How can you find your research gap?

In order to find a research gap, you should know where to look for it (see the part on research field) and how to identify that this is indeed a gap. That is why you must be familiar with the research field you will investigate. You can find a research gap in one of the two following ways:

  1. By finding some interesting phenomenon in your social environment. Something that is intriguing and worth studying.
  2. By looking at what others have studied and drawing inspiration from their studies.

These are two different starting points, but to some extent you will have to include both when identifying your research gap. Social life provides many interesting phenomena to observe and use as inspiration. While choosing your research gap, consider the following:

  1. Are you able to access sources relevant for this topic? Sources of knowledge include scientific literature, statistical data, and  persons (to be studied), if you decide to conduct empirical research. Before you start, check what sources you have access to.
    Example: I can pursue a very ambitious project that aims to see how COVID-19 is tackled by presidents of Germany, France and Poland. However, I will not be able to conduct interviews with them. I can collect their statements and interviews and analyse them. However, access to information is limited by my language skills. If I speak only German, I will have access to statements of the German president and only translations of crucial statements made by the Polish and French presidents. This way, I lose a significant part of available information.
     
  2. What you can study, and what you cannot, or what are your project’s limitations?
    Example: One cannot generalise the attitudes of a whole population based on research results from a study on attitudes towards vaccination on a single FB group. However, I can treat my study as introductory and exploratory. Based on the results, I cannot speak about the whole society, but I can study a small fragment of the society: the persons who filled in my questionnaire. A researcher should be aware of limitations related to the sample and methodology.

If you have no idea how to approach the topic or the topic seems too broad, you can consult existing studies on a similar issue in your research field. There is plenty of information available on the Internet, too. Therefore, the challenge lies not in getting access to information but in finding reliable and pertinent information. It is about your ability to pick the proper resources. For scientific inquiry and research, you should use scientific resources. For academic literature, look at these two sources in the first place:

  • Databases available at the library of your university,
  • Google Scholar

Type in the keywords related to your topic and check the search results.

Internet is an egalitarian medium as everyone can publish content. That is the reason why you should pay attention to the following while searching for relevant information:

  • Who is the author? Is it a scientist, a journalist, an influencer, or somebody else? Additionally, check where the author works and what s/he does.
  • What did s/he write? Is it a scientific article, a newspaper article, a blog entry, or a report?
  • Who published it? Is it a scientific journal, a think-thank publication, a newspaper, or an international organisation?

If you know your research field well, you should recognise whether the information you found is reliable and scientific. If not, look at Exercise 4.

Discussions in the social media dedicated to academic matters such as Academia.edu, ReserachGate.net or LinkedIn.com, also may be an inspiration to choose a research gap.

While defining your research gap, using the knowledge and skills you gained during your studies might be helpful. Your studies and related scientific discipline are a lens through which you look at the social world. One could, for instance, investigate vaccination rates against Sars-CoV-2: some people get vaccinated, and some do not. It has a profound impact on human relations, medical services occupancy rate, and policies of different countries. There are plenty of topics to investigate. Therefore, decisions whether one vaccinates or not, and the reasons behind it, can be studied through various lenses (i.e. scientific disciplines), such as: