When a new doctoral student joins the lab, the first big task he or she will face involves selecting a thesis or dissertation topic. Students entering with a master’s degree in Counseling Psychology who completed a thesis in their master’s program are encouraged to have me review it. If I can approve it as being equivalent to the sort of thesis a student would complete in our program, we can proceed directly to the student’s dissertation. If not or if the student did not complete a thesis, we will complete a master’s project before starting on the dissertation (a master’s project is similar to a thesis in many ways but does not require a graduate committee).

Even though a dissertation is more complicated than a thesis, most students find that selecting a dissertation topic is far easier than selecting a thesis topic because they know much more about research by that point. This post will focus on the doctoral student entering the program without a master’s degree and provide some tips on selecting a thesis topic.

Here are five things to keep in mind about selecting a topic for one’s master’s thesis:

1. Students are encouraged to select a thesis topic consistent with the work we are doing in the lab. Occasionally, a new student may have a great idea for how to extend our work in a new direction; however, topics with little relevance to our work are unlikely to be approved.
2. Once a broad potential topic area is identified (e.g., relational aggression among college students), narrowing it to identify the primary variables to be included and form tentative research questions will require the student to review the relevant literature. What are the current gaps in the literature on this topic? Where can one make a contribution by doing something different from what has been done before?
3. Statistically, theses tend to be much less complex than dissertations. Some may only have 3-4 primary variables. One of the more common approaches we have been using in a number of recent thesis projects involves testing moderation or mediation. If we know, for example, that a variable we are interested in is positively related to relational aggression, we might ask whether another variable might help us understand the nature of that relationship (e.g., what might strengthen or weaken it, whether it depends on an intermediate variable).
4. As important as the topic selected may seem, it is less important than being able to complete one’s thesis on time. Delays in doing so mean less time for completing a dissertation. Thus, topic selection must take feasibility into consideration. How large is the body of literature that will need to be reviewed? Can we recruit the participants we will need? Are psychometrically sound measures of the variables available?
5. There is no such thing as a perfect study because we will never be able to include all potentially relevant variables and will always have constraints. A thesis that is completed on time, leads to a conference presentation and manuscript submitted for publication, and informs a student’s dissertation is about as close to perfection as we are going to get.

The thesis process always seems to move faster than new students expect it to, and there is considerable pressure to identify a topic early in the Fall semester so we can review the literature, select variables, identify appropriate measures, and put together the written thesis proposal. Thus, it is often helpful for us to begin discussing possible thesis ideas during the summer before students begin the program.

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