Several factors influence your choice of a project topic, it could be individualistic though but most of these factors are very common among students. That notwithstanding, you need to take easy and careful steps when choosing a project topic. The following nuggets will help a great deal;
- Your project topic should be specific
- A project topic must have two variables
- Consider your source of research motivation
- What is the nature of your research
- Be certain of your scope of study
Your project topic should be specific
· Your project should intend to study a specific specimen. It is not proper to study an entire entity in their number; normally you are required to pick a certain specimen, study it and make your generalization from your findings.
· You must select a population of study and pick a sample size for the research from the population.
A project topic must contain two variables
· Your project must consist of a dependent variable. This simply points to the specific body you want to understudy. For instance, a topic that reads, “coverage of students’ politics in select national dailies”, ‘national dailies’ is the dependent variable.
· Secondly, it must have an independent variable. From the example above, the independent variable is ‘students’ politics’.
Consider your source of research motivation
· Personal experience; you may set to discover the reason for certain occurrences based on your personal experiences or that of someone.
· Observation; as a matter of opinion, if an occurrence have been observed or noted to have happened over time, a researcher may move to find out reasons why such things happen, how they happen, how it affects lives and possible solutions if necessary.
What is the nature of your research?
· Cause and effect. Your research may set to find the reasons why events happen and the effects on lives.
· Problem and solution. On the other hand, you may have detected persisting problem overtime and as your research objective, you would want to find solution to that problem.
· Existing records. This one more applicable in mass communication project topics where student could study the content of newspapers, academic data and lots more through a method called content analysis.
Be certain of your scope of study
· As an undergraduate, do not attempt to extend to the scope of a masters or PHD work. It could be too broad for you to manage at your level.
· Set boundaries for the length of time to study with months, sample size and your study specimen.