Choosing a Research Topic

1. Choosing a Research Topic Sanjoy Bandopadhyay Professor, Department of Music Sikkim University, Sikkim

2. Be Original • Approaching new research objects • New interpretation of available findings.

3. Approaching new research objects • Undocumented objects, e.g. undocumented music genre, undocumented music style, undocumented musical instruments, undocumented inter-associations of music with different aspects of culture and life and others.

4. New interpretations on available findings • Updating available with documents with further research adding information, adding on analysis and others. • Bring forth new interpretations of currently available research findings through different analytical approach.

5. You and Your Research • You MUST like your topic as this involves: • Strong involvement • Heavy thinking • Immaculate planning • Huge efforts to accumulate data • Considerable time and energy.

6. Time Plan and Research Volume • Your work requires good time plan. You have to compete it within the reasonable amount of time. Therefore you should be careful when you propose a research: • The volume of work involved should be efficiently manageable within your set time-period. You may set the target of 30 months that will include your data collection, analysis and logical data presentation [writing, etc.] to achieve the inference. • You may like to include a ‘Time-Plan’ in your research proposal.

7. Your Interest and Available Researches • You should remember that Research is an open space. • You discuss your interests with your teachers and colleagues. • Substantiate your interest with extensive reading and try knowing what has already been done in this. • Try to identify what are the areas left to be considered. THIS REQUIRES YOUR VERY SINCERE EFFORTS, WELL DIRECTED THOUGHTS AND REASONING.

8. Flexible Be • In most cases the research does not go as initially planned. • You may have to re-plan your research after you go through a Pilot Project. • Your final project may come out as much more interesting than you thought initially.

9. Primary work • Identify your research interest involving instrumental music culture. • Go through very intensive search to locate the available research documents. This is VERY IMPORTANT.

10. The available materials • Go on keeping notes of the points you discover and write down the bibliographical details. • Go on writing reviews of the works you study. [we shall tell you how to do it at appropriate time]. • Try to identify an area that is: • Not covered in the available research works. • The topic MUST appear ATTRACTIVE and INTERESTING to you.

11. Design a Test Plan • Congratulations! You have achieved the MOST difficult part of a research project.. The Research Question. • Try to design a Research Plan in consultation with your supervisor. • Try to design the data accumulation system.

12. Pilot Project • Pilot is a very efficient tool for designing a Research Project. • Obtain some sample research data. • Analyze the data

13. Pilot Project Data • Is the planned data obtaining plan feasible? • Can you improve upon the plan? • Do you think you should obtain different sets of data also for better research?

14. Pilot Project Data Analysis • Is the data directly helping in creating a logical inference? • What is the method of analysis to give you required result? Finalize your TOPIC after you gain experience through your Pilot Project. Now you know (1) the feasibility of your proposed research, (2) you are comfortable that you will be able to obtain required data and (3) you know how you will analyze them to bring out results. CONGRATULATIONS!

15. Q-A Session • Q-A Session where anybody in the group can raise questions and anybody in the group can answer to the that. • The Resource Person will review this and go on adding comments to give proper direction to the discussions. • Try to generate sub-topics from this presentation for follow-up discussion.

16. THANK YOU