8 Finding a Research Topic

Good research must begin with a good research question. Yet coming up with good research questions is something that novice researchers often find difficult and stressful. One reason is that this is a creative process that can appear mysterious, with experienced researchers seeming to pull interesting research questions out of thin air. However, research on creativity has shown that it is not as magical as it appears. It is largely the product of ordinary thinking strategies and persistence (Weisberg, 1993)^[1]. This section covers some fairly simple strategies for finding general research ideas, turning those ideas into empirically testable research questions, and finally evaluating those questions in terms of how interesting they are and how feasible they would be to answer.

Finding Inspiration

Research questions often begin as more general research ideas—usually focusing on some behavior or business characteristic: consumer behavior, market trends, financial performance, innovation management, and so on. Before looking at how to turn such ideas into empirically testable research questions, it is worth looking at where such ideas come from in the first place. Three of the most common sources of inspiration are informal observations, practical problems, and previous research.

Informal observations include direct observations of our own and others’ behavior as well as secondhand observations from non-scientific sources such as newspapers, books, blogs, and so on. For example, you might notice that certain products in a store always sell out quickly while others remain on the shelves. Could it be that most customers prefer those products for a specific reason? Or you might read in a business magazine about a company’s innovative marketing campaign and begin to wonder about the factors that contributed to its success. Much research in business has been inspired by informal observations. For instance, research on consumer loyalty programs was inspired by observing the frequent flyer programs of airlines.

Practical problems can also inspire research ideas, leading directly to applied research in such domains as marketing, finance, operations, and human resources. Does offering flexible work hours improve employee productivity? How effective are different investment strategies in volatile markets? To what extent do digital marketing campaigns influence consumer purchasing behavior? How can businesses improve their supply chain efficiency?

Probably the most common inspiration for new research ideas, however, is previous research. Recall that science is a kind of large-scale collaboration in which many different researchers read and evaluate each other’s work and conduct new studies to build on it. Of course, experienced researchers are familiar with previous research in their area of expertise and probably have a long list of ideas. This suggests that novice researchers can find inspiration by consulting with a more experienced researcher (e.g., students can consult a faculty member). But they can also find inspiration by picking up a copy of almost any professional journal and reading the titles and abstracts. In one typical issue of Journal of Marketing, for example, you can find articles on consumer behavior, branding strategies, market segmentation, the impact of social media on marketing, and many other topics. If you can narrow your interests down to a particular topic (e.g., digital marketing) or domain (e.g., financial markets), you can also look through more specific journals.

Reviewing the Research Literature

Once again, one of the most common sources of inspiration is previous research. Therefore, it is important to review the literature early in the research process. The research literature in any field is all the published research in that field. Reviewing the research literature means finding, reading, and summarizing the published research relevant to your topic of interest. In addition to helping you discover new research questions, reviewing the literature early in the research process can help you in several other ways.

• It can tell you if a research question has already been answered.
• It can help you evaluate the interestingness of a research question.
• It can give you ideas for how to conduct your own study.
• It can tell you how your study fits into the research literature.

The research literature in business is enormous—including millions of scholarly articles and books dating to the beginning of the field—and it continues to grow. Although its boundaries are somewhat fuzzy, the research literature definitely does not include self-help and other popular business books, dictionary and encyclopedia entries, websites, and similar sources that are intended mainly for the general public. These are considered unreliable because they are not reviewed by other researchers and are often based on little more than common sense or personal experience. Wikipedia contains much valuable information, but because its authors are anonymous and may not have any formal training or expertise in that subject area, and its content continually changes, it is unsuitable as a basis for sound scientific research. For our purposes, it helps to define the research literature as consisting almost entirely of two types of sources: articles in professional journals and scholarly books in business and related fields.

Professional Journals

Professional journals are periodicals that publish original research articles. There are thousands of professional journals that publish research in business and related fields. They usually publish monthly or quarterly in individual issues, each containing several articles. Most articles are empirical research reports or review articles. Empirical research reports describe new empirical studies conducted by the authors, while review articles summarize previously published research on a topic.

Most articles in professional journals are one of two basic types: empirical research and review articles. Empirical research describe one or more new empirical studies conducted by the authors. They introduce a research question, explain why it is interesting, review previous research, describe their method and results, and draw their conclusions. Review articles summarize previously published research on a topic and usually present new ways to organize or explain the results. When a review article is devoted primarily to presenting a new theory, it is often referred to as a theoretical article. When a review article provides a statistical summary of all of the previous results it is referred to as a meta-analysis. For example, a meta-analysis by Babíc Rosario et al. (2016)^[2] studies how word of mouth (when customers ‘spread the word’ about a company) influences a company’s sales by combining evidence from a large set of previous studies on the topic. Such meta-analyses are exceptionally useful because they do not only offer an overview what has been studied before, but advance the field as a whole by looking at what we ultimately know about a topic by combining findings of all (relevant) prior studies.

Most professional journals in business undergo a process of double-blind peer review. Researchers submit their work to the journal, where it is reviewed anonymously by experts in the field. Researchers submit a manuscript to the editor—who is generally an established researcher too—who in turn sends it to two or three experts on the topic. Each reviewer reads the manuscript, writes a critical but constructive review, and sends the review back to the editor along with recommendations about whether the manuscript should be published or not. The editor then decides whether to accept the article for publication, ask the authors to make changes and resubmit it for further consideration, or reject it outright. The authors subsequently use  the reviewers’ comments to revise the manuscript accordingly. This entire process is double-blind, as the reviewers do not know the identity of the researcher(s) and vice versa. Double-blind peer review is helpful because it ensures that the work meets basic standards of the field before it can enter the research literature. However, in order to increase transparency and accountability, some newer open access journals utilize an open peer review process wherein the identities of the reviewers (which remain concealed during the peer review process) are published alongside the journal article.

Scholarly Books

Scholarly books are books written by researchers and practitioners mainly for use by other researchers and practitioners. A monograph is written by a single author or a small group of authors and usually, gives a coherent presentation of a topic much like an extended review article. Edited volumes have an editor or a small group of editors who recruit many authors to write separate chapters on different aspects of the same topic. Although edited volumes can also give a coherent presentation of the topic, it is not unusual for each chapter to take a different perspective or even for the authors of different chapters to openly disagree with each other. In general, scholarly books undergo a peer review process similar to that used by professional journals.

The University of Groningen has an extensive library catalogue with, at the time of writing, about 3.5 million books, and 1.7 million e-books. You can access the University’s library catalogue at: https://rug.on.worldcat.org/ Many publications are available at -or can be delivered to- the library at the Faculty of Economics and Business, and many e-books can immediately be accessed online after logging in with your student account.

Literature Search Strategies

Using Web of Science, EBSCOhost and Other Databases

The primary method used to search the research literature in business involves using one or more electronic databases. These include well-known platforms like Academic Search Premier, JSTOR, Web of Science and ProQuest, which cater to various academic disciplines. For this course, Web of Science and EBSCOhost are two very useful databases for finding papers.

These databases consist of individual records for each article in the database. Each record includes basic publication information, an abstract or summary of the work, and a list of other works cited by that work. Researchers can enter one or more search terms, returning any records that contain those terms. This system is supported by various vendors, so the interface may look different depending on the library. What makes databases such as Web of Science and EBSCOhost particularly useful is its list of keywords and index terms associated with each record. These are standardized, which helps ensure consistency and accuracy in search results. For example, research on “market segmentation” is always indexed under that term. One key challenge, however, is finding the right term to search. Sometimes, search terms are obvious. Other times, however, different disciplines use different terms for the same phenomenon, making it more difficult to gain a complete overview.

Given the extensive database, researchers often need to try a variety of search terms in different combinations and at different levels of specificity to find exactly what they need. For instance, entering a broad term like “marketing” might return too many irrelevant results, but “customer inertia” and “marketing” may return much more specific results on the theory of customer inertia in marketing. One of the key challenges in obtaining a complete overview of research in a particular field is knowing which terms to search for.

Web of Science, EBSCOhost and similar databases also facilitate advanced search strategies. You can combine search terms to refine results further and use filters to include only those articles from certain years, journals, or authors. This granularity allows researchers to tailor their literature reviews precisely to their research needs, ensuring they gather the most relevant and up-to-date information.

Finding databases

At the University of Groningen, most databases can be found under https://www.rug.nl/library/search/e-resources. You can either search for the database (e.g. entering ‘Web of Science’ as a search term will lead you to ‘Web of Science Core Collection’, a very useful database), or clicking on the letter associated with a database (e.g. ‘W’ for web of science, ‘E’ for EBSCOhost)

Using Other Search Techniques

In addition to entering search terms into EBSCOhost, Web of Science and other databases, there are several other techniques you can use to search the research literature. First, if you have one good article or book chapter on your topic—a recent review article is best—you can look through the reference list of that article for other relevant articles, books, and book chapters. In fact, you should do this with any relevant article or book chapter you find. You can also start with a classic article or book chapter on your topic, find its record in any of these databases (by entering the author’s name or article’s title as a search term), and link from there to a list of later works that cite this classic article. This works because other researchers working on your topic are likely to be aware of the classic article and cite it in their own work. This may also help you find relevant additional terms to search on, as authors by other papers may be aware that multiple terms for the same subject exist in different streams of research.

You can also do a general Internet search using search terms related to your topic or the name of a researcher who conducts research on your topic. This might lead you directly to works that are part of the research literature (e.g., articles in open-access journals or posted on researchers’ own websites). The search engine Google Scholar is especially useful for this purpose, and tends to have more extensive coverage than databases such as EBSCOhost. The downside, however, is that many results returned from Google Scholar can be less relevant than results returned from databases such as Web of Science or from sources that are not peer-reviewed. A general Internet search might also lead you to websites that are not part of the research literature but might provide references to works that are. Finally, you can talk to people (e.g., your instructor or other faculty members) who know something about your topic and can suggest relevant articles and book chapters.

What To Search For

When you do a literature review, you need to be selective. Not every article, book chapter, and book that relates to your research idea or question will be worth obtaining, reading, and integrating into your review. Instead, you want to focus on sources that help you do four basic things: (a) refine your research question, (b) identify appropriate research methods, (c) place your research in the context of previous research, and (d) write an effective research report. Several basic principles can help you find the most useful sources.

First, it is best to focus on recent research, keeping in mind that what counts as recent depends on the topic. For newer topics that are actively being studied, “recent” might mean published in the past year or two. For older topics that are receiving less attention right now, “recent” might mean within the past 10 years. You will get a feel for what counts as recent for your topic when you start your literature search. A good general rule, however, is to start with sources published in the past five years. The main exception to this rule would be classic articles that turn up in the reference list of nearly every other source. If other researchers think that this work is important, even though it is old, then, by all means, you should include it in your review.

Second, you should look for review articles on your topic because they will provide a useful overview of it—often discussing important definitions, results, theories, trends, and controversies—giving you a good sense of where your own research fits into the literature. You should also look for empirical research reports addressing your question or similar questions, which can give you ideas about how to measure your variables and collect your data. As a general rule, it is good to use methods that others have already used successfully unless you have good reasons not to. Finally, you should look for sources that provide information that can help you argue for the interestingness of your research question. For a study on the effectiveness of advertising around sports events (Gijsenberg 2014)^[3]for example, you might look for information about how much companies typically spend on sports advertising, whether managers think this money is well spent, and so on.

How many sources are enough for your literature review? This is a difficult question because it depends on how extensively your topic has been studied and also on your own goals. Some very original studies only cite one or two papers, but most studies at least cite several dozen. Literature reviews and meta-analyses tend to cite a higher number of papers than most studies, as their entire goal is to review the current state of the literature. This may give you a very rough idea of what professional researchers consider to be adequate, but this is very much situation-dependent. As a student, your thesis or research paper may be a smaller-scale project in comparison to published work. However, the principles for selecting the most useful sources remain the same.