Discussion

**Please note that your final paper will be an interdisciplinary research that integrates the two disciplines that you are using for this degree. You must integrate your two disciplines (your primary and secondary disciplines) in a scholarly literature research design.

For this first Discussion Board there are two parts.

Part 1: Describe your two disciplines and what your research topic will be. I realize this is a work in progress. This is a good time to start thinking about your research topic and will allow for feedback from the instructor and students to help finalize your research questions.

Part 2: As you continue learning about Interdisciplinary Studies, I want you to think about STEPS 1, 2 and 3 from Chapters 3 and 4 of the Repko and Szostak text and begin applying them to your own research questions. What is the most important part of the interdisciplinary research process? What are some of the problems you may encounter in your research? How can you justify that your problem is worthy of interdisciplinary study? How can mapping help you in your research? Using your text, apply these questions to your own potential research problem. This discussion will be applied to later assignments such as the Research Design & Bibliography.

As you begin your initial literature search, what materials do you need to gather that will enable you to decide if your topic is researchable from an interdisciplinary approach? As an interdisciplinarian, you are researching a complex problem to find a gap in the literature.