The first thing you should ask yourself is why you think that three years is not enough. If it is just a vague feeling you have, do set your mind at rest by looking into it thoroughly. You need to look at your topic to examine its scope and determine what's involved in investigating it. For example, if it involves experiments, how many would you have to perform and how long is it reasonable for each to take? If it is a qualitative study, how many respondents do you plan to interview, what other documents or sources do you need to access? You could also think about similar studies done before and compare the scope of your work with that of other studies. You should, of course, also talk with your supervisor. It may be that you are underestimating yourself or overestimating the topic. One of the things we find is that many students talk in very broad terms about the topic they propose to research. This could be what is causing your difficulty. Even if this global topic stays as your official topic, you need to pull it apart, unpack it, and generate questions around it. By doing this you can appreciate the full extent of the topic. After this, you could well convince yourself that your topic is manageable within three years. Or you could decide that one particular part of it will stand alone and be really worth doing. You have to take the risk, of course, that once you have started asking questions about it, there is always the chance that you will discover it doesn't have much potential. Out of this soul-searching you must come up with a well-defined, worthwhile topic because only then can you and your supervisor decide whether or not it can be done in a reasonable time. If you fail to resolve the question of whether or not it can be done in time, you will probably lack commitment to your project. And lack of commitment is counterproductive, undermining, dampens your enthusiasm and motivation, and gives you all sorts of excuses for not getting on with it.

	Finding, formulating and exploring your topic.
	Achieving Designing and planning research.
	Clarifying your real reasons for doing this degree.