Postgraduate students are often at loss searching for answers to the question of 'what is a suitable focus for my dissertation? Lately, I found that inexperienced staff members also go through this ordeal.
In all of the graduate programs I have been associated with (social sciences) the approach is to have students start the process of selecting a topic in their very first courses. In practice, this means assigning them to write about the principles of a given class can be applied to a topic of their interest. In some classes, that means developing a literature review, in others it requires developing a research design.
This same process continues through the second year and beyond, so that students develop an increasingly refined sense of what they want to study and how they want to do so.
This appears sound practice when time allows, e.g. allocating tasks during different stages of a graduate course. In the present situation, strange as it may be, presumably experienced staff members (most of whom are MA graduates) are unable, perhaps unwilling or inconfident, to initiate research.
In nursing and health sciences, graduate students are expected to have selected a broad research area at the time of entering the program. Then during the program, they refine their chosen area, select a substantial area, and then choose a research topic. Usually, this is done in first year so that after the coursework, students are ready to start working on their research problem.
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