The research process often begins with a broad idea for a topic you’d like to know more about. You do some preliminary research to identify a problem. After refining your research questions, you can lay out the foundations of your research design, leading to a proposal that outlines your ideas and plans.
Here are the first steps of the research process, helping you narrow down your ideas and build a strong foundation for your research project.
Step 1: Choose your topic
Step 2: Identify a problem
Step 3: Formulate research questions
Step 4: Create a research design
Step 5: Write a research proposal
1: Choose your topic
First, you have to come up with some ideas. Your topic can start very broad. Think about the general area or field you’re interested in—maybe you already have specific research interests based on classes you’ve taken.
Even if you already have a good sense of your topic, you’ll need to read widely to build background knowledge and begin narrowing down your ideas. Conduct an initial literature review to begin gathering relevant sources. As you read, take notes and try to identify problems, questions, debates, contradictions, and gaps. You aim to narrow down from a broad area of interest to a specific niche.
Make sure to consider the practicalities: the requirements of your program, the amount of time you have to complete the research, and how difficult it will be to access sources and data on the topic. Before moving on to the next stage, discussing the topic with your professor is a good idea.
So you’ve settled on a topic and found a niche—but what exactly will your research investigate, and why does it matter? To give your project focus and purpose, you have to define a research problem.
The problem might be a practical issue—for example, a process or practice that isn’t working well, an area of concern in an organization’s performance, or a difficulty faced by a specific group in society.
Alternatively, you might choose to investigate a theoretical problem—for example, an underexplored phenomenon or relationship, a contradiction between different models or theories, or an unresolved debate among scholars.
To put the problem in context and set your objectives, you can write a problem statement. This describes who the problem affects, why research is needed, and how your research project will contribute to solving it.
Next, based on the problem statement, you need to write one or more research questions. These questions target exactly what you want to find out. They might focus on describing, comparing, evaluating, or explaining the research problem.
A strong research question should be specific enough that you can answer it thoroughly using appropriate qualitative or quantitative research methods. It should also be complex enough to require in-depth investigation, analysis, and argument. Questions that can be answered with “yes/no” or with easily available facts are not complex enough for a thesis or dissertation.
In some types of research, at this stage, you might also have to develop a conceptual framework and testable hypotheses.
The research design is a practical framework for answering your research questions. It involves deciding the type of data you need, the methods you’ll use to collect and analyze it, and the location and timescale of your research.
There are often many possible paths you can take to answer your questions. The decisions you make will partly be based on your priorities. For example, do you want to determine causes and effects, draw generalizable conclusions, or understand the details of a specific context?
You must decide whether to use primary or secondary data and qualitative or quantitative methods. You also need to determine the specific tools, procedures, and materials you’ll use to collect and analyze your data, as well as your criteria for selecting participants or sources.
Finally, after completing these steps, you are ready to complete a research proposal. The proposal outlines the context, relevance, purpose, and plan of your research.
As well as outlining the background, problem statement, and research questions, the proposal should also include a literature review that shows how your project will fit into existing work on the topic. The research design section describes your approach and explains exactly what you will do.
You might have to get the proposal approved by your professor before you get started, and it will guide the process of writing your research paper.
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