & Saunders, 2020). It's important to remember that it's completely fine to adjust your research aim as you go along. At the start, you might choose a specific topic, but after doing some initial research, you will better understand what has already been explored in that area. As a result, your interests may narrow or even expand. Thus, it’s acceptable for the topic to evolve over time (Dwarkadas & Lin, 2019).
Research suggests that there are two primary paths to exploring a research topic: the creative path and the rational path (Saunders et al., 2019).
Rational Path (or Linear Approach) (Saunders et al., 2019; Wintersberger & Saunders, 2020) involves structured questions such as: What timely topics in my field are currently in the media? What strengths do I bring to this research? What gaps exist in the research about this area of interest?
For the second one, Creative Path (or Non-linear Approach) (Saunders et al., 2019) is less linear and involves brainstorming ideas or keeping a notebook of ideas based on discussion in coursework or with your peers in the field.
Whichever path you choose, it’s crucial to narrow down your generalized ideas. This refinement will happen naturally as you progress (we’ll explore this further in the section on formulating a research question).
A very efficient approach to achieve this is to basically keep discovering the literature about and around your topic; at this point, you are gaining more background and context information and, as importantly, you are looking for gaps that could be explored (Saunders et al., 2019; Wintersberger & Saunders, 2020).
One of my professors and mentors once advised me that at the very beginning, I should use very preliminary resources, even just searching the internet about the topic and reading basic information, like from Wikipedia or watching videos. At this point, you’re not yet citing sources because you haven’t started researching the specific topic you’ve chosen. Instead, you’re just trying to understand more about the broad area you’re interested in.
Notably, your goal at this stage is to close the gap between what you already know and what is generally known in the literature. This is overly important as it ensures that you don’t end up with a research question that is either already answered or holds no significant weight.