Steve Tippins Ph.D.Helping doctoral students get their dissertation accepted, succeed in their careers, & change the world | Academic Career Advisor | Dissertation Chair & Founder, Beyond PhD Coaching | 35 + years of experience.

Find Gaps in Disagreement

26 Feb 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:35

In this brief instructional video, the speaker advises graduate students and researchers on how to locate promising research gaps. The primary strategy is to examine the discussion sections of papers, where authors often suggest future work, especially when results are contradictory. The speaker illustrates this with hypothetical references to 'Jones' and 'Smith' who reported opposing findings, highlighting that persistent disagreement signals an unresolved area that warrants further study. The video concludes with a call to join a free 'Dissertation Help' community for additional support in refining research questions.

Chapters

You can also find future research options in discussion sections where they're discussing what has been done, and maybe they'll talk about future research also if there are contradictory results. Jones found this. However, Smith found this, which means there's not agreement. And if there's a strong body of literature on both sides, there still needs to be more work done. There's still a gap in our knowledge. If you're struggling with finding a gap or just having difficulties in fine tuning it, join our free Dissertation Help community. I'll see you there.