Graduate Lounge - April 2005

The NERA Researcher
Vol. 43, Issue 2, p. 8
April 2005

The Graduate Lounge

Interested in Educational Research?
How to Decide What to Study

If you are a student who came to graduate study without a clear-cut definition of your own research interest area, you are not alone. Many graduate students come to master’s- or doctoral-level study having an intended area of study with somewhat ambiguous boundaries such as educational psychology, educational technology, or cognitive development. However, there is nothing wrong or bad about this unspecified situation. On the contrary, it can have positive influences on one’s research career depending on how one deals with it.

A strategy advised by many professors and advisors is to get into different research studies and projects. Each study adds a set of research skills and interests to one’s repertoire. As a result of guidance, supervision, and mentoring from more experienced researchers, novice researchers can build on their existing abilities and develop new useful skills. It is the collaborative nature of research projects that helps graduate students to realize and appreciate the requirements of being competent researchers.

In her NERA 2004 poster, Sara Fry referred to “finding an appropriate topic” as one of the barriers in the “dissertationing” process and advised graduate students to find their rhythm and get it done. My colleague Jon Hobbs, an advanced doctoral student in educational psychology at SUNY Albany, provides his insights and experience throughout his doctoral program. He agrees on the benefits of participating in different research projects for searching a research interest area. He even goes one step further by recommending his fellow comrades to “think outside the box” and look for research opportunities across departments and disciplines. Our division chair Dr. Joan Newman advises students to be open to new ideas and opportunities, but cautions against waiting for the perfect, paradigm-shifting idea. My advisor Dr. Robert McMorris, who is also a former NERA president, values the perseverance and problem solving skills of graduate students. He also believes in the merit of different research experiences in encouraging students to a more mature level in their “decision about a dissertation topic, committee, how to get it done, and how to laugh anyway when developing Plan B, C, or L.”

More research experience brings more potential interest areas. By having acquaintance with various research areas, one can employ the strategy to compare and contrast different variables for each candidate topic. Several variables affect the selection process for the final focus research topic(s) on which student will devote at least a portion of his or her career. Among these variables there can be personal predilection, feasibility of the project, availability of expert mentors or fellow authors, popularity, impact, and future of the research topic. Most of these variables are specific to each individual and his or her environment. For example, there may be programmatic studies on a specific topic in a department where student already has a focus area, whereas in another department students may be freer in their selection. Different variables will gain varying weights of importance for individuals in these two situations.

To sum it up, a widely recommended strategy to follow in looking for possible research interest areas is participating in different research projects even from across disciplines. Having a variety of research experiences brings a comfort of being able to make selection among them. The final decision about focusing on one topic as a dissertation subject depends on local circumstances related to one’s own stakes, preferences, and “what is happening.”

Author Note
Asil Ali Özdoğru is a second year doctoral student in the Division of Educational Psychology and Methodology at the University at Albany, SUNY. He is a student member of NERA and can be mailed at ED 233, School of Education, University at Albany, Albany, NY 12222.

Reference
Fry, S. W. (2004, October). Finding your rhythm and getting it done. Poster presented at the 35th annual conference of the Northeastern Educational Research Association, Kerhonkson, NY.