Where Research Topics Come From
Ideas do not arrive; they come from somewhere identifiable. The source names four origins, illustrates the first with a worked case, and — in the document as supplied — prints part of the section twice.
Four origins, and why naming them helps
The Week 3 material reproduces an excerpt from a published research methods knowledge base to answer the question of where research problems come from. The excerpt identifies four sources, and they are worth naming precisely because a researcher who cannot say where an idea came from usually cannot say what it is for either.
The four are not ranked, and the source does not suggest one is better than another. What differs between them is what each hands you and what each leaves you to build — which is the practical basis for choosing.
What each origin gives you
Practical problems in the field
Hands you a problem that demonstrably matters to somebody, and usually the access to study it. Leaves you to find out whether anyone has written about it theoretically.
The literature
Hands you a defensible gap and a body of prior work to build on. Leaves you to find a setting and a population where the gap can actually be tested.
Requests for proposals
Hands you the problem, its context, a preferred approach and a budget. Leaves you with somebody else's question and, often, somebody else's timetable.
Your own thinking
Hands you a topic you will still care about in eighteen months. Leaves you to establish that it is a research problem rather than a preoccupation.
Practical problems in the field
This is the origin most available to a practising project manager, and the source treats it as entirely legitimate. Ideas come from what you see happening around you, or from working with the people who see it.
The excerpt adds a line that is easy to skip and worth keeping: many of the ideas would strike the outsider as silly or worse. The point is that a problem obvious to people inside a practice often looks trivial to anyone outside it — and that this is a fact about the outsider's information, not about the problem.
The structure of that illustration transfers directly to delivery work. A recurring irritation — rework on a particular handover, a form that is always late, an approval that always needs chasing — is rarely worth studying as an incident. Multiplied across a portfolio and a year, it can be. The move from anecdote to research problem is a move from the case to the aggregate.
The illustration also shows the second half of the pattern: the industry in question had already developed approaches to the problem. An existing set of responses is what makes an evaluative or explanatory study possible, rather than a purely descriptive one. See Descriptive, Explanatory and Evaluative Research.
The literature in your specific field
The second origin is the one academic supervision tends to prefer, and the source describes it plainly: researchers get ideas by reading the literature and thinking of ways to extend or refine previous research.
Extending and refining are different operations. Extending applies an established finding to a population, setting or period it has not yet been tested in. Refining questions a condition of the original — whether the effect holds when a variable that was controlled is allowed to vary.
Both are more tractable than inventing a problem from nothing, because the framing, the vocabulary and often the instrument already exist. The source makes the same point from the opposite direction elsewhere: a topic that has been written about in journal articles has been addressed and developed theoretically, which it describes as very helpful for a beginning researcher working within an academic institution.
The mechanics of the search — sourcing, scanning, annotating and building a theoretical framework from what you find — belong to a later step and are covered in Step 3: Checking the Literature.
Requests for proposals
The third origin is the most concrete. The source describes requests for proposals published by government agencies and some companies as documents that describe a problem the agency would like researchers to address — virtually handing the researcher an idea.
It sets out what such a document typically contains: the problem that needs addressing, the contexts in which it operates, the approach they would like you to take to investigate it, and the amount they would be willing to pay for the research.
That list is worth reading as a specification of what a well-formed research idea contains. Any idea from any origin is ready to work with when you can state the problem, its context, a plausible approach and what it will cost you. Three of the four items are things a self-generated idea usually lacks on day one.
Your own thinking, and what shapes it
The fourth origin is stated briefly and then qualified: many researchers simply think up their research topic on their own — but no one lives in a vacuum, so the ideas you come up with on your own are influenced by your background, culture, education and experiences.
That qualification is more than modesty. It is the same observation that underpins declared-standpoint research, where the researcher's position is stated as part of the design rather than treated as neutral. See Critical Inquiry and Standpoint Research.
For research inside your own organisation the practical consequence is direct. An idea generated by your own thinking about work you do carries your reading of that work with it, including the parts you are certain about. Writing down what you already believe the answer is — before you design anything — makes the assumption available for inspection instead of leaving it to operate silently.
A second list, in the same source, that is never reconciled
The teaching material carries its own list of idea sources in the step where you begin with an idea, separate from the reproduced excerpt. It names your studies in your degree, your work in your industry, and readings in media and journals related to your industry — particularly a theme that stimulates debate and is topical.
THE TWO LISTS OF IDEA SOURCES IN THE SAME MATERIAL
| Reproduced excerpt (four sources) | Nearest item in the teaching source's own list | Match |
|---|---|---|
| Practical problems in the field | Your work in your industry | Close |
| The literature in your specific field | Readings in media and journals related to your industry | Partial — the excerpt means research literature, the list includes media |
| Requests for proposals | — | No equivalent in the teaching source's own list |
| The researcher's own thinking | Your studies in your degree | Partial — study interests are one input to own thinking |
The two lists appear in the same week's material and are not reconciled anywhere in it. Neither is presented as superseding the other.
Nothing turns on which list you use, but the difference is worth noticing on one point: a topic drawn from a debate in trade media is not the same as a topic drawn from research literature, and only the second establishes that the subject has been developed theoretically.
Choosing a route, and the gate all four pass through
Which origin to work from
What happens to the idea next
- Idea
- Literature check
- Feasibility
- Narrowed topic
- Research question
An origin is not a topic and a topic is not a question. The next two operations are separate and both are compulsory: establishing that the study can be done at all, in Assessing Research Topic Feasibility, and cutting the topic down to a workable size, in Narrowing and Scoping a Research Topic.
If you are working in the project management domain and want a starting shortlist rather than a blank page, the source supplies a list of broad areas — see Research Themes in Project Management. The step this page sits inside is covered in Step 1: Generating and Refining a Research Idea.
What to carry forward
- Four origins: practical problems in the field, the literature, requests for proposals, and your own thinking.
- The nursing back-injury figures are the source's illustration, not statistics you may cite as evidence.
- The illustration's real lesson is structural — a small per-case problem becomes researchable in the aggregate.
- A request for proposals specifies what a well-formed idea contains: problem, context, approach and cost.
- Own-thinking ideas carry your background with them; write down what you already believe before designing.
- Whatever the origin, the literature gate applies — little published work means seeking advice and expecting to be told to stop.
- The supplied document duplicates part of this section and truncates one passage mid-word; no content is lost.
Frequently asked questions
What are the four sources of research ideas in the source?
The experience of practical problems in the field; the literature in your specific field; requests for proposals published by government agencies and some companies; and the researcher's own thinking. The source reproduces these from a published research methods knowledge base and does not rank them.
Can I cite the nursing back-injury figures in my own work?
No. The figures — 5 or 10 out of every hundred nursing staff over a year, and costs in the tens of millions of dollars annually — are given as an illustration inside a teaching excerpt, with no study, sample or date attached. They demonstrate a structure of argument, not a measured rate. If you need a figure like that, find and cite a primary study.
Is a topic from my own workplace acceptable for a master's research project?
The source explicitly endorses practical problems in the field as an origin, and separately names your work in your industry as a source of ideas. The constraint is not the origin but the literature: the topic still has to have been written about, or you are advised to seek advice and expect to be told to reconsider.
What is the equivalent of a request for proposals inside a company?
The source describes published requests for proposals only, so any internal equivalent is an extension rather than source content. The nearest analogue is a sponsor or assurance function asking for something to be investigated. The trade-off is the same: you gain access and a problem someone wants solved, and you lose control of the question.
Why does the source repeat itself in this section?
It is a defect in the supplied document rather than a deliberate restatement. The feasibility heading and the paragraphs before it appear twice, and one instance is truncated mid-word where two passages have run together. No statement contradicts another and nothing appears to be missing.
References and source attribution
- Trochim, W. M. K. 2006, Research Methods Knowledge Base (http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/probform.php) — the source of the four-origin excerpt and the nursing back-injury illustration reproduced in the supplied teaching material.
- Naoum, S. G. 2013, Dissertation Research & Writing for Construction Students, 3rd ed., Routledge — cited in the supplied source as the reading on topic selection.
- O'Leary, Z. 2017, The Essential Guide to Doing Your Research Project, 3rd ed., Sage Publications, London.
- Bryman, A. 2016, Social Research Methods, 5th ed., Oxford University Press, Oxford.
- The supplied teaching source: consolidated week 3 teaching notes and slide material on developing a research topic, used here as the basis for all statements attributed to "the source".
Suggested questions for Ask KEVOS
- Help me turn a recurring problem on my projects into a researchable topic.
- Which of the four idea origins best fits someone with organisational access but limited reading time?
- How do I check whether there is enough literature on a topic before I commit to it?
- Rewrite my research idea as a request for proposals — problem, context, approach, cost.
- What assumptions am I bringing to a topic drawn from my own experience?