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.

The Best Way to Choose a Research topic

30 Mar 2026 · 1 min

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0:46

In this concise advisory video, Steve Tippins Ph.D. outlines a practical framework for selecting a dissertation or research topic. He emphasizes that a viable topic must (1) add to the existing scholarly conversation—conceptualized as a growing "knowledge pile"—and (2) be realistically executable within the researcher’s constraints. He warns against red‑flag topics: those that are overly groundbreaking with no precedent, excessively broad, inaccessible to the intended population, or driven solely by personal passion without scholarly justification. He encourages prospective researchers to self‑question: can the topic be justified, can it be executed, and does it meaningfully extend the knowledge pile? The segment ends with a call‑to‑action inviting viewers to comment for a link to a free dissertation help community.

Chapters

Here's one of my best tips for choosing your research topic. Your committee wants to see that your research adds to an existing conversation and that you can finish it. It's doable. I like to think of knowledge as a pile. Every piece of research adds a little bit more. If your research sounds groundbreaking, but no one has ever gotten near it, no one's ever thought of anything like that, that's a red flag. It's probably too far from our knowledge base for that gap to be meaningful. Other triggers are topics that are too broad to be doable, topics where you can't access the population, topics driven by personal passion, but lacking in scholarly need justification. Before you fall in love with the topic, ask yourself, can I justify this? Can I execute this? And does it add to the pile? That is what gets approved. Comment help and we will send you the link to our free dissertation help community. You've got this.