Scholarly DNP Project I

The Research Process: Topic Selection Video Transcript

Dr. Amanda Rockinson-Szapkiw

Welcome. This is Dr. Amanda Rockinson-Szapkiw. In these set of sessions we're going to talk about the research process. In this session, we're going to specifically focus on topic selection for a research project, thesis, or dissertation. By the end of our time together, our goal is for you to be able to describe the steps to successfully selecting a topic for your research project, so let's go ahead and get started.

Let's begin by talking about the research process. The research process usually begins with an I wonder, I wonder if, that is the research idea or topic that you want to investigate or that you even want to investigate now was probably derived from your experience, an interest that you had, or from some knowledge that you gained during studying. I used to work as a child and family therapist. When I was counseling clients, specifically families, I used to notice that as a child's behavior problems increased in school, the quality of the family communication usually decreased, so I wondered was there a relationship or is there a relationship between the quality of the family's verbal communication and the number of behavior incidents that the child had in the school?

Now, this inquiry is completely practical in nature. If I was to research is as a practitioner or as a counselor, it'd be worthwhile for me in my practice. However, it's not of a topic that would be sufficient for the purpose of empirical research, because the purpose of empirical research is theory. Now, when I'm talking about empirical research, I'm talking about research that I plan to publish or research that I'm doing for a thesis or a dissertation. Again, solving an applied problem is not sufficient or appropriate for these purposes.

Empirical research really needs to contribute or build theory. It needs to significantly contribute to the scholarly literature in the field. Again, and I wonder is a great place to start, but when you're proposing that empirical research and developing an empirical research plan, it's important to remember it's a place to start. You need to move from I wonder, or the I wonder stage, to the literature immersion stage. That is take your topic and learn about it in the literature. What had been published? What has been researched on the topic?

In doing this, in doing that literature review or in that literature immersion stage, what you really need to do is place your idea within the scholarly literature. The goal is to show how your research or the research idea that you have really fits into what we already know. Perhaps my idea of looking at the relationship between the family's verbal communication and the number of behavior incidents that a child has in school has already been researched. If it has, then it's not a good topic to investigate for empirical research. But, again, in that immersion stage I am looking to demonstrate the relationship between what I plan to research and what already exists in terms of theory and research. I really want to show how my research will make a contribution to the field. I want to show how it's going to fill a gap in the literature.

Once I demonstrate that, I then can go ahead and enter the problem identification stage, in which I identify my research questions and my hypotheses. Once those are identified, I can really start planning my research and actually go ahead and conduct my research. As you heard, as I described the process, one of the pitfalls that most beginning researchers fall into is really to underestimate what's currently known about a topic, specifically their topic, in the literature. Again, it's really important that you take your topic and then you dive, swim in that literature to determine what's already known.

Let's go back and consider my practical inquiry, the one about the quality of the family relationship and a child's behavior problems in school. Let's say that after reviewing the literature, I find that several studies have indeed been done on this topic and that there truly is a relationship between these two factors. However, as I look at the literature, I noticed that these factors have been studied and examined within middle school and high school students. Elementary students have never ever been examined. Aha. I have a gap in the literature.

I may also note that several studies suggest that further investigation is needed to determine if a child's attitude towards authority is a mediating factor between the relationship between these two variables. Thus, I come up with the following empirical problem that leads to this question. Is there a relationship between the quality of the family's verbal communication and the number of behavior incidents that a child has in elementary school, while controlling for the child's attitude toward authority?

Now, this is truly a topic worth pursuing. Why? Because first, I've contextualized it within the relevant literature. I've looked at the previous findings and considered what has been done and what hasn't been done, and I grounded my topic there. Then I also made sure that what I'm studying extends the knowledge in the field. Now, those are the two most important factors or keys to selecting an appropriate topic for research. However, there are some other considerations that you need to make when you are selecting an appropriate topic, especially when you're considering it for a dissertation or a thesis.

Another consideration is you need to make sure that you select a topic that sustains your interest, that's personally meaningful to you. However, you need to make sure that it's not too emotionally charged, because if you have a truly emotionally charged topic, let's say, for example, you are very, very interested in children with autism and you have a nephew that has autism, that is a topic probably near and dear to your heart. If you write about that topic, you may not be willing and able to accept criticism about that topic, and so it's really important, especially for the dissertation process, that you not have a topic that you're too emotionally charged about, because you do need to be able to accept criticism and constructive feedback about your writing and about your manuscript. Make sure it's something that sustains your interest, but it's not too emotionally charged.

The second thing you need to consider is to make sure you keep it simple. When my husband and I go to the Grand Canyon, he takes a video camera and I take a regular camera. I really enjoy photography and he really enjoys videoing. Now if, from a research perspective, my approach is better. You want to take a snapshot of the Grand Canyon not a video of the Grand Canyon. You also want to make sure that the topic you choose is not too challenging and it's not overly ambiguous. Again, keep it simple and especially, again, if it's a dissertation or a thesis, the best dissertation is a quality dissertation but it's also a done dissertation, and if you make it too challenging it'll never be done.

Finally and again, the things that I say over and over and over again are really important. Like I said the two most important things you need to consider in selecting an appropriate topic is making sure that it's actually worth pursuing and we've talked about worth it being worth pursuing empirically, but also practically—how are people in the field actually going to use the results that you find?

You need to also keep your work and keep your research separate that is to avoid bias. This is especially important in quantitative research which we'll get into later. You also need to ensure that you have a plan that is ethical in nature that you're protecting the human subjects that you're working with, that you follow IRB guidelines so you if you are working at a university or in a school system, you need to add you need to look at the IRB regulations.

Now that we've talked about how to appropriately select a topic for research and identified literature essential to this, you're probably wondering how you identify researchable ideas in the literature. I recommend you pay specific attention on to the sections at the end of any peer-reviewed article that you look at. Specifically I'm talking about the limitations and the recommendations for future research section. Read the limitation section and ask yourself can I modify this study to minimize or eliminate these limitations or perhaps there's a suggestion in the future research section or suggestion to extend the study that interests you. Perhaps it's a study that you could actually conduct so, there's your researchable idea your researchable question. Now remember, when you're looking at limitations and recommendations for future research the literature that you're examining should be no more than five years old and really if you're identifying the gap in your literature it's ideal if the literature is only one to two year old two years old.

Now let's take a look at your study and your ideas. What is your topic? Where did you derive the idea? Does your topic need to be revised based on what we just talked about? Is it a truly empirically significant and if not what steps do you need to take right now to revise your topic? I suggest you get started by answering these questions—spending some time answering these questions and developing a plan for the next steps you need to take to make your topic researchable.