How to select a good research topic for PhD?

1. Choose the topic that interests you

You must give first priority while choosing the research topic. The research topic you choose will decide your career path. In order to avoid critical challenges during your PhD journey, it is necessary for you to choose the best research topic that interests you. When choosing a research topic you must fairly consider your academic background because it is important for you to be well knowledgeable about the source that you are going to choose. When selecting a research topic you must keep your carrier goal in mind. You must choose the topic that your interest holds or the topic you are excited about. Your attitude towards your topic will reflect in your research process.

The following three steps will help you to set your field of research interest,

• Your academic background.
• Your carrier goal.
• The specific field in which you are knowledgeable.

2. Narrow your topic idea

Narrowing a topic is an important guideline while selecting a research topic. A broad or general topic makes it difficult to find the specified research area, so it is necessary to narrow your topic idea. To narrow your topic idea, you must identify the main words of the topic then using the list of the words, try to describe how and why your research topic is specific. It will also help you in the further research process. Now using the necessary sources you need to select the best research topic for your PhD. Before you finalize it is better to have a keen understanding of the research topic. You should take some time to find out whether the topic you selected is worthy or not. You must be sure that no one else has done their research on the same topic previously. Make your own arguments to find out how much your research topic is unique from others.

These three steps will help you to increase your confidence in the selected research topic,

• Understand your topic
• Check whether the topic is worthy or not
• The topic should be plagiarism free

3. Considering the scope of the topic

The scope explains the limit of the research area. When you select a research topic you must also know the limit to which the research area can be explored. Basically, you need to know what the topic is going to cover and what it is focusing on. As a researcher, you have to be scope-oriented when selecting a topic. Remember that, if you choose a broad research topic then it might take a long time to complete your research work. The following steps must be followed while considering the topic,

• The scope must be attractive.
• The scope shouldn't exceed the limit.
• It should be live an academic nature.

5. Brainstorming the concepts

The process by which an idea gets generated is called brainstorming. For example, techniques like free-writing or concept mapping can be helpful while brainstorming the concepts. Choosing a topic can be a difficult process if you are unaware about the concepts that the topic covers. This will get reflected when you start to write your research paper. Brainstorming can also be used to broaden a too narrow topic it can be very useful to select an organized research topic. To brainstorm you must list the basic concepts covered by your topic. You need to have a basic concept idea about the topic, based on the concept you need to remove the words which look more casual and combine the words which are remaining to create a broad topic. Brainstorming the topic will ensure you that,

• Your topic is not too narrow.
• Your topic is well organized.
• The topic covers all your ideas.