How to choose thesis topic ?

 

Advice on choosing thesis topic:

If you are searching for a systematic procedure for finding a research topic then this article provides some information and references about how to do it. Most of the advice is from the YouTube videos of Gradcoach and Frances Chumny.

Step 1:

Make a list of broad areas of research that you are interested in. Best resources to find such areas is to visit the top conferences in your area and find out the keywords/topics in the call for papers section.

Give preference to the topics which comes under the expertise of your supervisor, because he/she can much solid advice and feedback on your research.

Try choosing the areas which would align to your career interests after completing the research.

Keep at least 3 broad areas so that you will have more options if one the areas fail to interest your supervisor.

Step 2:

Narrow down the areas of interest. You can do this by looking at previous dissertations that are available in that area, either from your university or online.

You can also use survey papers to know about all the sub areas in your interested area. You don’t have read the entire dissertation for this, you can read the abstract, introduction and conclusion part to get an idea.

Step 3:

Now you need to know about the current state of the art of that area. You can know about this by quickly going through the literature available in your online through sites like google scholar. You can also read the survey papers entirely.

Read the Further research sections of those papers which gives potential topics for research. List out all those new topics for each of your interested areas.

Step 4:

 Finally, you need to carefully analyze the list of narrowed down topics that you have. You can try giving score between 1 to 5 for criteria like originality, literature base, importance etc. Then you can sort the topics based on your criteria.

Take the top ideas from the sorted list and present them to your supervisor for feedback.

That’s it, you have your thesis topic ready.


References:

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Az7JozSC-xc

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Az7JozSC-xc

3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXvoKE6_wQo

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