How To Find A Research Gap (Quickly!): Step-By-Step Tutorial With Examples Free Worksheet

In this video, I'm gonna show you how to find a research gap as quickly as possible using a straightforward process that doesn't rely on any tools or special software. Let's jump into it. Hey, Derek, here from Grad Coach.

If it's your first time with us, the Grad coach channel is where we cover all things research related so you can approach your research project, whether that's a dissertation paper, or just a research article. With competence and confidence. Speaking of which, if you are currently working on a research proposal for a dissertation or thesis, be sure to check out our collection of templates and tools over on the Grad coach blog.

On the blog, we cover everything that you need to get started on your research journey. If that interests you, you can head over to grad coach. com/.

As a starting point, it's useful for us to first define what exactly we mean by a research gap to make sure we're all on the same page. Simply put a research gap is any space where there's currently a lack of solid agreed upon research regarding a specific topic or issue or phenomenon. In other words, there's a lack of established knowledge given this lack and opportunity emerges for a researcher like yourself to.

That gap. So research gaps are essentially the birthplace of research topics. In other words, if you want to find a research topic, you've gotta start by finding a research gap.

Now, we've already done a comprehensive video going into the details. Of what a research gap is and the different types of research gaps. So I'm not gonna go into the weeds about that right here.

If you're interested in that video, you can find the details up here. There should be a little link for you. Alternatively, there is a link in the description.

Instead, in this video, I'm gonna focus on the how specifically, how do you go about finding a research gap really quickly now? Quickly is the key word. Yeah.

Because there are many ways to find a research gap, and we do cover some of those alternative options on the grad coach blogs, so remember to go check that out. But in this video, we're gonna focus on a process that really allows you to find potential research gaps quickly. So it's important to state this because it's not the only way.

Saying this is the way or the best way to find a research gap. But it is really a great way to quickly wrap your head around potential opportunities that exist within your area of interest and what we call the strategy or this process is friend hunting. So without further delay, let's get into it.

Right. So the very first step is to decide on your broad area of interest. So obviously we're not talking about deciding on a topic yet, just a broad area of interest.

Perhaps there's something that you've done in your coursework that piqued your interest and you're, uh, keen to explore that further. It could come from any source, but first things first, define your broad area of interest and then check that this is okay with your university or your institution. This might sound really dead obvious, but we've seen it so many times that students run down a path.

With great excitement and start piecing together research proposals and getting all excited about what they're gonna do. Only to find that actually the university requires a very specific focus in terms of the topic that needs to be researched. So step one, make sure that you have some clarity about your, your rough area of interest, and that that is acceptable to your university.

You can do that by checking any briefing documents that they've given you, or of course you can just contact the faculty and check that. Area that you're interested in would be acceptable. In this video, we're gonna use job satisfaction.

In other words, satisfaction in the workplace, satisfaction with your employer, and where you work as a sample area of interest to work through a running example and show you step by step how this process plays out. So once you've pinned down your research area of interest, the broad area of interest that you're keen to explore, the next step is to head over to good old Google Scholar. If you don't already know, Google Scholar is a great way to source academic literature for pretty much any topic.

It's certainly not the only way, and again, we're not prescribing this. Best way to find academic literature, but it is a useful starting point. And so that's the first step that we're gonna take.

So let's go on over to Google Scholar. So to start, you gonna want to do a few searches using keywords that are relevant to your area of interest. In our example of.

Job satisfaction. We could use job satisfaction as a keyword, or we might want to get a little bit more specific, perhaps job satisfaction for millennials or job satisfaction for Gen Zers or job satisfaction in a specific industry. So it's always a good idea to play around with as many keyword combinations and phrases as you can, and as you start looking at the literature, that'll also give you some ideas in terms.

How you could potentially phrase things and what language is used within your space, within your area of interest. So then for each of the keyword combinations that you use, or keywords or key phrases that you use, you'll wanna do some refining specifically. You wanna narrow it down to very recent articles because you're looking for a research gap.

Obviously, you want to. Content that's really fresh content that's come out as recently as possible. Of course, within academia, the wheels turn fairly slowly, and so what's considered fresh might already be, uh, you know, a year or two old, depending on your field, but you wanna narrow that down.

And so what you'll do is use Google Scholar to filter it down to the most recent papers, perhaps a year or within the year that you're in, or perhaps one year behind, depending on how fast moving the space is. Then it's time to dig into the literature itself. Yeah, it's time to get reading once you've run through a few searches or run a few searches using different keywords, and I'd recommend that you keep a separate tab for each of those keywords.

You'll need to scan through the results and see what's most relevant and what's most interesting to you. Of course, Google's going to give you a lot of content. For any given keyword, there's probably gonna be tons and tons of papers and.

You've gotta do a little bit of scanning and see what looks interesting to you. If you're looking at titles and they don't make any sense to you, well then you can probably scratch that off the list because that's going to be, uh, quite a curve for you to overcome in order to just get an idea of what the topic is about. So you wanna have a look through all of the articles that are coming up in the results, and you want to narrow your search down or pick out, let's say five to 10 articles that interest you and are attractive to you in some way.

At least pique your. Now I am making the assumption, yeah, that your university has provided you with access to academic databases. In other words, when you click on one of these articles, you can actually access it, or at least that you can go search for it within the university's database or library.

But if that's not the case, you will need to look at potentially two other options. The first option, Open Access articles and open access are essentially free to access articles and will include a link or two links to some open access dial directories below this video. So you can go have a look at those and that will allow you to search for articles that you know you have access to.

And the second option is a platform called Deep Dive. Now Deep Dive is essentially something like a Netflix or like a subscription service to access a broad range of journal articles. So this can.

Really useful and something that that'll probably be worth the money if you're just gonna use it for a short amount of time to source a group of articles. So you wanna look at those two options, either open access directories or Deep Dyve. All right, so onto the next step.

Once you've got your collection of articles, it's time to get reading. Now, the good news is you don't need to read every article from start to finish. That's gonna be extremely time consuming, and at least at this point in time, it's just not necessary.

So the way that you can approach this in a more. Optimized fashion is to focus on three specific sections for each given article. So the first is the abstract.

And while you were looking through Google, uh, scholar, you're probably reading the abstract. Uh, that's usually what they list in any case. And so you wanna have a look at the abstract.

That's usually one paragraph, two paragraphs, very short. You wanna have a look at the introduction cuz this will give you a bit. Uh, of an insight into the context of the study and the background of the study and what the researchers were trying to achieve.

And then lastly, you want to have a look at the discussion section or the conclusion section. Sometimes these two things are bound together and so that will tell you. What they found.

So by having a look at the abstract, by having a look at the introduction and by having a look at the discussion slash conclusion, you've got an idea of what were they trying to find and what did they find? And that's gonna give you a good idea of what that study was about. So you want to rinse and repeat that process.

Four, five, or 10 articles. From there, it's really time to get down to business and to focus on where you're gonna find your research gap. Now, this is where the magic happens.

So what you wanna do is you wanna have a look within any given article for section. That has phrasing along the lines of future research. Uh, further research or further research is needed, research opportunities or research directions.

You're looking for these kinds of terms. And what these terms are, are pointing to is obviously opportunities for further research for researchers like you. And so what we call this is the FRIN the FRIN section F.

R. I. N.

, and that just stands for further research is needed. Some studies will have a dedicated section for this, and some studies will include this as part of the conclusion section, or as I mentioned, it might even be the discussion section. And simply put, regardless of what shape it takes, the friend is your goldmine.

This is where the researchers explain what opportunities exist. Beyond their study. So given that you are looking at recent papers, you're looking at papers from this year or the previous year, if these researchers are saying that there's an opportunity for further exploration year or further exploration there, then obviously that presents a golden opportunity, provided that the research paper and the researchers are credible of course.

Um, but for the most part, if you're sticking to high quality academic journals, that's not something to worry. Now, of course, they're not handing you, uh, a bunch of research gaps and research topics on a silver platter, but this is a great starting point for you to at least get thinking about, okay, what are the opportunities for original research? So this is all probably rather conceptual.

So let's take a look at some examples in action to see what this looks like. So looking at this article, this articles about. Impact of over education, on job outcomes, and naturally job satisfaction is one of the variables that they'll consider in the study.

Hence, it's coming up in our search. So if we scroll down to the bottom of this article, you'll see there's a dedicated section called Limitations and Directions for Future Research. Yeah.

They talk about the limitations of the study and provide suggestions about how further research. Could, or future researchers could improve upon their work and overcome some of the limitations that were encountered in this study. Next up, we've got this study about organizational support and job satisfaction.

This is a quantitative study looking at the relationships between variables. So in this article, if we scroll down to the section titled, Limitations and future directions. They provide a really nice structure because they essentially break it down into limitation and then opportunity for research, limitation, opportunity for research.

So that's very nicely structured and it creates a nice list of opportunities that you can potentially explore. So what you wanna do is follow this skim review process of digging up research articles quickly, skimming through those three core sections, and then looking for the opportunities for further research or the fringe sections. You wanna do this for the five to 10 articles that you originally pulled up, and you wanna map out any potential interesting research gaps or research opportunities that emerge from that.

You might also find. You want to have a look at a larger number of articles, you might find that, oh, actually there were more than five or 10 that were interesting. Or you might just find that as you snowball through the articles in your original list that you find other stuff that's already interesting.

So don't rush this process, although I did say this is a quick way of doing it. You take the time to have a look at what's going on in the research and dig a little bit deeper. If you've developed your, your short list, if you've got through that process and you've found, let's say a, a handful of areas that are interesting to you, you'll then need to do a final step, which is to return to Google Scholar and just double check that there aren't any fresh articles, any fresher publications that have.

Already filled the gap. Obviously you don't want to go get all excited about a specific research gap. I need to find that, oh, actually there was a paper published last month that already covered this, and I just missed it in my original search because I was using different keywords, whatever the case may be.

So make sure that you just. Go back and sanity check all of the interest areas that you have or the potential research gaps that you have, and keep in mind that ultimately this need for originality will vary from university to university and depending on what level of study you're at as well. So, Keep that in mind.

Keep in mind that you don't need to always find something that's perfectly, perfectly original, but it is useful to use this as your starting point because this gives you really a view of sort of the edge of the current state of knowledge, the edge of the current state of research. Last but not least, once you've got that short list of potential research gaps, you're gonna need to evaluate them systematically so that you. Choose a winner, so to speak.

You certainly can't go on and research everything that's of interest to you. So there's many factors to consider, and if you want to evaluate your options systematically, we do have a free worksheet that you can access on the grad coach blog, which you can then use to kind of line up and evaluate each of your research gaps, so to speak. So as usual, include the link to that.

So there you have it, a pretty straightforward, time efficient way to quickly identify potential research gaps or at least potential research directions based on the existing literature, and most importantly, the most cutting edge, the most recent. Existing literature. As I said, this is certainly not the only way to find a research gap.

We do have many, many other routes that you can pursue, and you can learn more about those on the grad coach blog, but it is one way. As I mentioned, it might be a bit overkill depending on what the need for originality is. But it's a great starting point nonetheless, because it does give you an idea of what research gaps look like and what opportunities look like if you're still a bit unsure about how to pursue a research gap or how to find a research opportunity and how to move that into, let's say, a proposal into a dissertation.

Be sure to check out our one-on-one private coaching service where we hold your hand step by step through the process and make sure that you develop the best quality work that you possibly could. If you're interested in that, you can learn more and book a free consultation at GradCoach. com.

Until next time, good luck.