Choosing a Research Topic and Getting Resources Needed

Choosing a Research Topic and Getting Resources Needed

I. Choosing a Topic for Your Thesis

Most of you will be wondering about the topic of your thesis that you will write. You want to choose something where you have a strong interest, but you also want the topic to be current and feasible. A master's thesis is generally not supposed to be highly creative. You are not expected to make a profound contribution to academic work with your thesis. You must produce something more than just a simple report that you would undertake in a class. And, the thesis must be your own work and not just the compilation of other's works.

It will not be enough for you to say that you want to write about economics, politics, or international relations. These general areas are obvious starting points; but they cannot be sufficiently limited research topics. Your advisor may be able to help you to limit your thesis to something feasible. If you cannot find your topic title on Google Scholar, you may have to limit it more. Research is typically aimed at a particular question. One that can be answered yes or no; or one that allows us to say where the bulk of the evidence lies. Ideally, your conclusions on your research question can be reduced to a definite statement that adds to our knowledge of the subject. Ultimately you must have a research question that is both interesting and useful. You must have a question which allows your thesis to say something definite about the topic. Otherwise, there is no need to even read your thesis. Say something definite that adds to our knowledge.

One quick way to come up with a good research topic is to look at Google Scholar using key words about subjects you feel are interesting. Remember, choosing a topic that is interesting to you is not good enough. It must be interesting to the scholarly community. Google Scholar will help you narrow your interests. Also, you can see how many people are writing in this area. This will become crucial when you go about developing your literature review chapter. After you have collected say 10 references in Google Scholar (within the last five years) you can proceed to TKU databases and find additional references. First read the abstracts if they are available. Then check out the conclusions to the paper. If you find they are weak or confused, then discard them and move on to other references. Try to master the language and key vocabulary that is common to the papers. Look at the titles of the papers and see what is the basic research question they are addressing. Zotero is an excellent way of collecting your initial references along with some of the abstracts. Out of this set of references, choose one or perhaps two papers that you feel are really important, current, and understandable. Let's call these works your anchor paper(s). Focus your attention on these papers and read them from beginning to end. Know these key papers very well because they will form the basis for your own research. Note the references used in the paper (s) you choose as your research anchor since this can guide your literature review.Also, be able to talk in clear English the thrust of the paper(s), the methodology, the limitations, and the conclusions reached in the anchor paper. Later you will want to compare your research with the anchor research. The anchor paper(s) can help you to decide on a title and a specific research question.

Some students come up with two or three research questions (and usually they call them hypotheses). This is entirely unnecessary. Choose ONE research topic or question. That will already be a tough job to investigate. Any other questions will be subsidiary to this. Rarely will you find good research work that has numerous research questions embedded in them. For one thing, how would you decide on a title if there are three research questions. Your model may generate several empirical outcomes, but the thrust of your thesis (i.e. the focus) must be limited to a single research issue. Often you have numerous variables and the model can change depending on these variables. However, it remains true that these models and variables are all directed at a single research topic which has a relatively simple answer attached to it, depending on the evidence presented.

Research questions must be as objective as possible. For example, one should not write editorial-type topics like " Why the Obama Administration was a Failure", "An Investigation of America's Domination of Asia", or "Why Trump Will Eventually Cause Nuclear War", etc. Such titles are seen all the time in the media, but you will find that you have no way of investigating these topics except by surveying editorials and media that are not at all scholarly. Instead of influencing the minds of scholars, the writers are aiming to influence public opinion. Do not build your thesis on public opinion pieces in the media. Try to be impartial and unbiased. Let the bulk of the evidence tell you how to think about the subject. It will be hard and sometimes surprising. But, good scholarly work requires a commitment to honesty and integrity.

II. Resources for Your Research

Twenty-five years ago,all of the resources used in writing a thesis were to be found in the form of hardcopies in large research libraries. That is not true today. Instead we have the internet that can make the gathering of data and information almost effortless. Data can be downloaded, references can be sought out, and even books can be bought and downloaded in a matter of seconds. In addition, large sets of data, charts, and descriptive statistics are available from special websites devoted to processing and disseminating such statistics to the public. Today, libraries are mainly important for maintaining older books and references, as well as vast digital databases including up-to-date online versions of academic journals allowing online reading and even downloading of articles for personal use. The internet is a wonderful source of information, but it is not regulated and so the user must be cautious of using data and information in a causal manner. Some thoughtful discretion is often required. Be critical of the data and statistics offered on the net.

Most countries provide free data for public consumption, but some countries still maintain strict controls on data, while other countries have little in government budgets for the creation of dedicated databases. The FRED database is very extensive. For example, one can access the US unemployment rates for each month beginning in January 1948 and extending to present. By contrast, India has a difficult time providing reliable unemployment rate data, with the International Labor Organization and World Bank estimating only annual data from 1991 to present. Some international organizations have data, such as the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank, the OECD, Eurostat, and the UN. Sometimes this data is not free. Sometimes it is only partial and not complete for all places and for all years. It can be very frustrating to get good data on countries you are studying.

Financial data are usually high frequency and quite complete. However, financial data are not necessarily free. Financial data includes such things as stock market data, interest rate data, and exchange rate data. These data are high frequency and usually daily (even hourly). Daily data can easily be converted into weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly data as one wishes. One problem with daily data is that holidays occur and on those days the markets are closed. This makes it difficult to arrange the data carefully so that they can be read into statistical software. Working efficiently with these data require a great deal of skill with Excel, since there may be many thousands of observations.

Demographic data are usually very precise. Countries typically keep good records of births and deaths. Immigration data (especially illegal immigration) are much more imprecise. Tax records and data are also fairly precise, but the fiscal year may not coincide with the calendar year. In addition, countries like China have only recently begun to use taxation. Government spending is usually precise and up-to-date, but some countries will hide their defense expenditures. Corruption can also bias statistics on government revenues and outlays. Trade data is very precise and highly detailed. You can get detailed data on commodity trade from the UN here. Even so, countries that have strict capital controls may have biased data on commodity trade due to over-invoicing. The UN mirror data allows one to estimate this invoicing to a certain extent. One must also be aware of the different valuation methods used to quote trade (e.g. FAS, FOB, CIF)

For charts on economic data, the best place to go is trading economics. The data are not accessible, but the charts are free and can be designed in numerous ways. Very little definitive analysis can be done using these charts, even when two series are charted together. But, the charts can be used to illustrate apparent relationships in the data and can be valuable when motivating your research question in your Chapter 1.

The UN also has good annual data on national income for all countries of the world. This is important if you wish to look at panel data over a large number of countries. You can see the data here. The data are given in nominal and real values and are denominated in local currency units (LCU) and in USD. You can get all the important GDP data, as well as the breakdown in expenditure data. There are also population data and exchange rate data. The UN data is not up-to-date, so they may only have data up to 2015, but it goes back to earlier years and its coverage is complete. For this reason, I find it useful. It is only annual data and not quarterly data, though. To get quarterly data you will need to try other databases, and usually these are very limited.

The school has many wonderful databases that can allow you to research up-to-date journal articles. These include JSTOR, EBSCOHOST, and SCOPUS, and many others. You may find these on our school library's webpage. Just look for database in English to begin your search. You can download and printout pdf copies of these papers, as well. However, you should only download and printout a few of these since it is unlikely that you will read them all at first. Your job is to read a couple of these journal articles very carefully and try to understand all that they are saying in the article. Mastering one or two journal articles will be a tremendously important first step in writing your thesis. It gives you a command of the issues and an understanding of where the level of rigor is. You will begin to be able to talk about the subject with confidence and you will not feel overwhelmed by the subject you are studying. You will begin to realize just how much you can limit your topic, as well. You will be able to begin to outline the area of your research and you will see many diverse aspects of the topic you did not realize before. Questions will arise. Some of these questions will be aspects of the paper you do not understand. You will need to find help in clarifying these questions. Do not be embarrassed to ask your advisor or your teachers. You cannot ask them to read the whole paper for you ... that is your job. But, certainly there is nothing wrong with getting some help from other people when you need it. It is important to keep trying to understand something; don't just give up and say you can't do it. Many times, it takes several weeks to follow what is going on. Progress will be made, this is what matures you. Other questions will arise, which are speculative in nature. You will begin to ask if this is true or is that true. You will see parts of the paper that you feel are missing something or are poorly written. This is what happens when you immerse yourself in a subject for a long time. But, you must get started, so go to the databases and begin a word-search on a topic you love.