Kia Ora Maddog. For me the key to your thesis is that word 'question'. A finely honed research question is one that will be focussed, narrow, and that you can always come back to when you need to self-discipline (i.e. I've come across all this great stuff that I want to include but is it relevant to the question I have chosen to answer??!!. If it doesn't help to answer the question, you ditch it. An open question will allow you to go off on tangents that, in the end, you'll eventually have to cull to make the grade.
My advice would be to work with your supervisors (and associates) to craft a question and an abstract (80-90 word limit) to help you narrow down. Once you have done this to everyone's satisfaction (it may take some time) then you will finally have your parameters and your own disciplined focus. It's a slog but a worthy one (the actual field research stuff is a breeze in comparision).
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