Steve Tippins explains that a gap in academic research is an unstudied area or unanswered question, but warns that not every unstudied topic deserves research. A meaningful gap builds incrementally on existing work, not a huge leap disconnected from what scholars already know.
What is a gap in the literature? Quite simply, a gap is what hasn't been done. That is very oversimplified, though. A gap is something that has been unstudied or hasn't been done in your field, but just because it's unstudied doesn't mean it needs to be done. Your role in this process is to add knowledge. I like to think of knowledge as a pile, and every piece of research adds a little bit more to the pile. But we don't take huge leaps away from the we just add a little bit more. So if your research is in theory sounding very good, but no one has ever gotten anywhere near it, no one's ever thought of anything like that, that's probably too far away from our knowledge base for the gap to be meaningful. 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.
