Identifying an Area of Research

Abstract

You may not have a choice in what you research, it may be that you are given a particular topic area to research, or a concept to investigate. If this is the case, then if at all possible try to find some area that interests you within the given investigation. For example, let us say you are asked to research:

Why unemployment is 35% higher among unqualified people in comparison with qualified people.

Try not to fall into the trap of immediately presuming that everyone knows the answer already. If you do this, you will not only fall into a biased research outlook, but you may feel that the answer is so obvious that you are wasting your time in researching the topic. This in turn will lead you to devalue the importance of your research and you will find it extremely difficult to motivate yourself, especially if problems occur.