In his book, Writing the Doctoral Dissertation (pp. 61-63), Gordon Davis (1997) identifies several useful points to help in identifying your topic:
- Current events
- Suggestions for research from past dissertations
- Suggestions for research by authorities in the field
- Expressions of need for research by practitioners in a field
- Generally accepted, but unproved, suppositions
- Unproved or weakly proved assertions by an authority in the field
- Theories and concepts without supporting research
- Different approaches to testing of important results
