Academic Research Topic Selection

How do I know if my research topic is too broad?

Ask what an answer would look like. If any honest answer to your question would be a summary of what is already known rather than a finding, the topic is too broad. The fix is to narrow on one axis at a time: who exactly, what precisely, in what setting, compared to what or when. Narrowing all four at once usually leaves a question so specific that no literature speaks to it.

What is the difference between a research topic and a research question?

A topic is a bounded subject. A problem is a tension inside it, stated as a sentence with a "but" or a "yet". A question is an interrogative sentence naming a population, a phenomenon and a context, whose answer would resolve part of that problem. Most students have a topic and believe they have a question, and the missing level is almost always the problem.

Does an undergraduate dissertation have to be original?

Not in the doctoral sense of contributing new knowledge to the field. At undergraduate and honours level the requirements are that the work is your own, that the question is not trivially answered, and that you demonstrate competent research practice. A known question examined in a new population or setting, a replication where the original may not hold, or an established framework applied to an unstudied case all qualify.

How do I check whether my topic has already been done?

Three targeted probes, before any full review: search your question in the vocabulary of the field and read abstracts only; find one or two recent review articles and read their future-research sections, which are the most efficient statement of what remains open; and check whether the question has been answered in a different population, which often converts an unoriginal question into a defensible one. A contested question, where published work disagrees, is usually the strongest position for an undergraduate project.

How long does a research project actually take?

Cost it by stage with dates rather than as a total: ethics approval, recruitment, data collection, transcription or cleaning, analysis, writing, revision. Ethics approval is the stage most often underestimated and the one most likely to make a topic infeasible, because it happens before anything else can start.

My supervisor says my topic is too big but not how to fix it. What do I do?

Write the question out with its four axes visible, then narrow the one that is doing the least work for your argument. Usually that is the population or the setting. Bring the supervisor two narrowed versions rather than asking again, because the conversation is much faster when there is something specific to react to.

Should I choose the topic I find most interesting?

Among topics that pass a feasibility screen, yes, because interest is what gets a project finished. Among topics that do not, no. Projects fail on data access far more often than on boredom, and a confirmed route to data is not a compromise, it is the difference between a project that exists and one that does not.

Can AI choose my dissertation topic for me?

It should not, and in many institutions it may not. AI assistance can generate candidates to react to, apply a feasibility screen consistently, and ask the questions a supervisor would ask. The choice, the justification and the words must be yours, you must be able to defend the topic unaided, and you must follow your institution's AI use and declaration policy for the assessment.