What if my dissertation has already been done?

“I can’t do my dissertation on this now!”

“Someone else has already done it!”

Every dissertation student’s worst nightmare, right?

Or, is it?

I’m going to tell you how you can keep your topic and you’ll see how this problem is actually a blessing in disguise for your dissertation.

So, you’ve started your dissertation and you’ve been trawling through the literature. But, wait a second - OMG!!! Someone else appears to have done the exact same study you’re planning on doing!

What should you do? Firstly, get clear on your people, issue / interest and context. Secondly, if you have any of those three missing – add them in. Thirdly, in the highly unlikely event that their people, issue / interest and context are exactly the same as yours, get even more specific. Let’s take a look at each of those in more detail now.

(1) Get clear on your people, issue / interest and context.

Every social sciences dissertation title needs to have three things in it – people, an issue or interest, and a context.

In terms of people, you need a group of people who have at least one thing in common – that might be their age, gender, profession, race or ethnicity, social class etc.

In terms of an issue / interest, you need to identify an issue that these people are experiencing or an interest that they have. For example, issues might be inequality, discrimination, problems, challenges, barriers to doing something. Interests might be things they want to do, things they are doing, their hobbies, causes that they’re passionate about.

The context relates to the place or space, virtual or real, in which all of this is playing out. That might be a business, an organisation, a town or city, an online forum, a social institution like education, politics or criminal justice, a particular period of time, a phase of someone’s life.

Here are a couple of examples of dissertation titles that contain all three.

How do female lawyers successfully change careers after having children?

People = female lawyers

Issue or interest = changing career

Context = after having children

Experiences of institutional racism among medical doctors born outside of the UK working in neurology.

People = medical doctors born outside of the UK

Issue or interest = institutional racism

Context = the neurology field of medicine

Now what you need to do is take your dissertation topic and identify your people, issue/interest and context. Write it down and underline those elements. People, issue or interest, context. Make sure they’re all there.

(2) Add any missing elements

If any of your elements are missing – people, issue / interest, context - add them in. This will differentiate and distinguish your dissertation from the piece of research you’ve just come across.

Let’s have a look at a couple of examples.

Women’s experiences of domestic abuse.

If you started out with this as a dissertation topic, you are definitely going to find that ‘somebody has already done it’. This is a super broad topic. There’s a lot of literature looking at women and domestic abuse. It’s a really well-established area of the literature. However, that doesn’t mean that your dissertation can’t add to that literature. You just need to get specific.

This topic already has people (women) and an issue (domestic abuse). But – what’s missing? Context! it doesn’t have a context. You need to identify a place or space, virtual or real to locate this within. You might choose a time period – for example ‘during the pandemic’. You might choose a physical location – for example a town or city. As such, you might end up with a title like, Women’s experiences of domestic abuse during the covid-19 pandemic.

The effectiveness of education in prison.

Again, this is another area of the literature where a lot of research has already been done. This one has an issue (education). It has a context (prison). But it has no people! Who could your people be? Young or juvenile offenders? Female offenders? Male offenders? Offenders who are convicted of violent crimes? Identify one. You might end up with a title like, The effectiveness of education programmes in prison among female prisoners convicted of property offences.

By ensuring your topic is comprehensive by including people, issue/interest and context, and being specific about each, you will make sure it’s different from what’s already out there.

(3) Get even more specific

Now, lastly, what if you have got all three – people, issue / interest and context – and that still doesn’t solve the problem? What if there is already a piece of literature – or multiple pieces of literature - out there about that exact same topic? This is going to be less likely now that you have all three elements, but it’s still a possibility. So, what do you do?

It’s annoying when you have the exact same topic as someone else, but it’s not the end of the world, because you can still make this topic your own. You do that by getting even more specific with your people, issue / interest and context. You might want to home in on one, or two or three elements. It depends upon how busy the literature is in the specific area you want to look at.

Let’s stay with that example from the last section:

Women’s experiences of domestic abuse during the Covid-19 pandemic

As a criminologist who specialises in gender-based violence, I know this literature pretty well, and I can tell you that there are a lot of studies about women’s experiences of domestic abuse during the pandemic and even more are being added every single day. We have an area of the literature that’s becoming quite busy, so we need to carve out our specific niche.

We do that by taking each of the elements of the title – people, issue / interest and context, and getting even more specialist. Let’s take the elements one at a time.

Women. Okay, how can we get more specific here? We could look at women within a certain age category. We could look at women from a particular ethnic group. We could look at women with a specific disability. We could look at women who live in a particular place. For example, young women aged 18-25, Black Caribbean women, women with learning difficulties, women living in rural areas, women who work in particular professions, women belonging to a particular social class group.

Issue. Domestic abuse. How can we get specific here? We could look at a particular element of domestic abuse. We could look at physical violence, we could look at economic abuse, we could look at tactics that perpetrators use like isolation, deprivation, monitoring and surveillance.

Context. During the Covid-19 pandemic. Could we get more specific here? The pandemic went on for a long time. Could we look at a particular part of it? The first lockdown? The first three months? The transitional period where things were open but not like they were before, that liminal, in between period?

When we’ve done this, we can start identifying niche topics that likely haven’t been covered by other people. Examples of what we might put together here are:

Middle class women’s experiences of economic abuse during the pandemic.

Black Caribbean women’s experiences of domestic abuse during the first lockdown of the pandemic.

Experiences of isolation among domestic abuse victims living in rural areas during the pandemic.

See - you don’t have to throw it in the bin!

Can you see now how you can keep your dissertation topic? Even if you think it’s been done before, you can take that topic and make it your own, unique, distinct piece of research. You can do that in two ways. Firstly, ensuring you have people, issue/interest and context, and if you’re missing one of those, add it in. And secondly, getting more specific on one or more of those elements if you do find yourself in a busy area of the literature.

If you want more tips like this become a Degree Doctor insider by subscribing to my weekly emails. Click on the button below to sign up!

If you want me to walk you through the process of choosing a topic that you’re going to stick with, and get you ready for your literature review, check out my digital course, Dissertation Launch Pad. Click here or on the image below to find out more!