When finishing your university dissertation it is good practice to highlight areas of future research. This section is usually included in the concluding chapter or in some cases the methodology chapter. Depending on your university requirements you typically need to include three or six areas of future research. So what could be areas of future research?
Limitations of research
All pieces of research have limitations which can be used to propose future research. This may relate to the research design, method of data collection, sample size etc. For instance, a dissertation undertaking qualitative research will not have been able to generalise the findings or present them statistically. Therefore future research could adopt a quantitative research design that would allow a larger sample of numerical data to be gathered.
Findings of research
When carrying out research there could be themes arising from your findings which are interesting, popular or unexpected. This therefore could be further investigated as a study on its own. Moreover, there may be part of your research question that remains unanswered that requires further and perhaps more in-depth research.
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Same research question, different setting
It is likely that your dissertation will be focused on a specific theory, context, organisation, culture, country, age group, location etc. Your findings will therefore only be applicable to that particular area. Subsequently, future research could apply the same research question but to a different setting. For example:
To what extent are fashion consumers in the USA influenced by social media marketing?
This research question could be applied in a different context in several ways. Firstly, it focuses on the USA as a location which means the findings are based solely on the views of US consumers. Future research could therefore consider the views of people in other countries. Moreover, the question could be applied to other forms of digital marketing such as email marketing.
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