How to find a unique angle of analysis for your dissertation
So, you’ve done your basic research and you think you know the topic area you want to write for your dissertation project. You then start to research further, in an attempt to define a unique approach for analysing that topic. As you do, you find that your spider diagram scribbled on a post-it note slowly gets bigger and more elaborate, until your left with nothing more than a picture, of a spider, on a post-it note.
We’ve all been there, but by following five simple steps you can improve your research methodology, allowing you to overcome one of the first, but often most difficult, tasks of writing your dissertation — identifying your unique angle of analysis.
1. Start off broad
It may sound obvious, but start off by reading as much as you can on your topic area! This will allow you to gain a deeper understanding of the topic issues, gage whether there is enough content to write your dissertation on it, and, if so, gather considerable information and data. Remember, you may think you know a lot about a topic, but quite often that essay you wrote in your second year barely scratched the surface, even if you did get a top mark!
2. Make a list of the angles of research taken by academics (100 words):
As you embark on this reading rampage, you are generally encouraged to compile a bibliography as you go along. However, an equally important thing for you to to do is to start making a note of the different ways academics analyse your chosen topic. It doesn’t have to be a long detailed list, and you could even do it in amongst your bibliography, but quite often a line or two summarising an article or a book can give you a clearer idea of what has been argued, and specifically how. Doing this can also increase the efficiency of your research. Perhaps not so much now, but in four weeks time when you’ve got more deadlines than you do money in your bank account, this can allow you to easily remember the thematic content of an article!
3. Make a note of work that crosses over (100 words)
Be sure to make a note when the work of different authors has crossed over. What do I mean by this? If academics have: made similar arguments, tested one another’s ideas, built upon an argument, or critiqued each other’s work, than make a note of it — you can even add it to the list you’ve already started! Doing this will allow you to create a record, an academic family tree if you like, of the relationships between the arguments that have been made on your topic, specifically — who has argued what, why and how they relate. This can be beneficial for two reasons: it can help you to identify a theory or a school of thought (group of people who share an opinion on something), which you could prove or disprove as your unique angle of analysis. It will also provide you with a base of necessary information for writing your literature review and/or introduction.
4. Make a note of the limitations of the author’s research (100 words)
Another point to consider is that most articles written in academic journals will have a section towards the end, or in the conclusion, where the author acknowledges the limitations of their analysis, and what could be done to improve their analysis. If it’s a newly written article, the authors suggested improvements might represent an area of the topic that is largely unexplored, or hasn’t yet been analysed in a certain way, thus providing you with a unique angle for analysing your topic. In addition, the stated limitations can be used as a basis to critique their work (if you include their work in your dissertation), which is something you’ll need to do in order to write a balanced argument.
5. Choose a different range of sources!
Sometimes you’ll find that the most interesting line of questions on a topic area can come from a discussion in an interview, public debate or conference. An example of websites where you can find such things are: Youtube, TEDTalks and BBC radio podcasts. These social media platforms can therefore be a really helpful, as they not only provide you with a welcome break from reading dense articles on Google scholar, but can also be a great place to find irregular and interesting ideas, which you can then use an angle to analyse your topic area! So change it up, you may be surprised at what you find, and it will also show that you’ve used a diverse range of sources, which will only serve to strengthen your grade as well!
