One of the most common hurdles students run into when they have to choose an appropriate PhD thesis topic in social sciences is simply coming up with some ideas to explore further. There are a number of really good methods for doing this, but more often than not students simply don’t have the experience and fall into a state of panic. The following is a simple two step technique for choosing a great PhD thesis topic in the social sciences:
- What Makes a Good PhD Thesis Topic?
- How to Choose a Great PhD Thesis Topic
The first step in choosing a great thesis topic is in understanding what makes a good topic in the first place. There are two qualities to a good topic: 1) it must be original; and 2) it must be set into some context within existing social sciences research.
Originality: there are three ways to approach originality. One, a student must aim for some specific outcome that hasn’t been done before. Two, the second is to choose a specific topic and come up with some sort of question or problem that hasn’t been addressed. And three, is to apply some new method to study a specific subject that has already been researched.
Context: Even when you have identified a specific problem to work with you still need to place it into some context within research that already exists in your field of social sciences. In simple terms, you want to do this to ensure no one has ever done it before, you want to learn from the various methods that have been used in the past, and you want to provide justification for why your PhD thesis research matters.
So now that you have some guidelines of what a good thesis topic looks like you’re probably wondering how to go about choosing just one idea. Rather than focusing on developing just one idea, start by developing several ideas through brainstorming. Check your course required and recommend readings to begin. Then search for some related issues online. You’ll find that there are a number of interesting things worth discussing within social sciences. It’s your job to do the leg work to ensure that there are areas of interest to you that have yet to be explored completely. And believe us when we say that it is more than likely that there are plenty of areas that have yet to be studied.