Research field
A research field should fulfil the following criteria:
- You should be familiar with the research field you select.
- You should be able to investigate it, i.e. have access to sources of knowledge (primary or secondary)
Ad 1. A research field should not be completely new for you (if it is, you need to invest additional time and resources to learn it). You should be somewhat familiar with it, so that you can build your research design on your knowledge and experience. You do not have to be an expert in everything but knowing some aspects of your research field will definitely help you find a relevant research gap. It’s better not to learn about the research field from scratch (e.g. you know a lot about fashion influencers but you want to do a research project on pension system in Switzerland. Considering your knowledge, maybe it would be better to do a project about fashion influencers for elderly people, or Swiss fashion influencers). If you are starting from the very beginning, your chosen research gap might in fact not exist. You might also have a problem finding relevant literature. See Exercise 1.
Ad 2. You should have access to literature or research subjects related to your research topic. Before making the final decision about the research topic, check if you have access to relevant and credible resources. You might come up with an innovative and ambitious topic. Still, it might be impossible to study it due to the lack of suitable resources – relevant literature or access to data (or even the ability to generate your own data). Learn more about this limitation in Exercise 2.
Moreover, the topic should be appropriate from the point of view of ethics. In case of some topics or methods, consult your teacher, supervisor, or even an ethical board before engaging in research, especially about potentially sensitive topics found in fields such as psychology, pedagogy, or sociology. However, not all topics in those fields require special attention in terms of ethics, but only those that are related to generating or processing sensitive information, or that might cause discomfort to your respondents. It is strongly advised that with your experience and knowledge, you should refrain from pursuing such topics. See Exercise 3 for further elaboration of this issue. If you want to learn more about research ethics, go through the module "What is research ethics".