Q: Can a research on the topic outlined below work?

Hello Iddrisu – Welcome to the forum!

Straight up, that’s a pretty focused topic. So, you seem to be already on the right track. However, the thing is, the decision of pursuing a certain topic of research should best be made by the researcher, with some guidance or advice from seniors and supervisors. This is also because not just conducting the actual research but also coming up with a topic, gauging whether it’s worthwhile to pursue, and deciding to pursue it (or not) help to build your research acumen as much as doing the actual research.

However, to not leave you in the lurch, we shall provide a few pointers.

• You need to see if it’s novel enough. This would best come from doing a literature search, to see if other such studies have been conducted. Even if so, there may be some gaps in those studies that you could seek to pursue in your study.
• You need to see if it’s feasible. For this, you will also need to gauge and determine its scope.
• You need to see if it will help provide a remedy or solution to a matter of critical need or interest. We wouldn’t really know the Ghanaian scenario for the topic. But you would need to see whether it’s relevant – and to what extent. From the little we can make out, it does seem to be so, which is why we said you seem to be on the right track. :-)

Apart from the above, it would help to articulate the topic well to ensure your focus is right and also to ensure readers understand clearly what the study is about. Without knowing the details of your study, we would suggest a few changes to only the topic title. You may consider writing it as: 'The negative impact of the termination of the teacher allowance on their performance as well as the behavior and academic performance of their pupils: The Ghanaian context.'

Here’s the rationale for the changes:

• We believe ‘student teacher allowance’ should be just ‘teacher allowance,’ unless students and teachers both get an allowance. (We don’t believe this would be the case.)
• We have brought ‘academic performance’ before ‘pupils’ to make the title shorter and also to clearly state the three dependent variables (DVs) – teacher performance, pupil behavior, and pupil academic performance – together.
• We have included ‘The Ghanaian context’ after a colon to clearly call this out.

Hope that helps.

For more information and insights into the various points discussed above, you may refer to the following resources:

• How can I judge the novelty of my study?
• Tips for effective literature searching and keeping up with new publications
• 6 Tips on identifying research gaps
• How to choose a research question
• How do I present the scope of my study?
• 3 Basic tips on writing a good research paper title

All the best for your research!