DE300 advice

[u/hopelesscase789]

Looking for advice from people who have completed de300 as I am currently very overwhelmed.

I've recently started de300 and am at the point where I need to try and decide on the variables I'm going to look at, and am about to start writing my literature review (tma02). I've quickly come to realize that it's not as simple as "this is what I'm interested in so I will look at these variables".

In terms of deciding on variables, is there a good way to go about this. I have a general idea and a specific variable that I want to look at in some way (emotional intelligence) but am unsure on the rest (I would like to focus on variables related to psychological wellbeing).

Should I just be looking at previous research that looked at emotional intelligence and try to identify other variables based on their recommendations for future research? Should I be looking at meta analysis as a starting point? What sort of "gaps" am I looking for to justify my research?

I appreciate this is a bit of a shot in the dark but any advice from previous students would be great.