Writng for Research

Discussion Question 3

A very common situation when preparing to write a dissertation is having a that is too broad . Then when getting ready to work on the lit review , the becomes too narrow and the researcher cannot find enough information to make the lit review exhaustive

Share some suggestions of ways to narrow a

In to narrow a research , one must be able to identify the research variables that one is planning to study . For example , one wants to study academic achievement of students with special needs . The obviously is

very broad to narrow the one must first identify the variables in the , which are academic achievement and special needs students . Next , one must identify and operationalize academic achievement . In addition , special needs students have varied conditions and studying all types would not be too practical , hence one must identify a specific type of students , such as learning disabilities autism , Down syndrome etc . Another means of narrowing a would be to research , read existing researches and studies on the that you have chosen , and then find out how previous researchers had studied the . This would give you an idea of what had already been done with the you have chosen and except when you want to replicate a study it is best to find out first what researches had been conducted related to your . A more simple way of narrowing a is to ask yourself why you want to study your and what are the things that you hope to find out about the chosen (Aaron , 2002 . In this way , you would have a clearer picture of what you want to study

Share some ways to broaden a literature search

In to broaden a literature search , one must first identify the pertinent variables and factors in the study that have a bearing on the over-all study . The approach should be from general to specific , in the above example , one can first do a literature search on academic achievement of students in the country , then to the more specific academic achievement of regular and special needs students . On the other hand , research on special needs students can start with special needs students ' classification to programs that help increase academic achievement of special needs students . Another way of broadening a literature search would be to create a historical approach to the search (Roth , 1999 , starting from the earliest records to the developments in the field or at the present time

Share suggestions of ways to narrow a literature search but keep it exhaustive

Sometimes , it is difficult to narrow a literature search and still keep it exhaustive , but one way to do that is to identify only the key words that are related to the and will be measured in the study . In this way , the literature search will be narrow and focused only on the variables of the study it will...