When you're looking at choosing a dissertation topic, this is generally going to be through a choice made by you and your lecturer/professor. Most often, students, when they are thinking about a dissertation topic, should attempt to narrow down their topic to one that is specific and can adequately researched. However, the opposite is commonly true, as many lecturers sometimes feel that students want to ‘research the world' when they are thinking about a topic on which to write their dissertation research paper.



Your topic needs to be related to the academic arena, the course that you are one, and the area of expertise that your supervisor (the lecturer who will advise you of research direction) – if you choose a topic that is broad or off topic, then you're surely heading in the wrong direction. This is where your supervisor/lecturer comes in to their element – they'll question your understanding and thinking, and this isn't to test you as a person, but to test whether or not you have the background knowledge and potential to see the research through. The main element here is that your supervisor can see that you believe you have an ending in sight.

If you are on a management degree and have a keen interest in marketing on your course, then choosing a topic of researching women and the effects of Beauty products, in relation to brand loyalty, wouldn't be a good idea. Even choosing the 25–35 year olds category, who reside in the North West (of England) would still mean too broad of a topic, but will all be helpful when choosing a topic for your proposal.

Generally speaking, your dissertation topic should focus on something that you are interested in, but not something that you have detailed knowledge about. Why, you may ask? Well, simply put, you're going to become bored easily and distracted. This is a human trait that everyone carries – we like to learn new things, they don't have to be innovative or ‘hip', they just need to be new to us as an individual.

When you are thinking about the topic of your dissertation you don't need to go into much detail, as you are setting the foundations to build the rest of your proposal on. Once this has been approved by your supervisor, you will then be able to go onto writing the hypothesis, or hypotheses, for your research project – i.e. what you want to learn, prove, or disprove.

When you are looking at narrowing the topic for your proposal, you will need to conduct research with relevant resources and review what other research has already been undertaken in the specific topic. A quick tip here – it's always good to keep a note-pad on you at this point, as many of the sources you review will probably be used in your literature review.

From all of the research and thinking you are doing, and discussions with your supervisor and friends (the latter I would strongly advise), you should be formulating a plan of how your work is going to be shaped. This isn't an easy task, but was is in academia?

You will of course want to keep on topic when you are planning out your topic and proposal, and planning is best started as early as possible in the dissertation process. This will allow you to understand where you are at in every stage of the process and will also benefit you when you have to centralise the scope and thinking of your paper. This will all be helpful when you are looking to write your proposal and thinking about the hypothesis of your dissertation topic.