SUBJECT MATTER OF THE INQUIRY OF RESEARCH

You begin your research work with a problem; that is, having a problem or topic to work
on. A topic is researchable if the knowledge and information about are supported by
evidence that is observable, factual, and logical.
GUIDELINES IN CHOOSING A RESEARCH TOPIC
1. Interest in the subject matter – Your interest in a topic may be caused by your rich
background knowledge about it and by its novelty; meaning its unfamiliarity to you.
2. Availability of information – Collecting a lot of information as evidence to support
your claims about your subject matter from varied forms of literature like` books,
journals, and newspapers among the others, is a part and parcel of any research work.
3. Timeliness and relevance of the topic – The topic is relevant if it yields results that are
instrumental in societal improvement. It is timely if it is related to the present.
4. Limitations on the subject – This make you link your choosing with course
requirements
RESEARCH TOPIC TO BE AVOIDED
1. Controversial topics – These are topics that depend greatly on the writer’s opinion,
which may tend to be biased or prejudicial. Facts cannot support topics like these.
2. Highly technical subjects topics – For beginner, researching on topics that require an
advanced study, technical knowledge and vast experience is a very difficult task.
3. Hard – to - investigate subjects – a subject is hard to investigate if there are no available
reading materials about it and if such materials are not up-to-date.
4. Too broad subjects – topics that are too broad will prevent you from giving a
concentrated or an in-depth analysis of the subject matter of the paper. The remedy to
this is to narrow or limit the topic to a smaller one.
5. Too narrow subjects – These subjects are so limited or specific that an extensive of
thorough searching or reading for information about these is necessary.
6. Vague subjects – Choosing topic like these will prevent you from having a clear focus
on your paper.
SOURCES OF RESEARCH TOPICS
1. Mass media communication – press (newspaper, ads, TV, radio, films, etc)
2. Books, Internet, peer-reviewed journals, government publications.
3. Professional periodicals like College English Language Teaching Forum, English
Forum, The Economist, Academia, Business Circle, Law Review, etc.
4. General periodicals such as Reader’s Digest, Women’s Magazine, Panorama
Magazine, Time Magazine, World Mission Magazine, etc.
5. Previous reading assignments in your other subjects.
6. Work experience – clues to researchable topic from full-time or part-time jobs, OJT
experience, fieldwork, etc.
RESEARCH PROBLEM VS. RESEARCH QUESTION
MEANING OF RESEARCH PROBLEM.
The word “problem” makes you worry and pushes you to exert considerable effort
in finding solution for it. You consider research as the remedy for getting over any
problem. When you decide to do research, you begin with a problem that will lead you
to a specific topic to focus on.
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
You must not rush into gathering ideas and information about your topic. First,
spend time getting background knowledge about the problem that triggered off your
research topic to discover its relation to what the world, particularly the experts,
professionals, and learned people know about your topic.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
 The research problem enables you to generate as set of research questions. To give
your study a clear direction, you have to break this big, overreaching, general question
into several smaller or specific questions.
GUIDELINES IN FORMULATING RESEARCH QUESTIONS
1. Establish a clear relation between the research questions and the problem or
topic.
2. Based your research questions on your RRL because existing published works
help you get good background knowledge of the research problem and help you
gauge the people’s current understanding or unfamiliarity about the topic, as
well as the extent of their knowledge and interest in it.
3. Formulate research question that can arouse your curiosity and surprise you
with your discoveries or findings. This is true for research questions asked about
a problem that was never investigated upon.
4. State your research questions in such a way that they include in all dependent
and independent variables referred to by theories, principles, or concepts
underlying your research work.
5. Let the set of research questions or sub-problems be preceded by one question
expressing the main problem of the research.
6. Avoid asking research that are answerable with “yeas” or “no”.
7. Be guided by the acronym SMART
RESEARCH TITLE
A research title should be short, sharp and describe what your research is
about. Lipton (1998), mentioned five characteristics of a good title:
INFORMATIVE - Identify one or more two main points in the research to
communicate to audience;
A good title is capable of conveying those points. Be as specific as possible without
adding unnecessary details.
ACCURATE - The title should be truthful about the contents of the paper. Do not
over promise the results of the paper in the title.
CLEAR - The audience should not have to think what the title means. Different
people may interpret the title differently, so ask a number of people on critique your
title and tell you what they think the paper is about before they even read it.
CONCISE - Short titles are instantly recognizable and jump of the page. Every
word should have a reason for being present, and each word should contribute to
the message of the title.
ATTENTION COMMANDING - Think of a title than can catch the eye and the
interest of the reader.
Background of the study
Aside from developing the research problem, the researcher should be able to
explain the background or context of the research prob elem clearly. To describe the
background of the study, the researcher must use data published in other works about the
subjects. The background must be clearly showed that the issue or problem leads to the
necessity of conducting a study about the topic. Creswell (2009) provides guide question
that can help researchers in describing the back ground of the study or problem.
Why is it necessary to conduct a study about the topic?
What problem influences the need to conduct a study about the topic?
What is the context or background of the topic?
More tips on providing the background of the study
 1. Develop an opening sentence that will attract the reader’s interests and at the
same time convey the issue or problem in such a way that the audience can
relate.
2. Refrain from using idiomatic expressions because they convey vague or unclear
messages.
3. Use statistical data or numerical figures because they create a good impact.
Using such information suggests that the researcher has a good background of
the topic before conducting the research.
4. Clearly identify the research problem that leads to the study. You should be able
to explain the research problem of the study clearly in background.
5. State the reasons why the research problem is important by providing a number
of references to justify the necessity of studying the problem.
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
 In every aspect in any kind of research, questions arise and may be a catalyst for further
research. In a research paper, the statement of the problem is the focal point of your
research. It clearly states the main problem, written either as a declarative statement or as
question, broken down into specific sub problems. A research problem is basically the
situation that is need of a solution improvement or alteration what is currently happening
and what the researcher ought for things to happen.
To be able to know if your research questions and research problem is worthy to
studied, they should be able to:
1. Ask questions that guide the researcher in gaining a conclusion to their
hypothesis
2. Be able to help find results and conclusions .
3. Have a valid significance in relation to the study.
The statement of the problem is basically composed of the different questions that
the entire study will answer.
The statement of the problem is basically composed of the different questions that
the entire study will answer.
Main Question and Specific questions
MAIN QUESTION – What is the relationship of corruption and overpopulation
with poverty incidence in the Philippines?
SPECIFIC QUESTIONS
1. What are poverty, corruption and over population?
2. How do corruption and poverty correlate?
3. What is the effect of over-population on the country’s poverty rates?
SCOPES AND DELIMITATION
The Scope refers with “what/who is included in the study” while Delimitation deals
with “what/who is excluded in the study”. It is simply what the researchers can control that
would inexplicably affect their research problem and subject matter. In writing the scope
and delimitation, the following points should be considered:
 A brief statement of the general purpose of the study.
 The subject matter and topics studied.
 The locale of the study, where the data were gathered or the entity to which
the data belong.
 The population or universe from which the respondents were selected.
 The period of the study.
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
This section creates perspectives for looking at the problem. It points out how your
study relate to the larger issues and uses a persuasive rational to justify the reason for your
 study. It makes the purpose worth pursuing. The significance of the study answers the
following:
Why your study important?
To whom it is important? Who are the beneficiaries or who will benefit from the
study?
What benefit(s) will occur if your study is done?
Conceptual and Theoretical Framework
• Frameworks are perspectives points of views, models, or frames of references usually
made up of assumptions, theories, and concepts that are used by the researcher in the
organization of observation, reasoning, analysis and interpretation of research data.
Theoretical Framework
• It is the application of theory or theories in explaining the existence of the phenomenon
and the interrelationship of various factors which led to the existence of the phenomenon.
• Using a theoretical framework the researcher borrows the concepts, theories, and ideas
proposed by different social scientists, theorist and philosophers.
HERE ARE EXAMPLES OF THEORIES THAT CAN BE USED
• Macro theory
• Micro theory
• Conflict theory
• Symbolic Interactionism
• Structural Functionalism
• Feminists Paradigm
• Marxist theory
Conceptual Framework
Is a graphical presentation of your concepts and ideas on the basic structure or
components of your research as well on the relationships of these elements with one
another. The C.F is an important part of study. Miles and Huberman (1994) defines it as a
part of study that “explains, either graphically or narrative form, the main things to be
studied – the key factors, concepts, or variables - and presumed relationship between
them”.
Here are Regonel’s (2001) step by step guide on how to make a conceptual framework:
• 1. Choose your topic
• 2. Do a literature review
• 3. Isolate the important variables
• 4. Generate the conceptual framework
Pointers in writing a Conceptual Framework
1. Familiarize yourself with the objective of the conceptual framework.
2. Base the contents of the conceptual framework on your own understanding of the
elements and of the relationships of the research features.
3. See to it that all aspects of the conceptual framework are related to the objective of the
research.
4. Let others read your conceptual framework for comments or feedback for
improvement purposes.
Your conceptual framework must contain:
1. INPUT
2. PROCESS
3. OUTPUT
HYPOTHESIS
 A Hypothesis is a tentative explanation or an answer to a question about variables, their
relationship, and other facts involved in the research. Research always ends up with a
result.
A hypothesis has to be tested through analytical investigation to prove how true or false it
is.
According to Daniel Palazzolo and Dave Roberts, a good hypothesis has the following
three characteristics:
• 1. It is theoretically grounded.
• 2. It specifies the relationship between the values of two or more variables.
• 3. It makes testable comparison using empirical data.
Here are sample of hypothesis
• A. Couples who go to church often have a lower chances of separating compared to
couples who seldom attend masses.
• B. Double standards still exist in popular mass media in the Philippines.
• C. Religion influences the voting patterns of Filipinos in the provinces.
Categories of hypothesis
• Null hypothesis (Ho) – which states the absence of relationship between the independent
and dependent variables.
• Alternative hypothesis (Hi) – states the relationship between dependent and independent
variables.
DEFINITION OF TERMS
• These are listing of principal terms used in the study.
• This section defines the major terms in the statement of the problem and conceptual
framework, particularly those that vary in meaning to different people.