Picking the right topic for your doctoral dissertation is fundamental to fulfilling the research requirement of your online doctoral program. If you select the wrong topic, you may take years longer to graduate than you need to. We’ve made the process easier by clearly explaining what you need to know before you select your dissertation topic.
When choosing a doctoral dissertation topic, your topic must meet certain criteria to be approved for study. Each of the four following criteria must be considered:
The topic must be original to the academic literature
It must be problem-driven
It must be feasible
Your professors must like it (i.e., think it original, problem-driven, and feasible)
You also need to know what to do when you are stuck in the process and who to turn to for help.
As you prepare to decide on a topic, it is important to understand the criteria needed for choosing a doctoral research topic. The information listed below will help you understand the process and give you advice on what to do when you run into roadblocks. And sadly, they will come.
While this post will be most relevant to doctoral students enrolled in online programs at for-profit universities, some of the content is also relevant to doctoral students enrolled in traditional doctoral programs at bricks-and-mortar universities.
While there is a lot of information here, it is all designed to help you find the topic that will spur you on and help you reach your goals.
You’ll also learn a little bit about how Real Professors can help you pick the right dissertation topic for you, your professors, and your doctoral program and specialization.
Criteria 1: Originality
At the doctoral level of study, any research you do must be a new contribution to the peer-reviewed research literature on your topic. You may find that your first idea or three are not good topics to pursue, even if they are problem-driven and feasible, and even if one of your professors likes it. Remember, you will be reviewed by at least two more professors who likely will not think they are original topics.
Topics to Avoid
Some unoriginal topics for a doctoral dissertation are as follows:
Race on school disciplinary action
Transformational leadership style amongst clergy persons
Organizational strategies of nonprofits amid economic downturns
While the above topics may be problem-driven and also feasible given existing data collection instruments and data, they are not original. And your professors should know so and advise that these topics are well-researched already by the professoriate.
On Google Scholar, searches for each of these topics (e.g., “race and school discipline”) elicits tens if not over 100 studies per.
Specificity Matters
However, this does not mean that you cannot develop a more specific topic that would constitute an original research contribution to the academic literature. Indeed, the top research results for the above searches are for studies with much more precise topics.
For example, for the search “race and school discipline” on Google Scholar (as of June 25, 2021), the topics of the top three results are as follows:
a) The effect of being black and/or Latino on being referred by teachers to principals for discipline in elementary and middle schools.
b) The moderating effects of risk and protective factors at home for the relationship between race and being suspended or expelled in elementary, middle, and high schools.
c) Multiple case study of a purposive sample of high schools based on demographic differences (i.e., predominantly middle class and predominantly white, predominantly middle class and predominantly black, predominantly impoverished and predominantly white, predominantly impoverished and predominantly black) focused on disciplinary culture and institutional isomorphism.
Notice that these topics are much, much more specific than the list of unoriginal topics that precede them. With thought and research, you can almost always find a way to make the general topic that you are interested in more precise and to the point so that it will constitute an original contribution to the academic research literature.
How To Make Your General Topic More Specific
Here are some questions to ask about your general topic that will help you to make it precise enough to render it an original knowledge contribution to the academic literature:
Question 1: What other factors might enhance or mitigate the focal phenomenon?
Let’s stick with the general topic of race and school discipline.
You will notice that two of the three specific versions of this topic address factors in addition to race affected school discipline.
One of these studies (b) also includes data for risk and protective factors in addition to race, including family income, single parent households, food insecurity, mental health, and addiction as potential causes of being expelled or suspended.
The third study (c) addresses average family income and the different types of disciplinary policies in schools in addition to race. Always remember that social science is messy.
You cannot account for all factors that can cause an increase or decrease in an outcome variable, be it related to school discipline, health literacy, or job burnout. There is almost always something else for which you can collect data to render your general topic specific enough to constitute an original academic study.
Question 2: What other samples might also be experiencing the focal phenomenon?
Continuing the general topic example of race and school discipline, you might land on a more precise and original topic by asking yourself the additional following questions about potential samples:
What races have yet to be investigated?
What levels of schooling have yet to be investigated?
What combinations of race and level of schooling have yet to be investigated?
For example, the first study in the list above (a) addresses both Latinos and blacks from the perspective of critical race theory.
And the third study above (c) addresses middle-class blacks and poor whites in addition to poor blacks and middle-class whites.
In contrast, the predominance of the research on race and school discipline is focused on schools in impoverished black communities.
Considering different contexts and samples for the general topic in which you have interest is always a promising way to develop a more precise and original topic for your dissertation research.
Question 3: How might alternative research designs and methods improve understanding of the focal phenomenon?
For general topics that are studied predominantly using quantitative data, consider what gap(s) in understanding of the topic might be addressed using qualitative data. For general topics that are studied predominantly using qualitative data, consider what gap(s) in understanding of the topic might be addressed using quantitative data.
For example, the predominance of academic research on race and school discipline uses school or school district level data. Which means quantitative data.
What deeper understanding might open-ended or semi-structured interviews produce? For example, the third study in the list above (c) does just this. The authors conduct interviews with teachers and school administrators regarding not just the specific disciplinary policies in their schools, but additionally the reasoning and motivation for the policies.
Such understanding cannot be derived from quantitative data on school disciplinary actions.
In contrast, perhaps the research for a general topic is predominantly qualitative. Which means that there is little to no external validity in the literature. With a larger N, random sampling, and quantitative methods for data collection, such as surveys, the originality of your study may be that it is generalizable where previous studies are not.
Question 4: What ideas does my professor have for making my general topic idea more specific and therefore original?
If you have already asked this of your professor and he or she or they responded with something like “That’s your job” or “Oh, I see you want me to do your work for you,” then press them by asking about increasingly specific topics.
Here are example (abridged) exchanges you might encounter in the back and-forth between you and your professor (typically via email or Zoom and spanning multiple weeks) about your dissertation research topic.
The key of course is skipping the first four exchanges, which can literally take weeks with the stereotypical lazy online professor.
By starting with a precise topic that you have already verified as original with an informal review of the literature using multiple keyword searches and multiple academic research databases, your professor will have no choice but to take your word that your precise topic is original. Because they or he or she are notoriously lazy!
Tip: Be sure to save the email or text or online post wherein your professor approves your topic. This way, you have evidence of topic approval if your professor claims otherwise later on in your dissertation journey.
Criteria 2: The Problem-driven Topic
It’s not enough for your topic to be original.
It also has to matter.
And your topic must inform decision making that matters to more people than just you.
An original study of how many cups of coffee your neighbor drinks each morning does not matter. Or, if it happens to matter to you and/or your neighbor (perhaps you want to avoid your neighbor on mornings when she or he or they exceed two cups), in all probability the coffee drinking patterns of your neighbor do not matter to anyone else.
Problem-driven research in the social and professional sciences informs decision making that can help to alleviate if not eliminate the focal problem.
The problem of burnout in healthcare professions amid the COVID-19 pandemic is reason to conduct an original study of the mitigating effects of paid time off on burnout and subsequent negative work outcomes like absenteeism and turnover.
The problem of reduced fundraising amid the COVID-19 pandemic is reason to conduct an original study of the marketing strategies of nonprofits.
There are of course problems other than pandemics.
There are workforce shortages in specific industries such as healthcare and government.
There is perpetual addiction to alcohol and drugs.
There are market failures for which the government has yet to provide a public option, such as comprehensive yet affordable health insurance.
There are leadership failures in business that lead to negative work attitudes and behaviors, which in turn cost businesses millions of dollars per annum.
There is the problem of the profit motive causing online doctoral programs and its professors to fail students for trivial deviations from arbitrary templates, such as missing semicolons and/or inactive digital object identifier (or “doi”) links per APA 7.
Typically, a socioeconomic problem is what doctoral students initially think is the topic of their or his or her dissertation research.
But this is incorrect.
A socioeconomic problem is what motivates the selection of a general topic.
And the general topic is what motivates a preliminary literature review and the selection of a more specific, original topic.
The logic of picking a good dissertation topic is as follows:
That said, solely using data to demonstrate that a problem exists is not enough to constitute doctoral dissertation research in most cases.
Demonstrating that the revenues for nonprofit organizations in the United States declined sharply amid a specific economic downturn is demonstration of a problem, but it is not an original knowledge contribution that can inform strategic decision making in nonprofits.
However, demonstrating that race predicts and explains variation in the rate at which students are disciplined in schools, ceteris paribus, indeed is both the problem and the general topic combined. And the specific topic might be focused on a certain combination of race(s), level(s) of schooling, and other factors that too can affect disciplinary action in schools.
How To Know When Empirical Investigation Is Sufficient
So how do you tell when empirical investigation (qualitative and/or quantitative) of a socioeconomic problem is sufficient to fulfill the dissertation requirement of your doctoral program and when it is not?
There are two criteria that a problem must meet for the empirical examination thereof to be sufficient.
First, there must be disagreement that the problem actually exists.
For example, wrong or right, there are people in the United States who do not believe that institutional racism exists in the educational, legal, housing, public policy, religious, and/or business and professional arenas in the United States.
Second, the debate over the focal socioeconomic problem must be framed, implicitly or explicitly, with a critical theory of one ilk or another.
An example is the use of critical race theory to frame debate over and research into the role of racism in American institutions, including but not limited to the public education system, or criminal justice system.
Other examples are different iterations of critical behavior theory focused on demographic characteristics besides race, such as sexual orientation, gender identity, religious affiliation, and even political affiliation.
But remember, even if your problem meets both criteria, do not move forward with your literature review and data collection until you get the approval of your professor.
Indeed, different professors have different views on when and if a problem, when examined empirically, per se fulfills the dissertation research requirement of a doctoral program.
Criteria 3: Feasibility
Here are some problem-driven, original topics for your dissertation research that are not feasible, AND which should not be pursued:
A phenomenological study of altar boys and girls in Boston in the 1980s who were sexually abused by priests
A quasi-experimental study of the extent to which a new gun safety law affects gun related injuries in Colorado
Qualitative descriptive study of the racist attitudes and perceptions of homeowners in a predominantly white and affluent suburb of Atlanta
I would personally be interested in designing and implementing all three of these studies. The problems of rape, gun violence, and racism are, to put it mildly, compelling.
And there are no extant academic studies such as these. Nor will there ever be.
Each of these studies are wholly infeasible, but for different reasons.
The first study, of the lived experiences of now-adults who were sexually abused when children, would not be approved by your online university’s Institutional Review Board (IRB), ever. Even though these victims are no longer children, they no less qualify as a vulnerable population.
The quasi-experimental evaluation of the effects of a new gun safety law is not feasible due to a lack of data on gun-related injuries. The law is new, so these data do not exist yet.
The study of the potential racism of rich white people isn’t feasible for two reasons. First, you will have a very hard time recruiting participants. Moreover, the participants you do recruit will provide you only with qualitative data that are wholly fettered by social response bias.
Accordingly, the general decision rules for the feasibility of a potential dissertation topic are as follow, in no particular order:
Your potential study participants mustn’t be members of a vulnerable population. In addition to people who have been victimized, this also includes people who are economically disadvantaged, mentally challenged, under the age of 18, terminally ill, chronically ill, elderly, pregnant, incarcerated, homeless, uninsured, ethnic minorities, and/or unborn. This does not mean that you cannot sample from a population that has one of these characteristics. There are numerous phenomenologies of blacks who participated in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, for example. But if you plan to sample from a population with one or more of these characteristics, you must formulate your dissertation topic in such a way that it alleviates the possibility of any potential unintended negative consequences for study participants. Avoid problem-driven, original dissertation topics that require the units of observation to be sampled from a vulnerable population.
There must be extant data or a short-run way to collect data. Oftentimes a doctoral student will be very eager to analyze the effects of a new policy or program or strategy, be it in government or industry. And oftentimes this sort of dissertation topic will make for a feasible dissertation topic, in about five years. You cannot analyze the effects of a new policy or program or law or organizational strategy if enough time hasn’t passed for it to have an effect, potentially, positive or negative, intended or unintended. Quasi-experimental research designs require as much “after” data as “before” data for the outcome of the focal policy or program or law or organizational strategy. Without such data you will not be able to specify your quantitative model appropriately (typically with lagged variables) to account for maturational and other threats to internal validity. Steer clear of original, problem-driven dissertation topics for which the focal phenomenon is a very recent (say, within the past 2 years) law, public policy, public program, business policy or program, or organizational strategy in any type of organization. If you do not, you will pay tuition for much longer than you have to. And who wants to do that?
There must be some semblance of measurement validity. This one sounds like it applies just to quantitative dissertation research topics, but it applies to qualitative dissertation research topics equally so. The rub is that even though you can reassure study participants that:
(i) their survey and/or interview responses will be anonymized and
(ii) their participation in the study will be confidential, they still want to give responses that they believe are socially acceptable or desirable. When asking a rich white suburbanite what they think about an adjacent suburb that is predominantly impoverished and black, she or he or they will in all likelihood provide a positive response. Which is not to say that rich whites cannot view poor blacks positively. They most certainly can, implicit bias notwithstanding. But given both the history and current events of the United States, there is no way to tell for certain.
In general, avoid dissertation topics that require you to ask study participants about anything socio-politically controversial or divisive. Even if the topic is original and problem driven. Though it may be interesting, there is a good chance the data you collect will be deemed invalid and unusable by one or more of your professors.
Criteria 4: Professor Approval
No matter how problem-driven, original, and feasible a potential dissertation topic, there is no reason to pursue it if your professor disapproves.
Your professor might disapprove for one or more of the following reasons:
The dissertation topic is not appropriate to your degree program
Another doctoral student is currently working on the same, precise topic for his or her or their dissertation research
Your professor is a moron
Sometimes a doctoral student will land on a topic that meets all three of the criteria belabored throughout this article, but the topic is not right for a specific doctoral program.
For example, a multiple case study of the organizational strategies of veterans’ affairs hospitals for interprofessional collaboration befits the dissertation research requirements of most healthcare administration and public administration doctoral programs, but the topic is less befitting doctoral programs in leadership and general business administration.
One way to avoid veering too far from your doctoral degree program and specialization is to review the dissertations of past graduates of your program’s specialization. For the past five or so years.
Once you graduate, you have the rest of your postdoctoral career to do whatever research you like, if any, and without supervision.
For your dissertation research topic to be “right” in your professor’s view, don’t rock the boat. Pick a topic similar to previous ones that were approved, but that additionally are original, problem-driven, and feasible.
It is not uncommon for a doctoral student to select a topic that is right in all of the right ways, except one: it is similar to what another doctoral student is currently pursuing as her or their or his dissertation research topic. An easy way to avoid such duplication is avoiding the dissertation research topics of your classmates and those of the cohorts ahead of you in the program who’ve also yet to graduate.
Even if your topic is legitimately different enough to meet to be original, your professor will not read your dissertation proposal, emails, or assignments closely enough to detect said originality.
Dare We Say It? As Real Professors, We Do!
Which presents a very nice segue to the final reason your online professor at your for-profit doctoral program may not approve of your dissertation research topic: he or she or they may be a moron.
Professor Rant (You had to know it was coming!): The distribution of stupidity has been said (by economist types who are much smarter than me) to be normal across any population one can envision. The population of redheads in the United States has the same proportion of stupid people (and smart people) as has the population of lawyers in the United States. The population of people in Canada who did not go to college has the same proportion of stupid (and smart) people as has the population of medical doctors in Canada.
Which means that you should be not-at-all surprised if your online professor is a moron. A good many professors are morons. A good many moronic professors disapprove of original, problem-driven, feasible, and doctoral program specialty-appropriate dissertation research topics.
If you think you might have a moron in charge of your dissertation research (and in turn the amount of time and money it will cost you to complete your dissertation), schedule a meeting with your dean (i.e., your professor’s boss) or perhaps with another professor and ask them to review your potential topic.
You can also schedule a free meeting with a real professor before you do so, to make certain your topic is indeed the right one for you.
How Real Professors Can Help
We are real professors with real doctorates from real universities. Not only have we chaired or served on more than 100 dissertation committees collectively, we also have published peer-reviewed research in top academic journals in the fields of business, leadership, education, public administration, nursing, healthcare administration, and program evaluation.
In addition to helping you with the development of your dissertation research topic, we will also assist you in your direct and indirect communications with your professors.
We will write emails for you to send in response to your professor’s questions and revision requests. We will prepare you for your face-to-face meetings with your professor.
We will help you to file a formal complaint against your professor with the dean of your doctoral program when the former is being unreasonable, unfair, negligent, or even vindictive.
Pursuing your dissertation can be arduous, but there are tons of resources available to help you accomplish your goal. RealProfessors.org has the experience, time, and patience to work with you as you complete the dissertation process. We’ve been where you are, and we want to help you succeed. Whether picking the topic, identifying the best research questions, helping you decide on the method, or analyzing your data, we are here to help you each step of the way. And, we aren’t morons! :-)
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